Mom-teacher-a rather complicated combination. It is not easy to distinguish between professional life, skills that have been developed over the years of teaching and raising your own child. But it is necessary to do it.

She called me to agree on a consultation of my son, a teenager 13 years old. She immediately said that she suspects her son a serious mental illness and is ready if necessary for his hospitalization.

She entered the office and resolutely sat opposite me, preparing for our conversation. The son sat on the sidelines and even pushed back a chair. It was evident that she is not only very confident in herself, but also wants to emphasize this. And the son looked closed, even clamped and tried to stay from his mother at a distance, and not only in the literal sense.

Emotional contact between people is felt by the way they look at each other – even a glimpse, how they listen to each other – just by tilting the head. But mom and son held on like strangers who also fell into an uncomfortable situation.

Mom began to speak, but I politely stopped her and, apologizing, said that at first I wanted to talk to my son, and asked them to change places. She did it reluctantly, and he sat down to me with a wary expression on her face.

I started with the most general questions – about his hobbies, relations with friends and classmates, about the fact that he likes to read and watch in the cinema, about school classes, but without an emphasis on success in his studies, and about his favorite subjects.

I wanted to enter into a dialogue with him, shared his own memories from childhood, expressed his assumptions, commented on his answers and tried to cause him a living reaction to my comments. It was not a psychotherapeutic technique – I was really interested, and he felt it. He suddenly began to speak freely and with enthusiasm. I liked him more and more.

These conflicts were typical of adolescence, but in the eyes of mom they testified to mental ill health

Mom tried several times to break him and direct our conversation to discuss their problematic relations. She demanded that he tell him how he ignores her advice and orders, how irritably reacts to her fair remarks, how the scandal and almost tantrums on the level.

She was indignant: her son (and she is a honored teacher!), often there are low grades, so she is ashamed of him, and with the triumph of the exposure, she reminded of several of his conflicts at school. These conflicts were typical of adolescence, but in the eyes of mom they testified to mental ill health.

And then the behavior of the son has really changed. He began to answer her hostilely and aggressively, regardless of my presence. And she, with a sense of a strange celebration, turned to

me: “See what he is in reality!”

I calmly asked my son to go out and calm down. I told my mother that I did not see any signs of a mental illness, but I see that their relationship requires correction. That her position of absolute dominance and confidence in her rightness excludes the possibility of discussing with the son of any problems.