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Your children are not your children
Павел Эрзяйкин
There is nothing in this book that you wouldn’t know. In bringing up our children, we prefer clichе, well-known behavioral models and axioms, and going easy with these models, we don’t even think for a moment of how absurd they might sound. We consider them “the right thing”! Don’t fool yourself – your child doesn’t have to meet your expectations. Children are more “alive” than their parents because they are more filled with life. Parents, remember: your child is not your property! Parents are just a necessary condition for the appearance of a new life, and your task is to create a suitable space for its growth. A child having just been born is a perfect and beautiful creature, and there is no need to improve what’s perfect and beautiful…
Павел Эрзяйкин
Your children are not your children
Introduction
I hold workshops called «Parents’ meeting» and a training called «Self management» where I offer the participants to define the goals of their lives and their social roles. When we speak about such roles as «a friend,» «a boss,» or «a lover,» everything seems more or less clear, but when we define the roles «I am a mother» or «I am a father,» a complete ambiguity, ignorance and inability to understand the purpose of these roles comes out. «Why» I am a mother or a father is clear to all of us, but «what for» is an obscure subject. As a rule, speaking about the roles of a «father» or a «mother,» we think we have a duty to bring up a «good» child to be praised by neighbors and teachers, to be rewarded with diplomas of honor and even worse: we expect that someone will come and tell us «What a wonderful child you have brought up!» And for some, this may be the only understanding of the role of a «parent.»
The basic task of the book is to help parents understand their roles as a «mother» and a «father,» and to make them responsible creators and investors, but not sufferers, which is inevitable when understanding parenthood through «have to, must, ought to.» I want to help parents gain clarity, to present some functional models to bring up kids, to show how a new life begins next to them and what laws it follows when developing. There is nothing in this book that you wouldn’t know – just a description of the feelings you have when socializing with your child, while paying no attention to the feelings because you don’t realize their functionality.
More often we manipulate «proper» behavioral models, being guided by our concern to look «proper» in society. And what we call «upbringing» is really just an intrusion of the «dead,» outdated values created by God knows who and when. In our upbringing, we rely on these old models but not on the child, not on the situation we have here and now. There is no reliance on the child’s personality, which is the purpose of the child’s education. We prefer clichе, well-known behavioral models and axioms, and going easy with these models, we do not even think for a moment of how absurd they might be. For example, there is a stereotype to think of genitals as dirty parts of the body. That is why boys usually wash their hands after using the toilet. Frankly speaking, their hands were dirty before using the toilet. But we don’t think about that and live our absurd lives doing many things automatically. There is no rational point in such automatism.
We do something if we consider it «right.» Children are more «alive» than their parents are because they are more filled with life, so far. Parents have already become «disabled» through socialization. They do everything «right» and «correct» and therefore insincere. They feel offended to follow some social laws, conforming to them, yielding and rejecting their own wishes and plans, their individuality to please the society, whereas a child ignores these laws. We try to impose our values on the children, but these values are mostly limiting their freedom, and they resist. Then we frighten and beat them. Because if our children do not match some social norms, we become «bad» parents who underbrought, underlooked, undercontrolled and undermanipulated.
It is widely accepted on the state level, that if this is your child, you «must,» «ought to,» and «have to» be responsible for him/her. Under parents’ responsibility people consider «proper» upbringing, a child behaves «properly.» The child is put to sleep in the afternoon in the kindergarten, whereas he/she does not want to sleep, and it turns out that you are a «bad» mother, because your child does not meet some requirements. The majority of parents are preoccupied only with the thought of what other people may think about them. In the supermarket a child suddenly pushes a rack of chips – his/her mother begins to shout at the child, she blushes, she is confused: what will people think? Who cares what they think! There are shop assistants. If they could not control the situation and the rack fell down, let them go and pick up these scattered chips. If they do not want to, they can post a sign «Children and dogs forbidden.» We will see if people visit them after that.
Also, he doesn’t eat green peas!
There is one more extreme example in the parent-child relationship: when parents think of a child as their property. All pain that exists in the world comes from close attachments. As soon as we start to feel attraction to something, there appears a painful desire to possess it. We want this possession immediately and to last forever, but it is impossible. When we cannot have the desired thing, or when we lose something important, we begin to reproach ourselves that we have not done enough to keep it. I think this is partly the reason of parents’ painful feelings that they are «bad» mothers and fathers.
