Some children feel a need to control others. If they cannot control their peers or other important people such as teachers, then they may feel a need to search for others to control.

This does not mean that everybody has a need to control. However, some people feel helpless and frustrated by a feeling that others are controlling them.

Those people may look for somebody to control. Just as they turn to their parents to resolve other needs, they also turn to their parents to fill this need.

These children may feel that their parents should help them, by giving them a target to control. They might do this in many ways:

• They may fake illnesses, so that the parents have to keep taking them to doctors and be busy with them
• they may demand excessive attention, and accuse the parents of not caring if they do not get that attention. In this way, they work on their parents' guilt feelings
• They may try suicide as a means of controlling their parents
• They may leave home, expecting the parents to chase after them

The last method listed above works best in homes in which the family honor is at stake. The child can make great demands if he knows that his family wants to keep things "quiet."