Psychology (Reverse?)

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I have just experienced a situation that seems so stupid that i must know why it happens and if there is a name for it. My step dad was sleeping in his chair in the living room and my mom wanted to watch a show she had recorded. When he walks in the room to lay down, realizing that he could cut the grass and get his part done today. When he states what he was doing, my mother gets upset and makes a deal out of it, insisting that she will cut the grass. Now my mother is "crying" (she does this every time something doesn't go here way) and begging my step dad to start the lawn mower so that she can cut the grass and he refuses. This seems to me, like a case of unintended "Reverse Psychology", but I would like another opinion. Why do you think some people react this way to situations as this and what childhood or otherwise situation (event) in someones life would cause someone to think as so?