Parents feel that they are being «bad» when their expectations about the child do not come true, as if they did not bring the child up correctly. Long before the child’s birth, the parents imagined what the child would look like: for example, a tall and beautiful, strong and brave astronaut. So when it turns out they have a medium-height, not very brave, but kind and openhearted engineer, they feel deceived. However, they deceived themselves, having created expectations that the child does not have to meet.
People reason approximately as follows: «If the children were born to me, they are mine, so children have to feel like I want them to feel, think like I want them to think, and live like I want them to live.» Even wishing the best for our children, obsessed with the dreams about their future, we sooner or later face the truth that these plans are unreal. Having realized that parents become unhappy, and every unhappy person can make ten more surrounding people unhappy, because this person will suffer, complain about the child, punish the child, then feel guilty and look for the justification of such cruelty. In the end, such a parent will turn into the embodiment of hatred, dissatisfaction and stupidity. I want you to understand: everything we have belongs to us only temporarily. We can lose everything we have at any moment. We are renters on this planet. Moreover, our children are not our property; they are not dolls and toys. They belong to themselves. We do not have the right to order them, make them love us and be liked by everybody around betraying their individuality.
Stop making your children fit some models and trying to make them suitable to use. Stop being nervous that your kids do not look like some picture you have invented. Parents are a necessary condition for the appearance of a new life, just a condition. Parents’ task is to create some space for growth until the child physically and socially develops. We are a bow, and our children are arrows. While the arrow is in the string, we are united, but after a while you will have to let it go and it will fly to its target. Parents will stay at the same place and the child will grow up, become somebody and go away. The task of the parents is to give life and not to take it back. Bring up a child who will be able to live without you, far away from you and different from you. I do not understand when parents announce, with a hidden pride, that their children went away, roamed alone and came back home. This can happen only when parents haven’t taught their children how to interact and play with the world, brought them up to be dependent and irresponsible for their lives. That is why children cannot get along with anybody except their parents.
Until women stop giving birth to children to mock them, play dolls and thus support the system of creating new «jerks,» «fools,» «dullards,» and neurotics – I will always have a job as a psychotherapist, and various social services, rehabilitation centers and mental health clinics will be abundant! Think of the birth of your child as the appearance of an individual, a new human being – perfect and beautiful, and there is no need to improve what is perfect and beautiful.
§ 1.1. Parenthood
It seems that after we are 18, when we can get married officially, the understanding of the responsibility for our lives and the lives of our children will appear all by itself. But nothing appears automatically, and when we turn to have a baby one day we simply choose one of the two behavioral models: we start doing what our parents did or, on the contrary, we step aside from a ready-made scheme and try to act against it. If my father drank alcohol a lot, I decide that I will not drink it at all, and I become so obsessed with the idea that my son wants to drink his fill. If a mother was a whore, her daughter will be a nun, but if she happens to have a daughter, the latter will become a whore, because going to the extreme annoys.
With the birth of a child, all the ambitious dreams and plans of the parents they had before disappear somewhere and these plans are replaced by the phantoms – the images of a mother and a father. People start unconsciously copying phrases, intonation and gait of their parents. I have experienced this myself. When my first wife gave birth to a child, I was a student doing a summer part-time job away from home. When I got back after a month, I immediately noticed the changes that had happened to my wife. The girl I had married disappeared. There was my mother-in-law in her behavior, intonation and facial expression. Then I started noticing my father’s grimaces and gestures in my own behavior – that was how the «father» stereotype familiar from childhood woke up in me.
