Anal Stage - The Parents’ Role

The Parents’ Role

As mentioned before the ability for the children to be successful in this stage is solely dependent upon their parents and the approach they use towards toilet training. Freud believed that parents should promote the use of toilet training with praise and rewards. With the use of positive reinforcement after using the toilet at the appropriate times encourages positive outcomes. This will help reinforce the feeling that the child is capable of controlling their bladder. The parents help make the outcome of this stage a positive experience which in turn will lead to a competent, productive, and creative adult. This stage is also important in the child’s future relationships with authority.

According to Freud’s Psychosexual Theory, parents need to be very careful in how they react to their children during this sensitive stage. During this stage children test their parents, the authority figures, on how much power they really have as opposed to how much room the child has to make his or her own decisions.