In many contexts, other people, primarily parents and teachers, impose their external preferences on children and prevent them from pursuing their preferences. In other contexts, others may be unwilling to yield to children's expressed preferences. Except for voicing their own preferences or attempting to alter parental injunctions – strategies that were addressed in previous chapters – children need to learn how to cope with contexts in which others have set up preference blockage. In addition, children eventually develop second-order preferences that lead them to impose barriers on their own preferences and preference-seeking behavior, engaging in self-regulation to do so. In this chapter, I discuss children's strategies for coping with preference blockage, contexts in which others prevent children from either temporarily or permanently pursuing their preferences, as well as the psychological processes involved in self-regulation in which children put the brakes on their own preferences for the benefit of their own second-order preferences.

EXTERNALLY VERSUS SELF-IMPOSED DEMANDS FOR SELF-CONTROL

The strategies children use to cope with preference blockage are generally discussed under the umbrella term self-control. But this umbrella covers two different contexts in which self-control is required: coping with externally imposed demands and self-regulation. When others thwart preference attainment and impose demands for self-control, coping is required.