I feel guilty for my child's illness. Feelings of guilt before the child, or Why am I a bad mother? Then the child grows up, his problems grow with him: instead of broken knees, now there is dismissal, unhappy love and the search for the meaning of life. And somehow

Vita, as far as I know her, has always been a positive person. The girl looked at life with optimism, never entered into a confrontation with anyone and did not complain about anything. It was doubly surprising that her little son was ill so often. If fate punishes such people... After all, from an esoteric point of view, Vita's ability not to get hung up on difficulties should have given rise to only positive events in her life. What then is wrong?

Vita herself was anxiously wondering why the baby was so sick, dropping another potion into his spoon. Her son is up to 1 year old, which was supposed to provide the baby with strong immunity. All summer the child was tempered, resting with his parents near open water. Vita also did not lean on drug treatment, being afraid to stuff the child with drugs. At the first manifestations of a runny nose or cough, the girl tried to solder the child with herbal teas, carefully cleaned the nasal cavity with saline. But endless tracheitis, bronchitis, otitis, tonsillitis pursued the child, leaving him practically no healthy days in the year, and exhausted his mother, who was trying not to lose heart. If the situation with the child of the main character reminds you of your own, then let's try to look at it from a somewhat unconventional esoteric angle and figure out what parental mistakes can be and why our children really get sick.

“I wish that your children do not get sick”, “Lord, at least my baby does not get sick” - how often do we mentally or aloud express such wishes! Of course, we do this with the best of intentions, considering the health of children to the most important life aspirations. But the whole trouble is that the Universe does not understand the meaning of the “not” particle. You say “so that the kids don’t get sick,” and she, like an echo, hears “sick, hurt.” You say “if only my baby didn’t get sick”, and she hears “sick, sick” ... That's why, when formulating your desires, it is extremely important to avoid denials. It is correct to say “I wish the children were healthy” or “Lord, if only my baby was always healthy.” Such direct wishes will be interpreted literally by the Universe.

The second reason why a child can often get sick is the constant fears of his mother. Having suffered a serious illness of her child once, the mother begins to fear a relapse, to look closely, listen to the child in search of symptoms of a past disease. The Universe perceives this fear as a kind of excess potential, an accumulation of energy. The trouble is that the Universe does not like excess potentials, whether it be strong delight, fear, doubt or desire for something or someone. Any large cluster with any sign (positive or negative) the Universe seeks to smooth out and balance as soon as possible. And she does it in the simplest, shortest way. What is the easiest way to remove the fear of the mother? Realize it! If the mother's worst fears are confirmed, i.e. the child gets sick, then the power of fear goes away. The child has already fallen ill, there is no more fear about this, the fear has simply been realized, and now all the efforts of the mother are switched to healing the child. Yes, there are other anxieties associated with the course of the disease, but this is another excess potential, from which the Universe will also strive to get rid of.

How to do right? After all, fears are so difficult to control! And yet it is possible. To begin with, try to at least visually "pretend" to yourself that you are not afraid of a possible child's illness. You are already an experienced mother, you know how to act with a variety of symptoms of the disease, you know how to help. So why this premature panic? As you become accustomed to playing outward calmness, you will gradually learn to keep fear out of yourself as well. Thanks to this, excess potential will not be created around you, and this will stop attracting diseases to your child.

The third reason why our children often get sick is the “savoring” of this topic among relatives and friends. We call a friend: “Oh, Len, can you imagine, Masha got sick again, they just got cured, and the runny nose started again. Well, can you imagine? I don't have any strength anymore." Then we call our mother: “Mom, the news is bad, Masha got sick again. Yes. Woke up today with snot. And he's already coughing. Some kind of lethargic. Say the temperature is rising. Again, everything is in a circle. I'm just desperate." And then we call five more girlfriends, and so on and so forth. We seem to swing the pendulum of illness, revel in our trouble. It seems to us that in this way, after talking with loved ones, it will become easier for us. In fact, at the energy level, we “feed”, give ground for its progression and relapse. Therefore, it is better not to ring about the child's illness right and left. If you really need to relieve stress, then share your grief with the closest person, but do not multiply the news about the disease. Instead, spend your time and energy visualizing your child's recovery. Imagine how he wakes up cheerful and healthy, how he goes to school, plays in the yard with friends. In no case do not let inside yourself the thought that everything will get worse, that you will need the help of a doctor and the use of antibiotics.

