The differentiating child usually reacts to mother's absence not with open distress or crying, but rather with what the author have come to call "low-keyedness." In the five representative children, low-keyedness was greatest in Wendy, mild in Donna, variable and unpredictable in Bruce, absent in Sam, and very late in Teddy. In the practicing subphase, the thrust in autonomous ego development, along with interest and pleasure in functioning and exploration, helps the child to overcome the lowering of mood, the low-keyedness, in mother's absence. Separation reactions occurred with varying intensity in all children during the rapprochement struggle. In boys and girls alike, the repeated experience of relative helplessness punctures the toddler's inflated sense of omnipotence. The child recognizes for the first time his separateness from his mother. Ambitendency is conceptualized as alternating action in opposite directions.