In my previous article, I already wrote that the roots of psychosomatic problems lie in the earliest period of a person’s life - in infancy. And the formation of psychosomatic reactions is based on violations of interaction and interaction situations, ultimately – the problems of the primary maternal function. What is the purpose of this function? Simply put, how should a mother behave with her baby so that the threat of psychosomatics is minimal for him? Let's try to formulate the main purposes of the maternal function, the main mother's tasks: - the first task is care, satisfaction of bodily, physiological, instinctive needs. Warming, feeding, bathing... is another, most important task - to protect and protect the child. Protect from attacks, threats, environmental hazards and (!) from harmful, excessive stimulation, from excessive stimulation coming from outside. As well as from the lack of such excitement, from the poverty of incentives. That is, it is extremely important to provide the necessary and sufficient amount of external stimulation until the baby’s psyche becomes stronger and learns to independently defend itself from hyperstimulation and excess information, or to compensate for the lack of such. That is, the mother plays the role of a kind of “fuse” for the baby’s psyche, so that if something happens, the child does not “knock out the plugs.” These knocked out plugs are the notorious psychosomatic reactions. But since all human beings are deeply individual from birth, and it is absolutely impossible to measure them and derive a statistical norm of permissible stress, the main emphasis in solving this problem is on maternal empathy. The mother can only feel what is necessary for the baby, what is enough, and what is too much. And feeling for the child is a very important task for the mother from the very first day of the baby’s appearance (I think, not even the birth, but its conception) - it is necessary to guess the innate rhythms characteristic of the child and follow them, avoiding conformism and foreign schedules. We all know how difficult and painful it is to adapt to time differences or work with a schedule that goes against the biological clock (when a night owl has to wake up at five in the morning and go to work, or a morning person is forced to work until late at night). One can imagine how painful it is for a child to disrupt the biological rhythms of his tiny body. On the other hand, small, dosed, tolerable frustrations are necessary to motivate the development and formation of a properly functioning Superego structure. - to respond to the “correct” actions of the child with intonations, movements, touches - and receive them in response to your actions, correctly guessing the needs of the child - so communication, contact, interaction is formed. It is necessary to ensure a constant cause-and-effect relationship between behavior, feelings and bodily reactions. “The infant’s competence induces maternal competence. Maternal competence reveals the baby’s competence” (Cosnier). - and finally, practically the most important thing, the maternal function cannot be performed correctly without the participation of the father. Only the father can prevent the formation of endless symbiotic relationships of a dyad doomed to resonant overexcitation. Real or fantasy fatherlessness, for example, is always present in the anamnesis of asthmatic children. Flexibility, fullness and a healthy, stable rhythm in communication - this is what will provide your baby with good psychosomatic resistance. The beginning of this communication lies in the exchange of glances and touches. Visual and tactile images form the basis for the formation of ideas about oneself and others, the basis for mental internalization. Assessing a child’s psychosomatic resistance is, first of all, assessing his vitality and love for life. And who, if not a mother, can truly feel the reserve of love for life of her baby and understand whether they both need help??