And finally, another common cause of our children's illness can be the mother's constant guilt. There is an opinion in our society that the Lord can punish a person through the illness of his child. Because of this, mothers often take the illness of their child as a punishment for this or that misdeed in life. Sometimes a woman may feel remorse for cheating on her husband, for a tense relationship with her parents, and subconsciously wait for punishment. When a child falls ill, a woman seems to calm down, feeling that in this way she redeems herself. Dealing with guilt is very similar to dealing with your fear. Try not to let these harmful feelings into yourself, and if they still sharpen you, then at first visually remain calm, do not discuss your experiences with anyone, and they will gradually leave you. Publicly avoid statements like “It’s all my fault…”, “It’s only my fault here”, etc. They invariably give rise to feelings of guilt followed by punishment.

Try to work with yours, do a general cleaning in it, realize that you yourself can be the cause of your precious baby’s illnesses, and you will see how the situation will gradually level off and your child will shine with health.

My child... I wanted him so much! I thought I would move mountains for him, I did everything possible and impossible to make him happy. But, apparently, somewhere she didn’t follow, overlooked. I'm even scared to think that I'm to blame. An aching feeling on the heart gnaws from the inside, incinerates in thoughts - a feeling of guilt before the child. I did everything for him. And still I feel guilty.

(Forum of young mothers)

The psychology of guilt - revealing the reasons

The feeling of guilt - painful and desperately painful - is not always realized by a person. Most often, it just sits inside a person and, as if some kind of beast scratches the soul and torments from the inside. A person feels like a victim of his internal states and negative emotions.

And so I want to taste life without feeling guilty. Is there really no way to deal with it? How to deal with guilt, how to get rid of regrets, annoyance and heartache?

The system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan helps to get rid of the feeling of guilt. This is a technique that reveals to us the secrets of our unconscious desires and reveals the roots of feelings such as guilt and resentment, helping to get rid of them forever. But first things first.

Why "golden" moms are tormented by guilt

In fact, the best moms in the world experience guilt. Why? Yes, everything is very simple. Only people with a certain mentality can feel resentment and guilt. As explained at the training System-Vector Psychology by Yuri Burlan, the life values ​​of such people are home, family, children, honesty, decency, cleanliness. These are the owners of the anal vector.

It is they, perfectionists by nature, who strive to raise their blood ideally, they want to see him as the best, honest, neat, kind and well-mannered. So that people should not be ashamed. Acting out of the best of intentions, based on her inner beliefs and values, such a mother begins to "adjust" the child to her value orientations. It is these mothers who are prone to anxiety and excessive worries about the fact that they didn’t give their baby or overlooked it, didn’t have time, didn’t keep track. Although, by their internal properties, they themselves are somewhat slow and tend to think again before making a decision. And then they blame themselves for not being on time.

And they also strive to correct all the imperfections in their little blood, and when it doesn’t work out, they get upset and blame themselves for this.

Here is the reason: the inner desire to make everything perfect, and especially everything related to the upbringing of their beloved child, drives them into a trap, and a constant feeling of guilt becomes their companion in life. And, as you know, such emotions as anger, resentment, guilt are destructive. A web of self-blame can sometimes lead to illness. There is even a whole section in medicine - psychosomatics. Moreover, these conditions affect not only the mother, but also affect the child.

But in order to save ourselves from illnesses, our psyche finds ways out of the situation. We always find a way to relieve our inner tension. And it’s good if it’s a maniacal cleaning of the house and putting things in order on all the shelves. It is much worse when, from the tension that has arisen, she begins to “scourge”, or rather, beat, scream or humiliate her own child. Here you can already consider the whole stages of the formation of a sense of guilt and further walking in a vicious circle. (But that's a topic for another article.)

System-vector psychology shows everything on opposites, that is, on the difference of those very inner desires of a person. It is on the difference of these hidden sensations and feelings that various problems arise, and feelings of guilt and resentment are one of them.

Career or guilt

I would like to ask those young mothers who have children, do they have a sense of guilt towards the child? I work, I am 30 years old, and I see my 1.5-year-old daughter only in the evening and on weekends, so far I go on vacation only with my husband, without her, and I am constantly gnawed by a feeling of guilt that I am a bad mother ... that I can’t fully be next to her, because you need to run to work. And I come home from work tired, and I just don’t have the strength left for it.
(Forum of young mothers)

There are other mothers who begin to suffer from the fact that they devote little time to the baby, because they give all their strength to building a career. The presence of skin, anal, and visual vectors gives a woman the ability to be an excellent mother and be successful in society. But only does not relieve her of guilt before the child.

So, to the sacramental question of all women's magazines: career or family, it is the skin-visual woman who will always answer that she chooses a career. And it's not her fault. This is an unconscious desire hidden from her to earn money, build a career or even manage a business. Inside herself, she is convinced that she does everything for the child. And this does not mean at all that she is a bad mother. She just has a different priority.

For a mother who builds a career and earns money, for one reason or another, it seems that in this way she will better provide for the present and future of the child, because she will have funds for children's "educators", fashionable toys and clothes, a prestigious school, tutors, etc. .P.