There can be even worse, when to the copying of other people’s behavioral models mothers add their memories of how they played with dolls in childhood. Parenthood is a game, but not with dolls. Being a parent is staying in touch with the child here and now. This way you can be appropriate and adequate. The other day a woman came to me and said, «I have a problem. I have to go to work in the morning.» – «Do you have to go to work? This is not a problem.» – «But first I have to take my child to kindergarten.» – «Do you have to take your child to the kindergarten? This is not a problem as well.» – «But the child does not want to wake up.» – «You bet! Everybody wants to sleep in the morning. There isn’t a problem here.» – «But I have to take her to the kindergarten.» – «You have to. Just do it.» – «But she screams and shouts, she does not want to wake up.» – «That’s right. You force her to do what she does not want – she screams. It is OK. What’s the problem?» The problem is that the child turned to be «alive» and her reactions were beyond her mother’s expectations. It is not difficult to wake up a doll, even in the morning. Just take it by the leg, throw into the stroller and go to the kindergarten. But a child is a personality; you will have to negotiate with a child. I tell my 5-year-old daughter in the evening: «Shall we have a record on how much you will cry in the morning?» – «I’ll be smiling!» – «Will you?» In the morning she runs into my room smiling.
You can bring up children through a game or an agreement, when both sides have commitments and win. If you cannot come to an agreement – just wake your children up and take them, thrusting, to the kindergarten. In this case, you should not be confused about their screams and shouts that can wake up your neighbors. Try to understand that children are absolutely unwilling to go anywhere early in the morning. They want to sleep and they are absolutely indifferent to your job, where you must not be late, because your job isn’t valuable for children. Not criticizing and punishing children for their natural reaction, you take them to kindergarten, promising to talk in the evening and explain why your job is important and why they have to go to the kindergarten and etc.
Many people understand parenthood as a situation when children depend on parents, need them. Children need me, because I feed, dress and give advice. We feel disappointment when our expectations fail to come true, because, unlike a doll, children often do not want to sleep, eat or take a shower. Children have their own feelings, their individuality does not want to fit our idea of parenthood, and this drives us up the wall. When a 3-year-old child says that he will cook breakfast, wash the floor and clothes, parents get scared, «What’s up? We haven’t played enough with the child, but he doesn’t need us anymore.» Parents are shocked. Just because they have not become parents yet – they play parents. That is why when they feel losing control over a child, they start punishing and suppressing the child.
The biggest delusion is that if you frighten and punish children, they will grow up obedient and good. Looks like an idea with a collider: nobody knows what will happen if we activate it – may be the whole world will explode – but they still try to start it. The same thing is with parents: they beat children not thinking about the consequences, shout at children not thinking about the consequences, not being here and now interacting with them, trying to understand them even for a moment. Everything children have done is incorrect, everything children think is not right. Some parents do everything to make their children feel useless, insignificant, stupid and weak, and that is why children start having emotional and communicative problems. Many adults can recollect such an episode from their childhood, «First parents suppressed me, and then I grew up, started going to the gym, bodybuilding turned me into the heap of muscles to feel strong and never feel small and insignificant. Then I had my own child and I did not know what to do with him/her. So I started frightening and punishing the little creature because I was confused and embarrassed in front of the child and I started feeling weak and insignificant like a boy from my childhood who I had been running away from all my life.»
We can’t forgive children for reminding us how weak we were in childhood, and this leads to the following behavioral algorithm:
The first stage. We start insisting on something and it turns into persuading, though we feel that the child doesn’t want to do what we suggest. Our persuasion simply provokes the child to tell us «no.»
The second stage. Bribery. We try to make the child «prostitute» for a candy. For example, «you will go for a walk after you do your home task.»
The third stage. Blackmailing. When mother gets angry, does not talk or takes offence.
The fourth stage. If blackmailing does not work, parents proceed with threats.
The fifth stage. Violence (beating) – the ultimate degree of weakness and hopelessness of parents.
All these stages define psychological and social consequences for children, which appear when they become parents themselves.
We must understand that until we drag along the dusty bag of insults rooted in our childhood, we cannot provide our own children with a happy childhood. When we gave birth to our children, we lost the right to be losers, to be sick and unhappy. With every newborn child we get a new reason to live, be successful, abundant, joyful and enterprising. The more children, the more reasons. But there is a stereotypic opinion about children as an additional burden in our hard life. So saying that children should live a happy and plentiful life we are equipping them to fight on the territory where we have lost our battles, because we lack courage, will, discipline and responsibility. If we want our children to be responsible, we have to be responsible ourselves. If we want them to be successful, we have to be successful ourselves. If we want them to be punctual, we have to be punctual ourselves.
