Parental Expectations vs. Self-Determination Theme Analysis

Throughout five-year-old Dibs’s play therapy sessions and in conversations with his mother, psychologist and author Dr. Virginia Axline discovers that the way Dibs’s parents treat him is often based on whether he meets their expectations. This causes Dibs, who is actually a highly intelligent child, to hide his abilities: he doesn’t feel free to be himself, and he worries about being punished for not meeting his parents’ expectations. The book thus illustrates how parental expectations and evaluation can weigh heavily on children; instead, allowing children to develop at their own pace and be themselves enables them to be happy and reach their full potential. 

Dibs’s mother describes her constant critiques of Dibs growing up, ultimately acknowledging that this led to his stunted emotional development. After a few of Dibs’s play therapy sessions, Dibs’s mother spends an hour with Axline and explains their family history: she reveals that she and Dibs’s father never wanted to have children, and that Dibs’s conception was a surprise. Then, when they believed he was mentally disabled, they hid him from the world because they valued intelligence over all else and were ashamed of him. In this way, Dibs’s inability to live up to their expectations left him shut off from the world even from birth. In a second interview, Dibs’s mother relays that during Dibs’s first few years, she was always testing him as a way to prove that he was intelligent and that she could teach him. She admits, “I don’t think any child was ever so tormented with the constant demands made upon him that he pass this test and that test.” Dibs’s mother sees that in setting high expectations for Dibs, she built an emotional wall between them, depriving her son of the love that’s necessary for a child to develop properly and be happy.

Dibs’s frustration with being constantly evaluated comes up in his play therapy, illustrating how heavily his parents’ expectations—and his failure to meet them—still upsets him. In one session, Dibs acts out a tea party with other children. But when he accidentally tips over a cup that he imagines has water in it, he says that the tea party is over and harshly berates himself. When Axline says that the spilled tea was an accident, Dibs yells, “stupid people make accidents!” and says that “it was very stupid of him to be so clumsy,” referring to himself in the third person. These words—which are implied to parrot those of his parents—illustrate his anxiety over common mistakes, and it shows that his parents’ criticism has deprived him of joy. In another session, Dibs recalls a time when he ran into the house too quickly, bumped into a table, and nearly knocked over a lamp. His father called him a “stupid, silly, careless boy,” and said that he was ashamed of his son. The fact that Dibs can recall these stories so vividly shows how impactful and upsetting this treatment from his parents is, and how it reinforces his sense of being evaluated and unloved when he accidentally makes childish mistakes. Axline determines that this is why Dibs often acts like a baby around his father and refuses to respond when his parents speak to him: “Dibs was an expert at withholding speech as a way of getting back at his critical father.” He has learned to use his father’s expectations against him by isolating himself and diminishing his capabilities. The more Dibs acts like a baby or makes mistakes, the angrier his father gets, and the more Dibs withdraws in revenge—all of this leads to a harmful cycle of emotional deprivation.

Play therapy helps Dibs understand himself better and not be confined to the expectations that his parents set for him, allowing him to develop a freer, happier version of himself. Throughout their early sessions, Axline notes the “conflict [Dibs] had between expectations of his behavior and his own striving to be himself—sometimes very capable, sometimes a baby.” Dibs finds comfort in sucking on a nursing bottle or curling up as though he is in a crib. Axline understands that this behavior is Dibs’s way of expressing his desire to be “respected and loved for all his qualities.” In acting like a baby, he is attempting to subvert his parents’ high expectations and be cared for even though he is capable. In one session, Dibs mischievously mixes up jars of paint and the brushes that correspond to the jars, so that every color has an incorrect brush. Then, he corrects the brushes. When Axline asks if either way is okay, Dibs says, “In here, it’s all right just to be,” smiling and patting Axline’s hand. This observation, coupled with an unusual show of tender emotion, demonstrates the freedom that Dibs finds when he’s given permission to be who he is and do what he wants during play therapy. Dibs reiterates this idea in one of his final therapy sessions, after he has become more relaxed. He said that the therapy playroom has always been “As I said I wanted it,” a phrase that he repeats a few times. He calls the playroom “wonderful” and whirls around it, laughing. This suggests that Dibs appreciates the freedom and self-determination that he has been allowed in the playroom, and Axline illustrates clearly how this has made Dibs a happier child.

Axline concludes Dibs’s story with these words: “Yes, Dibs had changed. He had learned how to be himself, to believe in himself, to free himself. Now he was relaxed and happy. He was able to be a child.” Instead of being constantly compared to his parents’ expectations, Dibs’s ability to be himself and determine his own actions is what allows him to be that happy child.