Partly it is. Yes, but the child needs maximum attention from his mother, because mother is his world. It is from his mother that he receives a basic sense of security and safety, which is the foundation for the formation of his psyche. That's why the active, working mom needs to find a balance between work and baby.

If a mother with an anal-skin-visual bundle of vectors has to choose between a child and a career, no matter what she chooses, she will always feel guilty. At the same time, if the mother knows that there is a strong emotional contact between her and the child, that she is doing everything for the good of the child, the feeling of guilt will be reduced to a minimum.

Manipulation of guilt and resentment

A small child at an unconscious level "reads" the internal states of the mother and gradually begins to produce various manipulations of guilt and resentment. And when a mother pronounces her monologue with an offended or guilty intonation, then a child with a skin vector will benefit from this. A kid with an anal vector will manipulate the feeling of resentment and quietly pout in the corner. The child is always unconsciously trying to manipulate the parents in order to get what they want. It seems to adults that it is they who control these processes, which in fact is an illusion. These are pre-set scenarios that fill our lives with negative emotions. Even a small manipulator can instill a strong sense of guilt in the mother.

It is often possible to observe how an adult child manipulates the mother's guilt and demands money from her for her allegedly not entirely happy childhood. And the mother is led by these strong, emotional claims, and then again experiences guilt, resentment, anger and annoyance at her unreasonable child. How to deal with this tangle of problems?

Life without guilt is possible

In fact, you are not alone in your suffering. A huge number of mothers feel guilty before their child. And even the popular host of "Visiting a Fairy Tale" Valentina Leontieva also suffered from guilt before the child. She was loved by millions of children - and she could not devote so much attention, time and effort to her own.

What to do? To begin with, deal with yourself and your experiences, especially if the child has not yet passed puberty. Although you can set the tuning fork of your internal relationships at any age. After all, all the disagreements that lead to negative emotions and heavy feelings of guilt come from contradictions in the psychology of mother and child, or rather, the different structure of their psyche.

Get rid of guilt and breathe deeply

Getting rid of the weight of guilt is one of the enduring results that is repeated and tested by thousands of listeners. Here are just a few of them:

“... I HAVE IT. Loving my daughter, I couldn't help myself. My brain was covered with a veil. After I sobbed, hugged her, asked for forgiveness, feeling the deepest sense of guilt. But everything repeated. I can’t say that it was so often, but even now, owning systemic thinking, I perfectly understand what all this could lead to ... Neither I nor my husband could cope with her, she did not listen to anyone, no words and arguments didn’t perceive it, and, as it “seemed” to me (and now I understand that it was so), she deliberately provoked us into scandals, and then to physical punishment ... "
Anastasia B., Penza

“... I was terribly afraid to destroy this fragile life with my own hands. My first words after - to the midwife: “Help! I'll drop it now!" I was haunted by the feeling that they gave me something that I do not deserve, that I cannot save, that the role of a mother is not for me. …
What did I feel for the child? No "sweet buns", "small hands" and "toothless smile" touched me. I felt only pity for her, for the fact that I cannot give her the love that is due to her by birthright. That she doesn't get what every baby should have.
I stopped blaming myself, I understood why I did it, I tracked what moments cause me rage, indignation, despair. There are two main points: the need to constantly be distracted and a long loud cry. And I began to treat it differently. I learned to really immediately switch attention to the child, without clinging to the unfinished thoughts ... "
Irina M., lactation consultant, St. Petersburg

“... That feeling of guilt that haunted me is gone, a complete understanding that a child without a dad will grow up as a completely realized person and depends on his mother ...”
Ekaterina A., economist-manager, Moscow

It is possible to stop experiencing negative feelings of guilt in front of the child and break out of the vicious circle. To do this, you need to understand in detail the characteristics of your psyche and your natural desires, as well as the structure of unconscious mechanisms that drag us into destructive states of guilt and resentment. You can do this at the next free online training System-Vector Psychology by Yuri Burlan.