The child will hear you if you are interesting to the child. You will become interesting if you are not afraid to have a private life. Suddenly you come home with a big box, close in your room and start making a model airplane – you immediately draw everybody’s attention and they start getting into your hair. Or you’re putting on lipstick and going dating – at once you get the whole crowd around: where are you going? What is he like? Only when you are interesting to people and get their attention, you can bring forward your ideas and you can influence people. Unfortunately, parents often do not even try to be interesting to their children.
We take certain obligations before children are born: we are abundant and plentiful, and we are ready to share. But if we don’t have as much, our children will become a real trial to us. Then, if children eventually break cups, we tell them, «You are a sheer torture! Who do you take after?» Our life is a complete failure, because children always spot clothes, break and destroy things, don’t want to study or sleep – they are always making us suffer. So year by year we develop an inferiority complex in them. The whole life we make them understand that if they hadn’t been born, our lives would have been much happier. Children grow up thinking that if they hadn’t been born, parents would have been much calmer, not so nervous, irritable and anxious. «The only reason why my parents are not successful in life is me. I torture them, terrorize, trouble and disappoint,» – a little child bears this colossal cross of the parents’ misery. It becomes heavier and heavier. If children don’t want the cross to crush them, they start lying; inventing stories and excuses, or just go away (from home or life).
The meanest manipulation sounds like this, «I bought you this with the last money. I don’t need anything myself.» The goal is to make the child dependent, or if we have a closer look we’ll see the life position – «I don’t live and I won’t let you live either.» Love is not a sacrifice, or control, or jealousy, but freedom. Sacrificing love is a common bluff. There is no love in sacrifice, there is pain. We can’t sacrifice our life for a child. We say so if we don’t have life and have nothing to sacrifice. Sometimes a mother can only play the role of a «mother.» What else is she supposed to do if she can’t do anything except it and the child suddenly becomes independent? She will «lose her mother’s job.» That’s why when the child has troubles she feels good – she becomes meaningful, needed and she wants the child to love her for that.
In our «parent» arrogance we believe that our children have to love us. They don’t have to. When did they have time to owe us? When you had a child, it was your personal initiative. Children don’t have to love you for that. I remember once I and my wife got home late and our daughter was then two years old. We returned at night, entered the house – the daughter woke up and my wife called her to our bedroom to sleep, but the daughter said: «No, I will better sleep with my baby-sitter Victoria.» And she went away. My wife was offended that her daughter didn’t love her, and I asked my wife, if she loved our daughter. She said: «Yes, I love her.» – «That’s nice. So your life is filled with love. Enjoy it. Your daughter loves Victoria today, tomorrow she will love Max, and then she will marry Alex and go away from home.» Children don’t have to love us. They may love us, and they may not. Nevertheless they are still our children. Some people have many children dreaming that in their old age they will sit at home like Don Corleone and their children with families will visit them at the weekend, ask for advice, respect and hallow. But children may grow up and never return home. Understanding and accepting this fact is showing parent love.
To be honest, you will love your children in any case – if they are poor students or excellent ones, if they are a success or not, if they lived 30 or 130 years, if they have become Nobel prize winners or thieves. Does it make a difference? They are your children. There is nothing to do about it. But some mothers use the following scheme: «My son, when you were little I was responsible for you, now you’re an adult, be responsible for yourself.» This is mother’s offence, a caprice, because really it’s a lie: no matter where your children live, who they live with, you have always been responsible for them, and they have always been important to you. Well then, try to teach your children to be responsible for their lives and actions. When you park your car, you try to place it so that nobody could hit or carjack it because you’re responsible for your car even if you’re not inside. Try to bring up your children in the same way, so that nothing could happen to them even when you’re far away. This will be your parent responsibility and duty. This will be love.
Parenthood is a miracle and wonder. Sometimes we forget that these little humans are not dolls, they have a soul and personality. Our children are not ours; they belong to themselves. Your children are not your property. You‘re just creating conditions for a new life to flourish next to you. I have an acquaintance. When he was born, he was stronger and more vigorous than his parents. They accepted his individuality, because they could do nothing about him – he gained his points anyway. It was easier for parents to let him do what he wanted, not to interfere, not to suppress his inner power, but just give him some directions. He didn’t care where to borrow money – he could ask Rossel or Eltzin – every door was opened in front of him. Having worked in Russia with a breathtaking profitability and having bought everything he could dream of, he moved to the USA, then Australia and now he lives in Canada. He isn’t impudent, he doesn’t step on the heads of others, but extremely decisive, assertive, doubtless, focused, with the sixth sense. He doesn’t have fears that our unsuccessful parents share with us.
