Imagine this situation (or maybe someone will remember it from childhood?): a child is sitting at the table. He sits and doesn’t want to eat. Let's say the child is one and a half years old. My mother sits nearby and does everything: she tells a fairy tale, reads a book, and shows something interesting outside the window. What's all this for? So that when the baby, carried away by something, opens his mouth, quickly send him another spoonful of porridge. What do you think will happen if she gives up these tricks and just goes to do something with the child that is fun for both of them? nice and interesting? Will the child become weak, lose weight, get sick, die of hunger? Right now or in the evening? Unlikely? Why do you think many parents behave this way and not otherwise? Many people ask us: I am very afraid for my child - can this affect him negatively? I always know better than the child what he needs, but he does not listen and we fight... What should I do? He does not eat what is healthy for him ! What should I do? He doesn't sleep during the day! I can see how tired he is! What to do? These questions are understandable and natural. It's scary... If he doesn't eat, he'll get sick. If he goes without a hat, he will catch a cold. But is it worth going too far by forcing your child to do what you want to do, not what he wants to do? Remember the joke? Mom shouts from the window: “Son, it’s time to go home!” The boy is scared: “What, mommy, am I cold?” Mom: “No! You really want to eat!” And who doesn’t remember from childhood a big plate of porridge and a tired but purposeful mother who, together with her dad, decided to feed her child at any cost. And the fact that no one wants to eat is completely unimportant. And the fact that no one wants to feed is also not important. It’s just that for some reason you need to feed the child all this, to the end. Because “you need to eat a lot,” otherwise: you’ll get sick, you won’t grow up to be a real man, no one will marry you, they just won’t let you watch cartoons - whatever they come up with for that, to force the child to eat as much as he or she “needs.” And every family has its own “need” for this, sometimes you just want to run away from it and hide. But what to do? The child himself does not understand when and how much to eat! Here it is, one of the most harmful beliefs passed down by inheritance in our Russian families: that the child supposedly does not know how much food he needs and what kind, does not understand when he is warm, and when it’s cold, that he doesn’t know what’s edible and what’s not, he has no idea when to go to bed - and all this needs to be decided for him. Because the child is all so helpless, and he has no such understanding. But how can this be? Whatever you want, the child doesn’t have it. So, no?! Is it really never, well, absolutely never, that a child asks for food? Went to sleep? Wearing a jacket on a cold evening? Take off your socks if it's hot? Of course it happens. And it's clear why. Because children have something that most adults, unfortunately, have completely forgotten about. Every child has internal signals that tell him what is good for him and what is not. The Slavs called this a connection with his own soul - instinct or sense. In the African tradition, this was called the feeling of one’s own star (Africans called fate a star). Both of them believed that inner instinct prevents a person from going astray, helps him live his life and his destiny, find and understand his purpose in the world. Some would call it a connection with the Universe. In hypnotherapy this is called connection with the Unconscious, in NLP it is called signals of congruence and incongruence. Whatever we call this phenomenon, its essence remains the same. Children feel internal signals that tell them what is happening to them now and what they need. These signals cannot be lost - they can, however, be forgotten. Unfortunately, the child is taught to listen to himself and is taught to focus on someone from the outside , the one who supposedly knows better what the child wants and what he needs at the moment. And you can already guess where this path leads. Yes. Exactly. This is a direct road to addiction. Man,