In addition to social stereotypes, the attitude of parents has a huge influence on self-esteem. The foundations of self-esteem are laid in the family. Here are some aspects of parent-child relationships that shape character traits and affect self-esteem: Inflated demands of parents. As a rule, these demands grew out of their own unfulfilled needs and unachieved goals and do not take into account the child’s abilities and interests. The child does not achieve good results where he is not interested or has no abilities, as a result of which his self-esteem decreases. During the consultation, the woman described gymnastics competitions as torture: “my legs give way, it’s impossible to breathe.” Of course, she was unable to achieve high results in gymnastics. Now she is quite successful in the field of IT. Personal characteristics of parents. Anxiety of a parent can result in suppression of the development of activity and independence of the child. Sometimes, if a girl grows up pretty and attractive, the mother may overly “warn” her in relationships with men, as a result of which the girl may develop a ban on sexuality. Excessively emotional struggle with the child’s shortcomings. Shortcomings that the parent does not accept in himself, he tries eradicate it from your child. But the catch is that the parent himself has these shortcomings. For example, a father violently expresses anger, but a daughter is forbidden to be angry. But anger is a natural defensive reaction; all people tend to express anger in one form or another. The girl cannot completely refuse manifestations of anger, so she feels that her father does not accept her, and attributes this to her inferiority. Excessive strictness in rules and guidelines. The inflexibility of parents’ thinking limits the child’s creative potential. My client could not finish university for a long time: she either dropped out, then took an academic degree, then suddenly decided to study at another faculty. Gradually, we found out that her parents conveyed to her the message: in our family, the girls “fall short” and are not very smart. Of course, this attitude did not take into account her individual characteristics and abilities. Relationships with the child’s second parent. If something in the child resembles someone whom you would like to erase from your memory, who inflicted a mental wound, then the raising parent will perceive those characteristics of the child completely differently. which he inherited from his second parent. Constant reproaches from the mother: “you are as irresponsible as your father” do not increase the boy’s self-esteem at all. Moreover, they indirectly instill in him hyper-responsibility and perfectionism. The circumstances of the child’s birth. If parents perceive their child as “sick,” “fragile,” or “defenseless,” then it is useful to remember under what circumstances their baby was born. Often, the fear of losing a child, leading to a distortion of perception, appears in parents if the mother was treated for a long time for infertility, there was a difficult birth, or the child suffered a serious illness in early childhood. Such a child grows up to be overly anxious, dependent, dependent on the opinions and assessments of others. The undesirability of the birth of a child, the discrepancy between his gender and the desired one, complications in his personal life with the appearance of a baby can lead to emotional rejection of the child. Often, a child who has not received enough love from his parents develops relationship problems. A person can be lonely, live with a feeling of uselessness, while having a completely attractive appearance and good intelligence. Of course, these are not all aspects of parent-child relationships that affect self-esteem. It is important for parents to understand that their attitude towards their child determines his perception of himself throughout his life..