«Being a parent is raising children», – some parents say. How do you raise children? Do you pull them up by the hair? Being a parent is not making children weaker, but making them stronger every time, developing them socially, spiritually and physically. Until now, I remember one painful episode connected with my elder daughter. She was then a little girl and I threw away some pieces of bottle glass from her room, which turned to be her diamonds (she had been saving bubble-gum inserts for a year and changed them for that debris). They were valuable for her. Was I treating them seriously? No. Was that pile of glass valuable for me? No. Was I taking pangs to have it? No. But the worst thing happened when my daughter started to cry – instead of apologizing for touching her things, I started talking some nonsense like, «Don’t bring such garbage home anymore! There may be germs and dirt…»
It’s much simpler to neglect, than to understand the meaning of the values your child cherish. It’s even more difficult to realize your mistake and apologize. To apologize to a child, parents should overpower their parental ego, not every parent is able to do it. The chain of neglecting causes children to leave home and never come back when they grow up. Because if you didn’t sow anything, you will not have any yield. If you sowed the wrong seed, you won’t be able to get back in time and sow the right one to get a good yield. It is completely useless to look back in the past with pain, sorrow, reproach, suspicion and say: «I had to do that in time.» When people think about the past they imagine that they take care about the future. This isn’t true. The most important moment is the one we are living now. We plant new seeds – we get the chance to harvest a new yield. Not a guarantee, but just a chance. It doesn’t matter how old our children are, here and now we must do something and then any future is possible.
Questions
Why does my child call himself by his name? For example he can say about himself: «Max wants to drink.» What is this connected with?
There is such a notion – a «mirror» stage. First, your child sees himself as if in the mirror, then there is a transitive stage and he stops speaking in the third person about himself. Sometimes calling himself by his name, the child means a certain part of himself, that his parents accept or call somehow. Also he knows that there is one more part of him that his parents don’t accept, but scold and punish. The part the parents don’t need. So he doesn’t call this part of him by his name, because the parents don’t need this part. The child feels that when he does something his parents like, he is Max, but when he does things he likes, he is not Max, but someone else. When his parents start to accept the whole child without any divisions, he will stop dividing himself into the one, who his mother needs, and into the one, who she doesn’t need.
Sometimes a child is a «black sheep» in the family. For example, in the family of lawyers, the son becomes an actor or a clown. Why does it happen? Is that the absence of upbringing?
This isn’t the absence of upbringing, but the suppression of the children’s personality. This may not be the conscious choice of the parents, who accept the unique personality of their children and let them be what they want. Often such freedom of choice is the consequence of the successful parents’ business. They just have no time to «model» their children to fit certain image. This children are very «lucky» – the parents weren’t close all the time, didn’t impress their complexes and stereotypes on them, and didn’t shape them to the needed pattern. So unwittingly, they became the best parents ever. Their children grew up into people who know what they want, know what they can do best and do it. These children are lucky. It happens.
When is the right time to speak to a child about money?
You can touch upon this topic when children feel interest in money and start asking questions. You shouldn’t worship money and make it a life goal. It’s stupid. However, to undervalue it and lie that money is not necessary is also stupid. Teach children to think about money as energy. You have made something, created a value, which somebody will like and buy it providing you with money you can freely dispose of. That is, you get the energy and you can direct it anywhere, but before you have to create a value and make people ready to pay for it. My daughter once told me, «Let’s go and buy a doll!» – «Where will we get money?» – «We’ll ask mum.» – «Where does she get money?» – «She gets it at work.» – «How is that?» – «She cuts people’s hair.» – «She doesn’t just cut hair. Your mum cuts their hair so good that they like it and are ready to pay for it and come back to her over and over again.» Now my daughter knows: to have money you have to create something.
How to make children understand the value of money if they are from a rich family?
