Then when your baby, let's say a girl, begins to feel like a separate person with ideas and a will of her own, at about a year you and she will have a solid basis for coping with such common problems as excessive explorativeness and negativism. This rival-rousness becomes much more intense in adolescents because they have stronger emotions and because they sense that as an almost adult person they are ready to complete in the parents'own league, you might say. It's now their turn to challenge the world, to fascinate the opposite sex, to be the heads of families. So they feel like elbowing the has-been parents of the seat of power. Sub-consciously the parents sense this and, understandably, don't feel too gracious about it.
Rebellious rivalry takes many forms.
He then realizes that it's no longer dignified to stay on his father's house, so he abruptly leaves home to look for a job. Another boy may continue to get along well enough on the surface with his father but he displaces his defiance onto the school authorities or the police. In families with children in collage parent and child are apt to be so self-disciplined that they keep their anger under control and deal with each other by reasonableness. A child from such a background, feeling angry rival-rousness underneath, May have difficulty finding a legitimate complaint against the considerate parent. In families like this, rivalry is sometimes expressed unconsciously through unexpected school failure in high-school or collage or graduate school even though this child has a high degree or intelligence, conscientiousness and an excellent previous school record.