This is a book about your child's main emotional and physiological needs as they develop naturally from his birth through adolescence. He cannot develop healthily, however, without care and guidance, so this is also a book about your attitudes and behavior. I hope that this discussion of current psychological thinking about childhood and child care will help you in the important job of rearing your child to be emotionally healthy. All the ideas about child-rearing presented in this book have been practiced in real life: this is not a book containing speculations which have not stood the test of ordinary life situations. This book is meant for both fathers and mothers and is about both sons and daughters, but I've found it easier to speak of the parent as "she" and to speak of the child as "he. Where it is important to differentiate and to consider fathers or daughters separately, this has been done.I hope you will read this book through so that you get the basic philosophy which psychoanalytic psychology offers about normal child care and child development, rather than use it as a handbook in which to look up something when your baby puzzles you or when a new situation occurs. Equipped with the fundamental psychological approach which this book aims to present, you should find it as easy and natural to raise your child to be mentally healthy as to raise him to be physically healthy.