It’s absolutely true that the understanding of value isn’t instilled by rejections. Very often better-off parents don’t buy an expensive toy for a child saying that it is expensive. This is hypocrisy, and this isn’t the way to form a value. This is the trick of the parents, who have money, to demonstrate their power over a child, who doesn’t have it, and to provoke the child to beg, to ask, to plead, to persuade and promise something while they glory their importance and irreplaceability. You can’t say «no» only because of the price. Dualism is a wonderful phenomenon. It’s when people want to divide everything into «good» and «bad,» «good» and «evil,» «cheap» and «expensive.» The only thing is important, if it’s valuable for you or not. If you really need something, it can’t be expensive. You may be just earning little money.
So when children ask something, talk to them: «Why do you need it? What do you want to do with it? Why do you want it now?» Then it will be clear to you, why do children want this thing and you will be able to decide if you take part in buying it or not. You will be appropriate and adequate unlike the parents, who play a caring mother and a father, saying «no» to the child just because they want their neighbors to praise them: «Look! They are rich, but they don’t spoil their children! That’s the spirit!»
Involve children into earning money as into the game, which opens a range of opportunities. My mother kept saying, «If you want to eat – we’ll feed you, but if you want some luxuries – go and earn money yourself.» She helped me to get a job and didn’t take away my money. That’s why I have always known that earning money is super. A different matter is that not all better-off parents want their children to earn money, because in this case the children lose their dependence on them. Such parents often have nervous children, who are sure that they are complete zeros without their mom and dad. However, even millionaires have kids who don’t care about their parents’ money, because they know they can earn as much as they need. Thus, millionaires having bought houses for their children feel deceived and start taking offence when children refuse to live in them. Are they taking offence because their child turned to be unsuitable for manipulation and independent, not a stupid sheep? They must be happy.
My son likes only Japanese cartoons, anime. I can’t say that I’m interested in anime as well. When he tries to discuss them with me, I get bored to speak and listen about it. I really tried to understand – it doesn’t work. But I want to have something in common with my son.
You have got common life, but your hobbies may be different. For example, my wife is a hairdresser, and I’m a coach. We have different hobbies, priorities and values. We have different views on the world. I don’t tell her about motorcycles, she doesn’t tell me about hair dye – there are plenty of other interesting topics. Just accept that your son is interested in anime. Don’t criticize these cartoons and don’t try to love them like he does. Just don’t avoid him, when he wants to share with you. My daughter also tells me about her friends from the kindergarten, although I have never seen them. But I understand that at the moment when she is discussing them with me, she is eager to share with someone, and she has no other friend to tell it. I listen to her, I nod, but I don’t criticize, don’t give advice, if she doesn’t ask. Nobody asks for more from you. It’s enough that you listen to your son. The problem is that you think, «If I’m a mother I have to tell something important and clever to my child.» We are afraid of talking to our kids because it seems that if children share we have to share as well, but we have nothing to share. So we turn our back on children. Our children don’t need anything of what you are thinking. Just be with them. It’s like when you visit your parents and they present you with three jars of mom’s pickled cucumbers and two jars of strawberry jam. It’s quite clear that you can buy everything in the supermarket, but you better take these jars, because your parents want to be useful. Give them that opportunity.
Together with my husband, we decided to give our children a certain sum of money every week. But sometimes we just don’t have it. I don’t know if we can tell our children that we don’t have money or our agreement is more important and if we have promised we should provide them with this sum of money.
When you decide to give children a certain sum of money every week, think first if you have such opportunity every week. If this sum of money appears once every three years, don’t promise anything. But once you have promised, you have to fulfill commitments.
I need to travel on business, but I have nobody to stay with my daughter because she doesn’t want to go with me. I understand that it’s better to interest her somehow than to force, but sometimes I don’t have any desire to fancy something, to picture how thrilling and fascinating the trip may be. Can I act straightforward?
If you have an opportunity to deal, do it. If you don’t have such an opportunity, but you must go, don’t play, don’t pretend – be honest. Accept the fact that there is no opportunity to deal and start direct actions – take your daughter; put her in the car and drive. Explain to your child that there is no use in crying, that you must go anyway and after a while the child will understand, that it’s really useless to cry and will stop doing it.
How to teach a child to eat the right food? She doesn’t like what we eat, so I can’t teach her with my personal example. Do I have the only way out – be firm?
