When it is Beth's turn to be the patient and she is called in to see the doctor, she stands up, crosses her arms, makes reference to the immediate event in her role-play as she might as an adult in a real life situation. When the play doctor comes in she sighs, "God almighty…I waited 20 hours out there and 20 minutes in here – God I love doctors. They love their money…they take their time!" In contrast, Doug stays more at the children's level by asking them questions that are pertinent to the event at hand and keeps the conversation going. For example, when told he is being booked in the hospital, he asks, "what time?" and when the doctor looks down his throat, he points out, "But you didn't put the light on."

Jill views her role as a strong disciplinarian with her son to set the limits regarding how he should behave at school and with others, including his little brother and parents. To Jill, obtaining behavioural compliance from her son is important for his education. In the videotaped interaction with her son, the two are involved in play outdoors in the backyard, while the father repairs an old car in the driveway. Jill makes sure that her son respects the rules of the game, which means that she sets all of the rules "because [she is] bigger", including who gets the biggest and best toys to use. She is clearly setting the limits and there is no chance of wavering from these or negotiating new terms, even if this is supposed to be a fun play activity. In fact, Jill either fails to even respond to her son's requests like, "I want to use that [squirt gun]" or her responses are blunt refusals with a simple one word "no" when he asks again "Can we trade squirt guns?" When her son wants to stop this play and says, "I don't want to get wet, I'm cold", Jill's response is simply "Too bad."

This play sequence shows no real turn-taking and the function of Jill's language is to dictate short commands in which she expects immediate compliance without a challenge by her son such as: "Leave it alone", "Turn it on now", "Get away from the trailer", "Leave it by the garbage can", and "Move." In a home interview, the interaction between Jill and her son seems to be disciplinary in nature, with Jill continually correcting her son. When he tries to get up on the kitchen counter to see what is going on, Jill continues to reprimand him like a broken record until he responds, "Please…No! Put that back. Thank you, you know better than that to be on that shelf. Yes and you know better than that too. Don't you?…You know better than that, don't you?…You know better than that don't you?"