Single Blog

When they appear with us, I just want to love them. And it seems that the forces of this wonderful love are enough for education. Although it soon becomes clear what illusion it is. Two years, six and ten years: our correspondent talked about how the children taught her to be a mother – in every sense of the word.

I would like to succumb to the temptation and begin to allow them all. “You are too tired to sit down for lessons? Do not worry, I’ll talk to the teacher “. “You only want the second? Okay, I will remove the soup in the refrigerator “. “Be shy to say hello with a neighbor? Well, another time “. Probably, very soon I would be accused of the fact that I let everything on my own and divorced the children. And I would wave the book of Donald Winnikott and make excuses that “I am in a special condition that is very reminiscent of the disease, but at the same time completely normal”*. Oh, how grateful I am to this person who realized that immediately after the birth of the child, my mother goes crazy (which is quite natural) and begins to identify herself with her baby: “This allows her to look at all his eyes and respond to all his needs with accuracythat no machine will master – and which is impossible to study “.

And everything would be fine if the madness of the first days did not give such distant complications. Already today, when it has long passed the full fears and uncertainty time, it declares itself with bouts of guilt at the sight of reproach in children’s eyes … Yes, I just wanted to go on a visit! But no: I begin to seem to myself a traitor who puts my interests above the interests of children, cancel the meeting, cease to prohibit them at all, which involuntarily strengthen them in the feeling of the very children’s omnipotence, which Winnikott called the logical consequence of our children’s reverence.

Unattainable firmness

If you are going to educate someone, the problem is that you can’t give slack. But everyone is only capable of what is capable of. My mother, for example, always said: if the children frolic, then everything is in order with them. And I can only admit that I break into them much more often than my husband. But it’s easy

to understand me! Just imagine this wonderful picture: a second ago, they packed me peacefully (beloved mom) before bedtime, but when they were in the nursery, they instantly turned into monsters. One jumps at the bottom of a two -story bed, the second hangs from the upper floor and pounds the lower machine, and the third laughs and throws it with pillows. The whole house is shocked by cries and squeal ..

So, having achieved silence, I, torn between the desire to love and the need to educate, fall into a chair and open the book of Julia Hippenreiter “To communicate with a child. How?” . I read: “Rules, that is, restrictions, requirements and prohibitions, must be in the life of every child. Children not only need order and rules of conduct, they want and wait for them. This makes their life clear and predictable, creates a sense of security “. And here is especially for me: “It is especially useful to remember those parents who strive to upset children as little as possible and avoid conflicts with them. As a result, they begin to follow their own child “.

To be consistent, confident, reasonable in my parental decisions … However, I have something to object: since I spend too much time with them, it is difficult for me to be both who gives and those who refuse. In this I am supported by the family psychotherapist Inna Khamitova: “The child really needs both: love and acceptance, on the one hand, organizing the beginning – on the other. If one mother is raising children, she has to take on both of these tasks “. From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the father has an even thinner mission: not to allow the mother to merge with the children into a single whole. Do not forbid them to be together and love each other, but to strengthen them in the thought that a child is not a continuation of the mother, but a separate, full -fledged creature that should grow and once leave.

Big slap

When Ilya was born (then we still had Cyril), I really thought that I would never raise a voice on him. Everything was perfect until at a year and a half Ilya began to pound me on her cheeks – literally. He had fun, and I cried. This went on exactly until my husband saw this outrage. He already had a son (Vanya – from his first marriage), and he calmly applied “legal power”: he made comments, and sometimes about horror! – sent my baby to the corner. Then it was easier for me to blame him for cruelty than to gain spirit and establish in relations with the son of the border of the permitted.

