When a mother interacts not with a real child, but with her idea of ​​him: “my child is a future manager, a leader,” and the child is shy and loves to be in loneliness and it’s difficult for him in a noisy children’s group. “There’s something wrong with my child, he’s silent, withdrawn, quiet, do something with him!” - says the mother, noisy, active, energetic, pushing the child into the office. After the words of the psychologist: “everything is fine with your child, these are the characteristics of his nervous system,” there is horror and confusion in the mother’s eyes, and the words come out of her lips: “Is it possible to do something? He’s so slow, he can’t do anything.” Psychologist: “It can be done. You can accept your child for who he is, learn to build a relationship with him.” When the mother is calm, reasonable, thorough, and the child is a little imp, fast, nimble, energetic, the mother begins to suspect hyperactivity and the child ends up with a psychologist, and the psychologist’s answer is the same: “Accept your child, yes, he is not like you, he is different , but he has the right to be different.” It’s sad that they can’t always accept him like that. Of course, it’s good when an energetic mother has an energetic child who loves noisy games, activity, or a calm, quiet mother has an angel who loves to play soldiers while sitting alone or read books, a physicist dad has a son who loves exact sciences, and an artist has ballet is a talented, artistic, bright child, but this is not always the case. Then the child chooses either to be good for mom/dad and not be as he is, or to be as he is and face rejection, unconsciously receiving a message from his parents: “you don’t have the right to be yourself.” When such a child grows up, it is difficult for him to find his place, to find himself, because inside there lives a mother/father or another significant adult who always says: “you have no right to be.” Where do mom/father’s ideas about the child come from? They are born long before the birth of the child, when the dreams, desires, aspirations of the mother are either broken by time, age, finances, laziness, health, and then sadness about missed opportunities takes on the image of a great mother who can give her child what he needs - “to become an artist.” ballet”, “play a musical instrument”, “graduate from a prestigious university”, “find a worthy life partner”. A child is born in the head, who is endowed with the qualities necessary to realize his mother’s or father’s dreams - fragile, flexible, musical or strong, brave, able to manage others and manipulate. When a child appears in a family, fantasy often collides with reality, like the Titanic with an iceberg, and goes to the bottom. Sometimes it happens differently and the fantasy does not disappear, but is put on the child like a second skin that cannot be removed and is difficult to live in, and the older the child becomes, the more difficult it is to remove it, since under the skin hides a small, defenseless creature that does not know who it is .Ekaterina Yuzvak, child and adolescent psychologist