Under the influence of past experience, the history of the development of a person's personality, the so-called super-valuable ideas can appear in his consciousness. They can be ideas about a particular human quality as the most valuable, necessary, and helping in life. In these cases, the parent builds his upbringing so that the child is necessarily endowed with this "especially valuable" quality. For example, parents are sure that their son or daughter must be kind, erudite or brave.

In cases where the values of parents begin to contradict either the age characteristics of the child's development or the inherent individual characteristics, the problem of independence becomes especially obvious.

A typical and vivid example is a situation when a passion for sports leads to the fact that spouses make plans for joint family hikes, yachting, skiing, not noticing that in their dreams of a future child they still see a boy... A girl is born. But education is built according to a pre-programmed super-valuable pattern. The emphasized masculine style of clothing, the abundance of sports exercises, somewhat unnecessary for a girl, a skeptical, mocking attitude to games with dolls and even a joking, seemingly affectionate nickname Tomboy are also masculine. All this can lead to negative consequences in mental development and even cause a serious illness in a child. There is a double danger here. Firstly, a girl may form features of the opposite sex that prevent correct and timely gender identification, in other words, the awareness of herself as a future woman may be distorted. Secondly, by imposing on the child qualities that are not inherent in him, parents seem to convince him that the child is not needed as he is, and emphasize their rejection. And this is the most unacceptable, the most dangerous style of attitude towards the child's mental health.

We also have to meet with another type of realization of super-valuable ideals of upbringing. I remember the following incident. The mother of a ten-year-old boy turned to a psychological consultation with complaints of increasing stuttering, which arose in her son for the first time at the age of five. In classes with a child in a play group, it was found that stuttering is the most noticeable, but a particular, verbal manifestation of a more general feature of the child. He has developed a habit of delaying any response. It turned out that the boy gave an effective or verbal answer to any question or behavior of his partners in the game after a long pause. There was no doubt about the difficulty of understanding the question or situation. The boy studied well, played the violin, read a lot, coped with all the tests for ingenuity. And yet, in communication, any responsible signal was accompanied by a delay. Gradually, it became clear that the reason lies in the way the mother realized the consciously accepted, especially significant goals of upbringing for her. It proceeded from the principles of universal kindness, forgiveness, the impossibility of inflicting pain, and "non-resistance to evil," which were quite attractive from the point of view of morality. From the very first days of life, such principles, which for the child turned into all kinds of restrictions on his activity, accompanied every step, every action of the baby. It was impossible to accidentally break off a branch - after all, it also feels, to step on a bug - this means to hurt, to break a glass - this is the creation of someone's good hands. Well, when the time came for childish skirmishes and fights, my mother intensified her influence. Once and for all, a ban was imposed on retaliatory slap, push or blow. If they took a toy from you - give it back, pushed - in no case respond in kind, if you were not accepted into the game - move away. Thus, from a very early age, from the "basics of communication", the boy was forced – and he loved his mother very much, trusted her – to restrain the first, immediate reaction and only then, after delay and inhibition, to show a response in accordance with the instilled demands. This is how this feature of behavior arose, and then fixed, became the main cause of stuttering.

In this example, the behavioral disorder arose as a consequence of the implementation of super-valuable parental requirements without taking into account the peculiarities of the stage of development and the age capabilities of the child.

As can be seen from the above examples, the granting of a certain measure of independence to a child, a shorter or longer distance is determined by the motives that prompt and "comprehend" upbringing.

It turned out that if the only or main motive for upbringing is the need for emotional contact, or the need for achievement, or the need for the meaning of life, upbringing is carried out at a shortened distance and the child is limited in his independence. In the implementation of a certain system of upbringing, when the motive of upbringing is as if moved away from the child, the distance can be any, this is determined not so much by the personal attitudes of parents or the characteristics of children, as by the recommendations of the chosen system. But the problem of independence is clearly manifested here as well. It looks like a problem of the child's lack of freedom in the manifestation of his inherent individual qualities. In the same way, the super-valuable motives of parents regulating upbringing limit the freedom of development of the child's inherent inclinations, complicate development, disrupting its harmony, and sometimes distorting its course.

Goals of education. Future parents, of course, think about how best to formulate for themselves the goals of the work on the upbringing of their child...

The answer is as simple as it is complex: the goal and motive of raising a child is a happy, full-fledged, creative, useful life for this child. Family education should be aimed at the creation of such a life. After all, there is nothing more natural than raising your own child! When a young mother breastfeeds her child for the first time, she does not just feed him, she gives him the first life lesson. And this is sweet to her, as it will be sweet to put her son on the potty, teach him to use a spoon, cross the street, etc. Each of us initially has a pedagogical streak. It is given to us as a voice, as an ear, as the ability to think. It is the basis of human contact, universal contact, constantly transmitting knowledge, experience, wisdom, kindness... Without it, humanity would not have survived. "In the upbringing of children there is a naturalness of a hand stretched out to help, so free this naturalness from captivity!" – these words are uttered on September 1, addressing the teachers, by a wise grandmother – an experienced teacher – from the story by G. Shcherbakova. But the same words can be addressed to us, parents: "Education is an outstretched hand, an incentive to step forward without fear, because you are near. And it's so natural to teach walking... You don't need to break anything in yourself, you don't need to look for crutches and instructions to help, you just need to follow yourself. To live naturally and naturally to devote oneself to one's educational work. Without sacrifice, without torment..."

To follow yourself... "How come," readers will ask, "we are talking about raising a child, but it turns out that we need to think about self-education?" Many psychological studies have proven that the success of education is directly dependent on personal development, on the harmony or disharmony of the mental world of an adult. Some authors have tried to trace how the character traits of parents are related to the character traits of the child. They believed that the peculiarities of the character or behavior of parents are directly projected onto the behavior of the child. It was thought that if the mother showed a tendency to melancholy, depression, then her children would have the same features. With a closer study of this issue, everything turned out to be much more complicated. The connection between the personality of parents and the upbred features of the child's behavior is not so direct. Much will depend on the type of the child's nervous system, on the living conditions of the family. Now psychologists understand that one and the same dominant trait of the personality or behavior of a parent is able, depending on different conditions, to cause a variety of forms of reaction, and in the future, stable behavior of the child. For example, a harsh, hot-tempered, despotic mother can evoke in her child both similar traits - rudeness, incontinence, and directly opposite, namely, depression, timidity.

We have already discussed the question of the connection between the motives of upbringing and the degree of independence given to the child. The connection of upbringing with other types of activity, the subordination of upbringing to certain motives, as well as the place of upbringing in the integral personality of a person – all this gives the upbringing of each parent a special, unique, individual character.

That is why future parents who would like to raise their child not spontaneously, but consciously, need to begin the analysis of the upbringing of their child with an analysis of themselves, with an analysis of the characteristics of their own personality.

Harmony of the spiritual world. Future parents may ask themselves the question: what is the character of a person, what inclinations, what features of behavior are most necessary for the proper upbringing of a child? Who can be a successful parent? Apparently, the success of upbringing does not depend on any particular set of personality traits. "All mothers are needed, all mothers are important" – these well-known lines can be understood as a recognition of the fact that the success of upbringing is not determined by the presence of some special personality traits necessary for the parental role.

Psychological research shows that the most successful people cope with upbringing who are determined by a certain harmony of the mental world, its openness, ability to change, and ability to analyze. For the upbringing of a child, the so-called self-actualized, harmoniously developed personalities are most adapted. What is the secret of personal harmony, what is the way to find it? Why is a harmonious personality able to most successfully perform the functions of raising a child?