ABSTRACT
Accompanying a child through his dramatic first three years is a major challenge and responsibility for the parents, since this is the time during which the underlying pattern of the personality is formed. It is a difficult but also felicitous task to help the child master these first years, investigate the world, and come to know his own body and emotions. Contact with children can also activate the most unfortunate side of a person, eliciting cruelty and hate, when the requisite psychic and practical support is lacking. The chapter poses high demands on the reader in attempting to establish a connection between everyday experiences with young children and psychoanalytic theories on child development in the first three years of life, supplemented with experiences from therapy. An essential component of the psychoanalytic attitude in childrearing consists in helping the baby empathetically to deal with frustrations, disappointments, and failures in small increments.
