ABSTRACT
D. G. Barrett’s detailed effort focuses mostly on issues of publication and presentation, rather than the clinical challenge of confidentiality in concurrent work with children and their parents. Increasingly independent mobility and the development of a sense of a subjective self create conditions in toddlerhood for psychological and body boundaries to be consolidated, and the experience of ownership of the inner world and psychic space. Three is the traditional age for children going to preschool, predicated on developmental readiness in terms of toilet mastery, language development, and growing social capacity for relationships with adults and children beyond the family. Parents often respond with hurt, feeling excluded or assailed or attacked by the child’s reticence. Concurrent clinical work with parents of adolescent patients is an opportunity to introduce the concept that development does not mean their child just grows away from them.
