Preschool Children's Behaviour Under Parental Prohibitions

The purpose of this research was to define typical forms of preschool children's behaviour in prohibitive situations, to reveal their manipulative ways of communicating with parents, and to analyse the adequacy of parental perception of children's behaviour in concrete situations of conflict of interests. Preschool children from Moscow kindergartens (30 boys and 31 girls) and their parents (59 mothers and 2 fathers) participated in the study. The total number of 'parentchild' pairs was 61. Research methods included the Rosenzweig PictureFrustration Test for children (modified by the author), the Parental Attitude Test by A.Ya. Varga and V.V. Stolin (supplemented by three questions on manipulative tendencies in children's behaviour added by the author). The results obtained in the research are as follows: in prohibitive situations preschoolers tend to shift the responsibility for resolving conflicts on to their parents and to accuse external causes of their behaviour. In frustrating situations the majority of children react selfdefensively, protecting their own interests. At the same time parents tend to overestimate children's desire to satisfy their own needs and underestimate children's tendency towards selfdefence and the fact of prohibition itself. Despite their parent's expectations, children do not fully realize the objective reasons of parental prohibitions. Manipulative tendencies can be also be found in childparent interactions; the most common among these are appealing to one's own weakness and taking advantage of family disagreements.