Children need mirroring and echoing from their primary caretakers. In the first three years of our life each of us needs to be admired and taken seriously. We need to be accepted for the very one we are.
Good mirroring from a parent with good boundaries:
1. The child's aggressive impulses can be neutralized because they do not threaten the parent.
2. The child's striving for autonomy is not experienced as a threat to the parent.
3. The child is allowed to experience and express ordinary impulses, such as jealousy, rage, sexuality, defiance, becaues the parents have not disowned these feelings in themselves.
4. The child does not have to please the parent and can develop his own needs at his own developmental pace.
5. The child can depend on and use her parents because they are separate from her.
6. The parent's independence and good boundaries allow the child to separate self and object representation.
7. Because the child is allowed to display ambivalent feelings, he can learn to regard himself as the caregiver as "both good and bad," rather than splitting off certain parts as good and splitting them from the bad.
8. The beginning of true object love is possible because the parents love the child as a separate object.
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