dependency conflict is the simultaneous process of both “pushing a child to be autonomous or separate and do things on their own, while at the same time telling the child that the parent is judging, evaluating, or watching what the child does, which sends the opposite message. It ties the child to the parent. The parent is, in fact, the person who is controlling the child. A paradigmatic example is a five-year-old on a playground,” Weisner said. “The mother says go off and play, meet other children. When the child gets a few feet away, she calls out, ‘Hi, I’m right here! I’m watching you!
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