The article was written using the materials of Yuri Burlan's online training "System-Vector Psychology"

often read

Eh, I didn’t want to write in this topic, but I can’t resist, it’s too painful a topic :-(Yes, and slippers will fly like a shaft now ... but I just can’t help answering your post, Line.
Line wrote:
Yes, you really took responsibility for the treatment of the child. But someone had to take over, right?
What responsibility are we talking about? Listen to the doctor and do as they say? Too little for responsibility. We do not know the situation of the author, it is quite possible that the husband and mother-in-law at one time tried to convince the mother that it was not worth trusting the opinion of the doctor so much that one should try to consult with other specialists, look for other methods of treatment, the same homeopathy, for example , in short, do not relax, assuring yourself that the child is normal, but act using all available methods.
"Yes, you followed the doctor's orders, but then he is a doctor to fulfill them, and not to increase the doses when he wants."
It seems to me that this is true only if this doctor is fully trusted by ALL family members. If someone has a question about this, then you need to look for other specialists.
When a child is ill not acutely, but chronically, as the author writes, I really want to hear from the doctor that everything is fine, nothing needs to be done, it will outgrow, etc., etc. I really want to hear it and BELIEVE it! And it seems there is every reason to believe, the doctor says. But at the same time, one must and must face the truth when one of the relatives, who is usually recorded as alarmists, yells that everything is not at all OK.
“It seems to me that if your child has a serious illness, then you need to collect as much information as possible so that next time you can explain to your husband WHY such treatment is needed and WHY it was impossible to increase the doses. And when he realizes that you know what you are doing, you will treat differently."
I agree with this entirely. It just seems to me that the husband behaves this way precisely because he does not see and does not feel that his mother knows what she is doing.
Everything that I wrote is just a different view of the situation, which we know only from the words of the author.
Author, I'm sorry if I further exacerbated your suffering, perhaps everything I wrote has nothing to do with your situation. But even if there is something in common - do not blame yourself, this is not constructive, and do not be offended by your husband, he can also be understood. Look for information, look for good specialists, listen to each other, decide everything together and with arguments, then later you will not have a reason to blame each other. Good luck and good health to your baby.

Four-year-old Sashenka has Edwards syndrome. This rare genetic disease is characterized by multiple organ pathologies and developmental delay. In the long list of Sasha's diagnoses - hydrocephalus, four heart defects, the absence of an ear ... Doctors gave the child no more than three months to live. Sasha has been living for the fifth year thanks to good care.

Years of fighting the disease is also a valuable experience and understanding of many issues that parents of sick children face. How to find the strength to survive the shock and fight? What traps and temptations appear in the way of the family and each of the spouses? What can be done to avoid them? And if it was not possible to avoid - is it always necessary to blame the one who left?

- Eugene, what happened was a surprise to you? Or did they learn about the child's illness before birth and managed to prepare?

Everything happened unexpectedly. Screening during pregnancy did not show any severe abnormalities. They learned about them only after Alexandra was born. And it was, of course, like snow on the head.

Everything happened suddenly and strangely. The wife had a caesarean section, they showed the baby. She managed to write to me that Sashenka is beautiful ... Then the child was taken away and put in the intensive care unit. My wife wrote me about it, and I immediately went to the hospital.

They let me in surprisingly quickly, without shoe covers, without a bathrobe. They just said: “Are you Glagolev? Let's go." They took me straight to the intensive care unit, where the head of the department told me everything in no uncertain terms: “Look who you gave birth to.” And showed all the pathologies.

The daughter was born weighing 1400 grams. A small lump that looks like a chicken. Looking at her, I felt as if my car had crashed into a pole at full speed ...

Did the comprehension of what happened come immediately or did it take time?

- I noted for myself that it took me 8-10 months to realize, accept and understand what to do next. And it took my wife much longer to accept, several years. Probably because dad is easier to accept. The father has no such connection with the child. With mom, this connection is primordial and unconditional. And daddy comes to love for the child later. And sometimes it doesn't come. More pragmatically approaches, mind, or something. This is a known fact. Plus, if a woman experiences everything on an emotional level, then a man, as a rule, is looking for any specific solutions. It also mobilizes.

- What solutions did you find?

“First I found meaning in covering our life story. When Sasha was one year old, we made a page on facebook. And they began to tell how we live. The page now has over a thousand followers. A year later, I changed jobs and went to charity. Before that, there was a complete feeling of uncertainty, a lack of understanding of what to do.

“But they did, they saved the child.

- From the very first days. But the acceptance of the new life came much later. And in the hospital she had to do the first operation, because one of her heart defects was incompatible with life. Only one surgeon agreed to perform such an operation. He did it longer than usual, but he did it very well, thanks to this Sasha is alive. There are three faults left. But due to the large number of pathologies, the hospitals did not want to take us, because the outcome was clear to everyone, and why would anyone worsen the statistics.

By the way, the very head of the department who shocked me with the news about the child's illness helped to solve this problem. Maybe she was in a bad mood at that moment, I don't know. But in the future, she had a good attitude. She helped us get settled in the Tushino hospital, they agreed to accept us. After some time, they removed it from the ventilator, and after 3-4 months they told us: “That's it, get ready to take it home.”