The child definitely won’t like what you impose on her, and it’s OK. To teach with your own example means doing something not for the public, but for yourself. I always eat only what I like, but not the food the doctors recommend. Once my daughter came to me and said, «Granny says yogurt is useful.» – «Do you like it?» – «Yes.» – «This is the most important.» I devalue such notions like «useful» or «harmful» for her to choose what she likes, because there is no «right food» – it all depends on who is selling food today. Children’s tastes may not coincide with the parents’ ones and there are no universal values. Even the statement that porridge is useful sometimes doesn’t work and it turns out that porridge does harm to some people. If something is useful for 80 per cent of people, should the remaining 20 per cent suffer and eat this? Nutrition is very individual. Offer some choice to a child and watch what she chooses, what she is inclined to. You can’t pull the child into the «healthy nutrition,» but you can create some interest to it. If you don’t want your child to eat fast food, don’t have such food at home. I don’t forbid my daughter to drink Cola, but I never drink it myself and I have never bought it in my life. Show the value of the food you prefer, be meaningful about how important it is to eat the right food, talk to your children, and fancy a story about healthy nutrition. Show a fat woman and ask: «Do you want to look like this?» – «No.» – «Then don’t eat pizza eight times a day.» Through visualization, through clarity you will reach your goal faster than through prohibition. Banning produces a different effect – love for what you hate. If you force – you get the resistance. That’s why some parents are surprised that at home their children eat the right food, but when they go away to the university they start eating pizza and drinking soda. That happens because when they lived at home the parents were making them pretend and spoon-fed with their «right» food.
How to introduce discipline as the way of life in the family? On the one hand we are all unique and individual, but on the other – I don’t want to turn family life into chaos. How to introduce some general rules and traditions?
Discipline doesn’t suppress uniqueness. Discipline is a necessary condition to survive. To breathe is the discipline of life. If you don’t breathe – you die, it is not discussed, it is accepted and fulfilled easily. The same is true in the family. If there are rules, but they are not fulfilled easily, they can’t become the discipline, because they are not accepted as values by the family members. It’s a great spiritual, noble and important task to create family traditions and make your family a clan. First there should be clarity – you have to explain the meaning of the traditions, so that everybody would understand the advantages of following these rules. Discipline is not an implicit subordination, but a necessary condition. In my family I created traditions of acceptance, respect and love. So all family members know that if one of us is busy, they shouldn’t bother him/her – when he/she is free he/she will come up to you. For example, everybody knows that if I’m not available at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they will never have a chance to talk to me. I’ll do what I have to and (even if everybody has forgotten), I will come up myself to ask what was the matter.
In many families parents are eager to introduce the tradition of getting together on New Year’s Eve. But you can’t impose a tradition, it can only be created. If it’s interesting at home, if home holidays are celebrated solemnly, there is an atmosphere of unity, togetherness, openness and contact – such tradition will outlive years. If there is acceptance, respect and interest to communication between family members, then everybody will visit you on New Years’ Eve.
Where is the borderline for parents’ interference or non-interference? Is the child wise enough to prevent an accident?
Accident is the way to depart this life, go away from parents. Water, fire or drugs are not the cause. The cause goes back in the past. The ways of departing this life may be different – we blame germs, glass, rivers, but, believe me, these are just the ways to depart this life, not the causes of doing it. If your child enjoys life, if he sees the opportunities for himself and understands how to use them, trust me, no disaster will happen to him.
It’s not easy for me to agree with you. I remember my mother beating me with a twig for playing in the sandpit. Now I understand that she was right – we were little and didn’t realize that we could be covered with sand.
Maybe not. Anything can happen to us at any moment. We can slip and die in our own bathroom. So what?
I want to speak about some basic signals to teach the child: what is dangerous, what is not – for the child to distinguish.
The most dangerous for life is life itself. We live and then die.
I’m speaking about being cautious, not about …
Cautiousness is the fear you have for your children. You are afraid, you forbid, but forbidding you only provoke curiosity. Inhibition has never inhibited anything for real, but provoked and stimulated action. You forbid something, but secretly children will do it anyway, otherwise they will not calm down. I want you to know what you forbid, what you punish your children for. Is there really some danger? Or are there just your personal fears, hypotheses, worries and fantasies – in a word, paranoia, behind your anxiety?
