How does my own childhood affect my child? This question, explicitly or implicitly, often arises during consultations with a psychologist. Sometimes it is not asked directly and hangs unspoken in the air until the psychologist asks it himself - what was it like for you in your childhood? Sometimes parents talk about how they wanted mom and dad to sometimes be distracted from their eternal troubles and just talked about something. And then they would learn a lot. About an unfair C on a test and an angry teacher. About not being able to make peace with your best friend. About the fact that on the way from school you have to walk through a group of high school students who smoke and, probably, can offend you. Day after day, anxieties and fears accumulate that there is no one to share with. Such a child grows up with the feeling that his adults could not take care of him the way he would have liked. Sometimes there is a seemingly obvious solution - I will simply do everything differently, not like my parents. And then, of course, my child will be happy. I will always be interested in his life. I will talk to him, I will protect him from any troubles. At this moment, parents forget that their child may need something completely different. Sometimes the child tries to convey to the parents - no, I don’t want to tell everything about my friends. I don't want my parents to come to school and argue with the teacher over every grade. I want to come home after school chatting with my classmates, not holding hands with my mother. Sometimes parents can hear the child, and sometimes they are lost and don’t know what to do - if these ways of showing their concern don’t work, are there any other options? Apart from total overprotection and complete indifference? At this moment it will be very useful to look back at your own childhood and ask yourself a few questions. Why did I, as a parent, decide that full-time custodial care was the best way to take care of my child? What did I, as a child, need then, in my own childhood? And does my child need this now? Then a new discovery comes: many years ago I needed parental support, and there was so little or none at all. And now I, as a parent, have the feeling that an adult is not capable of support at all, no matter how much I give to my child, it will still not be enough. I bend over backwards to provide for all, all, all situations where my son or daughter needs my help. And I don’t notice how my own child is suffocating under the weight of parental anxiety and overprotection. At this moment, real growing up begins for the parent. He ceases to be a small child who, through his own son or daughter, is trying to fill his emptiness - and becomes an adult who is looking for truly working ways to support himself and his child.