It's easy to say - "take it", and then what? It was completely incomprehensible to me how to be and what to do. Sasha had depressed breathing, she needed constant oxygen support, and she could only eat through a tube. In Tushinskaya, the wife was offered to go to the hospital to teach nursing, but, in fact, they didn’t actually teach anything. And to our puzzled question, they offered to leave the child. “It’s okay, they will look after her here, and you will come and visit.”

– Have you thought about it?

- Of course not. It was unrealistic. Although with us, parents abandoned a child with Down syndrome. It was a young couple, they went, like us, to those brief meetings with the child that were allowed in intensive care. We both understood that we would not refuse, but we did not know what to do next. And then we called out to our friends, and through them we went to the Vera Foundation, which was just starting a children's hospice project. A woman, the head of the field service, arrived from there, and somehow immediately reassured us. I talked to the doctors, we were transferred to the palliative department in Chertanovo.

Only after being there for about two weeks with Sasha, we realized what we can do to make the child live.

We understood that the situation is what it is. How long Sasha will live, we do not know. So, we will do everything in our power while she lives.

Before that, I couldn't understand. Occasional visits to the child in intensive care do not give you this understanding, do not give you the opportunity to accept the situation and live it. This is completely different. Visiting a child and being with him is a big difference.

Many people stopped calling

– How did your acquaintances, relatives, friends react to your grief?

“At first, we didn’t tell almost anyone, except for a narrow circle of people. Only a few people knew what was really happening with Sasha. Because it was embarrassing. Because the diagnosis is genetic, and the questions of why this happened and whose genes worked, of course, immediately arose. We dismissed them very quickly, but, nevertheless, we understood how other people might react.

A wide circle was told after 8-10 months, when the acceptance of the situation had already come. It was difficult, but we began to talk. The reaction was different. At first, everyone wishes all the best for Sasha to get better soon, and so on, they call, ask how things are going. Then a lot of people stopped calling. Now I understand in hindsight why.

What to say to the parents of a terminally ill child? Asking all the time doesn't make much sense because the situation won't get better. Say words of support? But we are unable to do this.

The word "hold on" is not support for me. This is a formal courtesy. In general, some friends fell off, but new ones appeared.

There were also people who really helped, showed how to act. Sasha has a godmother (we christened the child right in the intensive care unit), shortly before that she experienced the departure of her mother and knew how to behave in such a situation. She did not bother with calls, but only asked: “Can I come?”, She just came and was there. It was the most necessary thing that could help.

- And how was the older child informed? And how did he react?

- When Sasha was born, Vanya was 10 years old. He was very glad that he had a sister. Of course, we didn't say right away. The first time carefully, without details. And then somehow the two of us sat down, and I told him: “You see, there are situations when it is impossible to cure. Sasha may soon be gone…”

Now he is 14 years old, he takes care of her very reverently. Can do many things that other people cannot do. He loves and cares a lot. It really changed him, that's for sure.

Why do fathers leave?

- Have there been moments when your hands fell, you wanted to give up?

“Of course, everyone has them. In especially difficult moments, I want to shout: “Lord, You see everything, You give everything according to your strength, well, look how much you can! No forces!" Then take a break - and again in the fight. There is no way to give up. We did not choose this path, but we chose to follow it - not to refuse, not to give up, not to do everything so that the child leaves faster, as it also happens.

But it also happens that people overestimate their strength. Many fathers of sick children leave their families. Why?

- When I first learned about this case, there was an unambiguous condemnation. When I found out the statistics, I condemned them even more, considered them all goats and bastards. After a few years, I realized that not everything is so simple. I saw how relations between a man and a woman become aggravated in a critical situation, how the problems that existed before the birth of a child intensify. Here is the search for the guilty, from which some never come out - no one wants to take the blame, especially when it comes to genetics. The desire to blame another can be fueled by relatives: “I told you, you shouldn’t have married him!”

But the very first reason is that a woman most often becomes one with a sick child, does not separate herself from him, and the father automatically finds himself outside this circle, outside.

I worked a lot in women's groups and often heard women discussing their men, husbands, calling them detachedly “he”. "He's like that, he's like that." And the girls begin to advise: "You do this, do this." It feels like this is not a husband, but some kind of stranger with whom a woman has to be forced to communicate.

No normal man can stand this for long. He will endure for a while, but then the question will inevitably arise: “What is all this for? If I can’t communicate with my wife, as before, if she doesn’t give me time and attention, if I am constantly accused of something, then it’s easier for me not to be around. I can help with money, show up regularly, and it will be easier for everyone.”

Is he right in this situation? Can not say. But the behavior of some women raises many questions for me. Because dads often leave, fueled by the behavior of moms, and not because they are some kind of bastards. When I see such mothers, I understand that it is not their fault, it is their misfortune.

