We had promised to write ‘The psychological process of the family’ after writing ‘The psychological process of the patient during hospitalization’, but then many things overwhelmed us and we put it aside. We were very impressed by the recent psychological experience of a couple of parents during their child’s hospitalization, and a long letter from the parents to the doctor in charge when the child was discharged from the hospital gave us a clearer picture of their psychological process. With their permission, it is published here anonymously. I have briefly circled some of the points that touched me to share with the parents. And thank you to the parents for their selfless gesture – sharing their experience with everyone. I also want to make it clear that we doctors have anxiety just like the parents, and what supports our perseverance is the parents’ trust, tolerance and courage to change. Here is the content of the letter Dr. A: Hello! If you don’t mind, please let us call your child’s A-dad. I think back to the anxiety I felt before I was admitted to the hospital, the confusion I felt after I was admitted, the relief I felt when I felt safe in your communication center, and the joy I felt when my child’s condition improved. All these urged us to share our feelings with Papa A. Let’s start with our family’s visit to Beihang Sixth Hospital. The child was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and hypothalamic syndrome at the YMCA the year before. The treatment before the diagnosis also took many detours. After the diagnosis, we were still unfamiliar with this disease and thought that if we cured the hypothalamic syndrome, we would be completely cured. During the two years, we were intermittently hospitalized in the endocrinology department of the YMCA for two times, and later in the local Chinese hospital for one time to specifically regulate digestion. Although there was improvement after the first hospitalization at the hospital, the condition returned to its non-hospitalized state more than three months after returning home. We inquired about the Sixth Hospital of North Medicine through a classmate who is a doctor by profession, so we hurriedly set out on September 23, 2013. As we walked downstairs to our home, my child rushed to the building and said: goodbye. The feeling in my heart was sorrow and pathos, asking myself if my child could still come back healthy. When we were hospitalized on the 24th, we both waited at the entrance of Variety 3, and when we saw the nurse bring out the child’s clothes, our hearts were filled with hard and bad emotions. Later, when you had a preliminary understanding with us, we told you about the treatment process of our child and the family situation as well as our own state, and you must have felt our uneasiness. When you said that the cooperation of the family was very important, our understanding of cooperation at that time was what families of patients generally think of as the general process of cooperating with treatment (doing whatever the doctor says), and we did not have such a deeper understanding than we do now. When my child was first admitted to the hospital, she was unstable and did not want to greet people in the ward. She told us that the patients here had no compassion and were sarcastic about their own illnesses, and that they liked to spread the word around and talk about what they saw. So, our worries increased a lot more. At this time, we put all our hopes on the doctor and just encouraged her to communicate more with you. During our first visit, we asked you about our child’s condition and treatment with eagerness, while you focused on telling both of us to take care of ourselves first before we could take care of our child. Later, we both slowly realized that you were referring to both taking care of our own lives as well as including our own emotions. You suggested that I read the love poem “To the Oak Tree,” which was new to us. After returning to the hotel, my wife and I read the poem together and felt that you compared the relationship between husband and wife, father and son, and mother and daughter in a family to that of an oak tree and a cottonwood tree: “I must be a cottonwood near you, made as a tree image with you, with roots clasped in the ground and leaves blended in the clouds “. Family love is like a cottonwood tree and an oak tree with their roots clasped together, while, at the same time, each has space, like leaves each stretching in the clouds. The relationship between the three of us, husband and wife and children, should be like what you said about taking care of each other, and each bringing food and gasoline to satisfy ourselves in the desert to come out together. Referring to your words, we went to arrange our life for these two months or so, and we really tasted the sweetness that life is no longer just caught in the anxiety of the sick child. During our communication with you, we realized that we had problems in teaching and communicating with our children: we often avoided problems and did not face them directly; we interfered too much in our children’s affairs; and we did not really respect our children from the bottom of our hearts. After realizing these things, we decided to change our ways, but at the same time, we were a bit worried: we felt challenged to show our children a completely new face all of a sudden. It was you who told us to take our time, that the process might not be smooth, happy, or even bumpy, to lower our goals, that there would be joy in the bumps because we were trying, and that there would definitely be discomfort, but also positive feedback. This process should allow our children to experience that we as a couple are working hard at times, and so we have the motivation to keep going. Through our communication with you, we have placed more emphasis on what is best in communicating what is most true about ourselves and expressing our true selves. Now, the three of us encourage each other to express our true feelings to each other honestly and communicate issues on that basis. For example, when parents in some cases are reluctant to do what their children ask them to do, they used to hide their thoughts from their children and do it themselves with difficulty, but now they express directly to their children that we are reluctant to do it and then calmly say the reason why we don’t do it, and the children like this approach. We are also gradually using true respect for our children from the bottom of our hearts and friend-like equal communication, although we are a little rusty at the moment, but we are not afraid to insist on the correction and bravely move forward. The above is both a benefit from you and a wake-up call for us at times. The road is still long, but no matter how long it is, we will no longer focus on its results, but rather enjoy the process and live a healthy and happy life with family members communicating with each other. Seeing our child’s physical and mental outlook improve day by day through your careful treatment and communication, we have gained more courage to persevere and strengthened our confidence. It is you who taught our child to face and challenge himself and gave him confidence. We feel that we cannot end this experience with thanks, it is difficult to express our feelings, so let’s wish Papa A good work and good health for the whole family. Salutations Father and mother of the child