It’s good that by the time the youngest, Cyril, was one and a half years old, I have already accumulated some experience. Education, in my opinion, really begins at this time. Before that, you have to engage in the main health of children and try to ensure that their rhythm of life gradually ceases to subjugate everything else. Life is really complicated when they begin to walk (and run), and then say, what are these eternal “why”, “I do not want” and “I will not” cost. “As soon as the child begins to move actively, we are seriously thinking about his safety,” comments Inna Khamitova. – We remove everything fragile, close the sockets, block the boxes … And this is the first restrictions. Then we begin to plant it on the pot – we teach it to cultural norms. And the older the child, the more borders and frames become. In essence, they are all divided into two groups: not to do what is dangerous for you, and not to do what is harmful to others. Everything else is possible, and here it is better not to limit it, otherwise we slow down his cognitive activity. “.

Movement by touch

Yes, this is so – our freedom ends where the freedom of another person begins. I spent a lot of time explaining to Cyril that you can’t do whatever (for example, I want to beat another baby in the sandbox, take away toys, run out onto the road), and trying to teach him to replace animal forms of behavior (to beat his head on the ground, throw toys. ) human. The problem is that Cyril is my youngest, and I’m unlikely to decide to give birth to one more thing … So I take him to the handles, even when I need to go twenty meters, I succumb to if he whipping and begging the toy … The only thing I am for sure for surecapable of being polite and friendly when I insist on something (and you have to do this for sure). I do not just ask for “saying words”, but I ask you to say “please” (“PAA-LE-stro”) and “thank you” (“these-bo”). I take care that we have a good, calm relationship;I want him to take into account the needs and emotions of another;I try to, looking at me, he learned to concede, reckon with others and respect the rules. And when it can be difficult for him to do what he should – for example, collect our toys in the sandbox before going home – we do it together.

We and our children are equivalent, but not equal: we have more rights and more duties to them than they have before us.

But back to Ilya – my first -born (second in seniority in our family). When he was only born, I sincerely sympathized with my neighbors in the maternity hospital: they didn’t get such a wonderful child! And it was with him that I broke the most firewood: admiring his genius, I believed that I should not prevent her from some absurd rules (“If you want to wear a T-shirt inside out? What is a creative approach!”). Then I began to feel guilty for awarded him a younger brother. And she allowed him to behave like little … There is absolutely nothing to be proud of here, but this is so: I was nervous and did not know why grabbing. Ilya is now six years old, he knows how to read and write. He is fond of insects and plants. The question that is most worried about me now is how to combine the desire to teach him everything in the world and his real inclinations? The upbringing is to force or motivate? “The eternal question is which is better: permissiveness – so that the child grew up by creative, free, but not knowing borders, or tough frames and rules,” says Inna Khamitova. – Bad both. And we, parents, are forced to follow the subtle bridge, which separates one from the other. Education is always associated with compulsion. Because we still make children do what they don’t want. Although, of course, it is more pleasant to live on the principle of pleasure. But this is called splendor “. However, when Inna Khamitova refers to Schwartz (“Children should be pampering, then real robbers grow out of them” **), I immediately remember Nabokov: “I was a difficult, wayward, and more spoiled child (pamper more children, gentlemen, youDo not know what awaits them!) “***.

Eternal parents

Vanya, my stepson, now ten. When we met him, he was very small, and it was with him that I passed combat baptism. He taught me a lot, just because I did not take him out and gave birth. This is what allowed me to find out what my parental role can be in pure form, without a harmful impurity of maternal intoxication. But a new test awaits me ahead when a family is covered with a storm of adolescence. “Parents and children are equivalent, but not equal: we have more rights and more duties to them than they have for us,” explains Inna Khamitova. – However, relations change over time: the closer the puberty, the more equal they should become. After all, it is assumed that when the child is 18–20 years old, we will turn into friends, in two dear adults. Therefore, as he grows up, we need to become other parents. “. So, for starters, I have to find the courage to change in myself and be ready to withstand everything that growing children will present to me. Do not leave them to pieces their own confusion. Just be near. Our task is not to protect them from life, but to bring them to this world. And decide to leave them there.