Evgeny Glagolev

No one is trained to behave in a situation of grief, there are few examples, there is no model in society. And society often only warms up - with attitude, misunderstanding, inability to support, even rejection of families with special children.

In addition, it is more difficult for a man to accept the situation of a sick child. For a man, this is a blow to pride, self-esteem, when there is a global doubt about the ability to prolong the race. It is easier for him not to understand this, but simply to leave. Most women don't have that choice.

There may also be a situation where the child was supposed to be a means to save the marriage, but is born sick. This is generally the highest risk.

- Nevertheless, in society, the attitude is almost always unambiguous - the departed man is to blame ...

– Yes, society unequivocally condemns fathers. I read a lot of discussions and articles on this topic, and I know from communication with mothers. It's like a stigma for a person who left - "a bastard, a traitor, an unworthy person." And vice versa - a man left with a sick child is considered almost a hero. Because, firstly, everyone knows the statistics of paternal departures, and secondly, any society needs heroes, and ours especially. For people, this is the most obvious "heroism" that everyone understands.

Have you been told that you are a hero?

- They often said, but what kind of hero am I? I do my best and I know that I don't do much. I try to treat myself very adequately, objectively assess my abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Usually I answer: “Guys, this is nonsense, you don’t know what you would do in this situation.” Sometimes you have no other option not to do what you can do. Each of us does what we can. That's all.

“How did you and your wife manage to avoid the dangers you just mentioned?”

“It's not that we avoided it, we just passed it. On the one hand, the time we spent in intensive care with Sasha, when we supported each other as best we could, certainly brought us closer. On the other hand, when both are in psychological and physical stress, one awkwardly spoken word can provoke a quarrel. Together we learned caution and understanding. This also brought us together.

Maybe we just got lucky, maybe that's the way we are. But we managed to avoid any serious conflicts. I think there is some logical explanation, I just don't know it.

However, we are still testing. If you have accepted the situation, this does not mean that there has come a complete understanding and harmony with yourself and with others. And then it can still be difficult.

- What would you advise the fathers of sick children, so as not to break down? And for moms - so that dad doesn’t leave?

- It would be good for fathers to understand that merging a child with a mother, when a father is on the periphery, is, if not normal, then a natural process through which one can and should go through. Look for contact and an opportunity to talk with your wife about what you don’t like, but without accusations and evaluations. You just have to say: “It’s become difficult for me to communicate with you, let’s talk about how we can fix this, because I’m not sure that I can stand it. I understand that you're tired, I'm tired too, so let's talk." This conversation must take place.

It is important for a woman to speak out, and a man is looking for solutions. Sometimes you do not need to offer solutions, but you just need to listen to your wife, to be with her.

It’s also good for dads to look for other dads like them to talk to and see how they’re coping. This helps a lot. The children's hospice dad clubs helped me a lot. And understanding appeared, and when you see that you are not alone, it is easier. Yes, and you yourself can help someone, become an example.

My wife sometimes reproaches me for my excessive openness, but I see what kind of request people have for information about life with a sick child. Therefore, I chose the path of openness for myself, in order to simply talk about what worries both me and people.

By the way, I noticed in many clubs with dads something that slipped through many. Almost every man feels guilty about not being able to help his wife the way she wants to. This was a discovery for me and even amazed. Someone communicates better with his wife, someone worse, but everyone wants to be a reliable support and protection. But if women do not give a chance to do this, then nothing will work.

Therefore, a mother needs to clearly understand that a child is certainly loved, needs care and help, but still, a husband and wife always stand higher than children. If there is no marriage, everything will be much harder.

You can’t blame your husband for not doing something - a man has the right not to be able to do something. And when a man does something wrong, you need to prompt, speak directly - do not hint, do not wait for the man to be enlightened and he suddenly learns to jump at night to the bed of a sick child when his wife is tired. No need to think that a man himself must know about it.

In general, both husband and wife need to be more open, understanding and give the other a chance to correct.

Sasha with mom

Is a fix always possible? In general, is leaving an irreversible act or are there examples when a person, having rethought, returns? Does such a person have a chance?

- There are such cases. I know a family that has a child with the same disease as Sasha. The man in this family took to drink, left, but returned a year later. And as far as I know, they are together now. Not without difficulties, of course, but they learn to overcome them.

I believe that there is always a chance for improvement. It all depends on whether a person will be blamed for the fact that he once stumbled. It is easy to blame mistakes, but if you do this, then the constant feeling of guilt will make you leave again.

To know or not to know?

- Do you think it might be preferable to know about the child's illness in advance, for example, at the stage of pregnancy, in order to have time to prepare? Or, on the contrary, such knowledge can harm?

