The successful management of the parent who asks for psychiatric help for a child requires special consideration. While psychotherapists have become aware of the parent's unconscious motivations in the pathogenesis of the child's psychopathology, the clinical application of this understanding has lagged behind theoretical knowledge. The author feels that it is possible to help the parent become aware of his specific involvement in the child's symptoms without resorting either to a psychoanalysis or other prolonged psychotherapy of the parent. The formulation of the psychodynamics of the interplay between the parent's role and the child's symptoms is presented in this paper. The key therapeutic maneuver lies in the mutual elucidation of the paradox that the child has apparently turned out to be the complete opposite of those attitudes and ideals which the parent had attempted to realize in rearing the child. Cases which illustrate this paradox are presented. Clinical experience has demonstrated that the value of the ego-syntonic paradox formulation lies in its ability to enable a parent to recognize and accept his own unwitting participation in the child's emotional problem.