Reverse Psychology - Children

Children

Reverse psychology is often used on children due to their high tendency to respond with reactance, a desire to restore threatened freedom of action. Some parents feel that the best strategy is sometimes "reverse psychology": telling children to stay in the house when you really want them to choose to go outside and play'.

Questions have however been raised about such an approach when it is more than merely instrumental, in the sense that 'reverse psychology implies a clever manipulation of the misbehaving child' and nothing more. With respect to '"emotional intelligence"... successful fathering', the advice has been given: 'don't try to use reverse psychology....such strategies are confusing, manipulative, dishonest, and they rarely work'. In addition, consistently allowing a child to do the opposite of what he/she is being advised, undermines the authority of the parent.

Read more about this topic:  Reverse Psychology

Famous quotes containing the word children:

    The children are all crying in their pens
    and the surf carries their cries away.
    They are old men who have seen too much,
    their mouths are full of dirty clothes,
    the tongues poverty, tears like pus.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.
    —Polish Proverb. New York Times Magazine (February 20, 1994)

    Clara: I don’t think a mother should depend so much upon her children for her rewards in life.
    Mrs. Pilletti: Well, that’s what they teach you in New York University. It real life, it no work out like this.
    Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)