– I think everything is very individual here. I would certainly prefer to know in advance. Although I ask the question: if I knew, what would change? Probably, we would have spent more time in unrest, reasoning, confusion and incomprehension of what to do. Because we do not have a system of helping such people, and you are still left alone with trouble, not knowing what to do with it.

The ideal option is when the help system is established.

Learning about a terrible diagnosis, a person must understand what options there are, except for abortion.

As it happens abroad - a terminally ill child is born, and he is given the opportunity to adequately end this short life. If the disease is not fatal, you can take care of treatment, rehabilitation and so on in advance.

All this is possible if help services and consultations are organized, as, for example, is done for future adoptive parents. Before you adopt a child, you go through a course of study. It seems to me that such things should be made, if not mandatory, then accessible to any person with a sick child. This will allow parents to respond more adequately and promptly, accept the situation, realize and study a difficult diagnosis.

- Are there any initiatives in this regard already?

- There are schools in the children's hospice, or rather, camps for children and parents who find themselves in such a situation. They are good because people get to know each other, with other sick children, with doctors. There are discussions where you can ask any question and get an answer. But this, of course, is not enough. In hospitals and maternity hospitals, we don’t even have a basic brochure or infographic about “what to do if…”. It seems to me that this is necessary.

Difficulties and joys

What does a typical family day look like?

- We start the day with washing, brushing teeth and other hygiene procedures. Then we do exercises, take medicine. Then we feed, of course, through a tube, and again medicines and procedures - standing in a verticalizer, kneading arms, legs, and other things that are prescribed for us. After lunch - again procedures ... The whole day is scheduled literally by the minute - when and what drugs, when we play, when we eat, when we walk ...

Her immunity is weak, and because of the fear of infecting or catching a cold, Sasha went out for the first time with her only after more than two years. In fact, there was also a fear of people's reaction to such a special child, and to protect against this fear, we made special postcards that contained short information about Sasha and which could be given to people. This year they took Sasha to the temple once. In general, the priest comes to us from time to time to give communion to his daughter.

The most difficult thing for me now is to observe her epileptic seizures. We've been fighting them for almost a year now. We change doctors, medicines, but it doesn’t get any easier. To see these daily attacks, from 2 to 12 times a day, is unbearable ...

– What are you most afraid of today?

“Most of all, I’m afraid that this will drag on for a long time. That Sasha will continue to live in this state for a very long time, experiencing torment. And in moments of attacks, I sometimes understand that I want it all to end as soon as possible. I do not regret myself, for me the most difficult thing is to be unable to help Sasha, because I can only observe all these difficult conditions, and sometimes it is very difficult. I focus on the good, but in reality I always know that it is with me.

Of course, there are many joyful moments. Every day we gather in the evening as a family and thank God for them. We list - everyone says that it was joyful today ... It is very important - to learn to notice such moments, to appreciate them. You sum up the day in the evening - and you understand that the day was difficult, and there were no less joyful moments than yesterday.

Sasha teaches us to appreciate every day simply for what it contains - a piece of delicious cake, tea drinking, time spent together, meeting a good person, summer, albeit cold, but still ours ... It's all very joyful.

In life, you need to please yourself. Otherwise, you can burn out from fatigue. Once a week or two, you need to be in good company, go to the movies or eat something tasty in the nearest cafe. Or even just being alone in your favorite place - I often do this.

Six years ago I went to a psychologist. She was recommended to me by friends, she was a candidate of sciences, she held a prominent position in the university, - in general, I trusted her.

At one of the meetings, I told her about my first birth, when I had an emergency caesarean. For me, that story was very painful, I worried for a long time that I could not give birth on my own, I was worried about the child, looked closely to see if everything was in order with him, attributed all his difficulties to caesarean and blamed myself ...

In general, the story was not easy for me.

And so this psychologist leaned back in her chair and authoritatively said to me:

Well, it's understandable why you had a caesarean. You just wanted your child to die.

I swear that's what she said, word for word. Now, of course, I know what I should have done then. Get up immediately and say goodbye to this woman forever (and do not pay for the meeting, in any case. This behavior of a psychologist is direct emotional abuse, in this case you are not required to pay for the session).

But I know this now, and then I had two small children, a lot of guilt before them, an authoritative psychologist, and many, many self-doubts.

And then I almost believed her. Not that I believed it, but sometimes I still thought: maybe it’s really my fault? Maybe it's me, and the reason for the caesarean, and in general for all the troubles of my son - I? Perhaps now it seems absurd to you: how could you believe it? When it comes to other people's children, we see everything soberly, but when it comes to our little one ... We are ready to believe anything.

If you have a child and the Internet, then you have almost certainly read and heard these “expert opinions”. Who write, for example, “up to seven years, parents are 100% responsible for the health and psyche of the child; all illnesses of the child are a reflection of the emotional background of the mother. This is a verbatim quote. Or “mother and child have one emotional field, and the mother transfers all her problems to the child, therefore all children’s illnesses are psychosomatic”, this is also a quote.

