Ron Says…
“When you give a child something, it’s his. It’s not still yours. Clothes, toys, quarters, what has been givenmust remain under his exclusive control. So he tears up his shirt, wrecks his bed, breaks his fire engine. It’scnone of your business. How would you like to have somebody give you a Christmas present and then tell you, day after day thereafter, what you are to do with it and even punish you if you failed to care for it the way the donor thinks? You’d wreck the donor and ruin that present. You know you would. The child wrecks your nerves when you do it to him. That’s revenge. He cries. He pesters you. He breaks your things. He ‘accidentally’ spills his milk. And he wrecks the possession on purpose about which he is so often cautioned. Why? Because he is fighting for his own self-determinism, his own right to own and make his weight felt on his environment. This ‘possession’ is another channel by which he can be controlled. So he has to fight the possession and the controller.”
L. Ron Hubbard
chapter “How to Live with Children”