Then the child grows up, his problems grow with him: instead of broken knees, now there is dismissal, unhappy love and the search for the meaning of life. And somehow it turns out that we, mothers, feel guilty in all the problems of our children. They didn’t feed like that, didn’t bring them up like that, there was always not enough time, and in general, our children are “unloved” without exception.

The foundations of this delusion come from a superficial knowledge of psychology. When psychology as a science began to develop, it actively studied the family and the influence of the family on the child. And this is quite understandable: when nothing is really known in the new science, it seems logical to investigate what lies on the surface - the influence of the family. So they studied the family, and wrote books about the family, and looked for reasons in it.

And since dads rarely approached children in a family of the 19th-20th centuries, all the bumps fell on the mother. And in the middle of the last century, poor mothers were accused, it seems, of all the troubles of their children, and even of incurable diseases: listen only to the terms of that time:

- "Cold" or "frozen" mother (accused of childhood autism)

- "Schizophrenogenic" mother (accused of schizophrenia in a child)

- “Absorbing” or “merged” mother (accused of eating disorder in a child and of what she was not accused), etc. and so on.

It was very convenient to attribute all the troubles of children, even when these children had already grown up and had their own children, to the mother.

After all, no matter what happens to you in life, no matter what trouble you get into, you definitely once had a mother, and she definitely did something wrong! Found the root of all evil, hooray.

Of course, this point of view does not help anything, but only instills in poor mothers with an endless sense of guilt, shame and fear of moving again. It seems that no matter what I do, I will certainly inflict an unhealed mental trauma on my child. Here is such a scar (s).

Fortunately, psychology develops very quickly, and everything turned out to be not so simple. There are millions of mothers in the world who treat their child with restraint, or even detachment and coldness. But few children are born with autism.

There are millions of changeable, fickle, unstable mothers - but not all children suffer from schizophrenia.

Human health and psychological well-being are made up of many components. They can be roughly divided into three parts:

1. Biological context- what is in the genes (for example, both the autism mentioned above and schizophrenia are now considered genetically determined, and the mother has nothing to do with it), how the pregnancy proceeded, how the birth went, what diseases the person had, physique, hormonal levels, etc. P. No matter how overprotective a mother is, her daughter will not have anorexia if there is no corresponding genetic profile.

2. Social context- the environment in which a person lives and develops. This includes my mother, but besides her, all other relatives, friends, and, in a broad sense, society are included in the social context. As in "Three from Prostokvashino":

“It is necessary that there are dogs and cats in the house,and a whole bag of buddies. And all sorts of hide-and-seek hide-and-seek "...

Yes, mom is important, but she is not the only important person, and certainly not everything depends on her. In addition to mom, each of us has experienced thousands of events that in one way or another influenced our lives, and it is naive to think that mom can handle them all.

3. Psychological context- These are the characteristics of the psyche of a particular person. How he used to think, solve difficult situations, what is his emotional background, what are his interests, dreams, aspirations, abilities ... And most importantly, what no researchers and no mother can predict. This is a person's free will, his ability to choose and change his behavior.

A person is very difficult, and life is also difficult. And we cannot write off all the features of our children only on the fact that "when she was seven years old, I worked so hard, and I was not at all up to her."

Yes, you worked hard, and even then there were a million events that made your daughter or son what they are. Even then, her beloved parrot died, you got a dog, she had a fight with Katya, and became friends with Marina and Vika, and she loved her teacher very much, and then she spent two weeks in the hospital, and there the boy from the next ward shared sweets with her ... And all these details have formed into a kaleidoscope of your child's life, and are still forming into it.

I am writing this article with one single goal: to at least take a little off the endless feeling of guilt from mothers and say: listen, you are not to blame. Well, at least you are definitely not to blame for all the troubles of your child.

You are not omnipotent, but you are not powerless either. And even if many mistakes were made, and you could not be the mother you wanted, then you can do it now. Any minute.

You cannot shield your child from all troubles, but you can warm his life right now. Ask yourself: what kind of mother would I like to be for my child? Caring, loving, giving freedom, attentive, respecting his choice, helping?

Take a few minutes to find the right quality for you. And then ask yourself: what can I do for this in the coming days? Maybe it will not be easy to do - for example, I want to be the mother who gives the child freedom and the opportunity to grow up. And for this I want not to do everything for him and give the opportunity to make mistakes.

It's very difficult for me to watch him go wrong. But this is how I can be the mom I want to be.

Even if it already happened that he was born by caesarean.

Evgenia Dashkova, psychologist

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