Why paranoia? There is the whole science of job safety at the enterprises. Why does it exist? Because there is some accidental statistics and they try to explain to the workers, what actions can lead to traumas or death. I think in the same way we have to explain to our children what may be dangerous for them. It’s really hard to believe that children have some inner wisdom to help them avoid danger…
You all have seen neglected children, who hang around in the streets and are subject to many dangers not having the slightest idea about them. We can argue here until midnight – you have a million of examples, I have more. I just want you to be conscious parents, not guided by such notions as «right-wrong» or «good-bad.» Be adequate. Don’t punish and don’t forbid, if you don’t understand what you forbid and what you punish for. Very often parents forbid something, not because they’re anxious about a child, but because they want to look good in the eyes of other people, because they feel embarrassed for the child. And their hypertrophic fear for the life of the child comes from a thought, «What will they think if my child dies?» Everybody will come up and say, «You’re such a bad mother!» this makes us shout to our children, «Stop it! That’s dangerous! Don’t touch it!»
§ 1.2. The Norm
It’s easy to be right, relying on the past experience, other people’s recipes and their behavioral models. Doing so, we’ll be right in the eyes of other people, but unlikely we’ll be happy. We have two ways to live: either you are right or you are happy. People become happy when they clearly see and understand what they have to do here and now and they do it. Immediately, depending on what and with whom these people interact, they get response and reward. Using other people’s ready-made «right» models in any situation, not depending on the context, shows that people just don’t understand what is happening, what it means for them personally and how to react in order to be appropriate, essential and sufficient. Something brand new, just born, unique and unlike anything else is placed into an old, well-known pattern. This never happens without aggression or anger, and it gives temporal and insignificant effect. Therefore, life seems unhappy and useless, because all efforts bring no reward.
Many parents are looking for some «norm» and want to be «right» in the eyes of other people. But this is paranoia because other people don’t care about us – they do their own business, thinking about their problems and often just don’t see us. However, it seems to us that everybody is looking at us, so for some passers-by, we play our performance called «I am a good parent,» losing our children, their trust, losing the ability to be precise and wise.
It is considered that to be a parent is to comply with some norms and rules to meet the demands of society – the irrelevant demands god-knows-who created. But the second party of the child-parent relationship is not the society, but a child, never taken into account, because he/she is «little and na?ve.» Parents try to look «good» in the eyes of other people and loose contact with children, therefore losing the ability to influence them. The drug addicts have «the best» and «the rightest» parents. Believe me, they have the most caring, attentive and sacrificing mothers. Once a woman came to me to consult. She was a very «correct» mother. Her husband committed suicide, her elder son went to prison, her daughter was a whore and her younger son was a drug addict. She was furious; she was stomping her feet, blaming school teachers, society, drugs, bad company in the street, movies and time itself. She was always right, but because of this, her husband «went beyond the veil» and her children went into the street. This mother was like a neutron bomb, because her rightness destroyed everything around leaving nobody alive and her family preferred being elsewhere, not close to her.
Sometimes I consult women who want to become mothers, but it doesn’t happen because doctors say they are infertile, though somatically they’re healthy. I ask these women, «Why do you need this child? Who told you that you need this child?» They get offended, considering this question a foolish one, «I need a child to take care of him/her, to spare the child, to educate, to nurse, to treat when the child is ill…» This answer demonstrates that such future mother has already projected a child as some helpless creature, demanding her permanent attention, yearning for the mother and missing her. Then I ask a question, «What if your child isn’t born disabled, but a healthy, quick-thinking, curious and creative person? What if your child doesn’t need your help and the attention you have got in store for him/her? Your child may disappoint you by such independence. Then what?»
Having been born individual, inimitable and unique, children immediately find themselves tied by their parents’ concepts of how it should be done «right.» Moreover, to this «right» parents add something they were eager to achieve, but failed. Something they regret, something they don’t have the courage to do, something they didn’t have time to complete or something their own parents were against in childhood. And now as adults, they still have no determination to complete something, trying to fulfill it with the help of their children. They want, let say, to see what will come out not taking any risk. They want to conduct an experiment: «What would have happened if I had done that?» For example, «I should have finished a language school. Or was I right not having finished it? I’ll send my son there, and we’ll see what will come out.» Then, education feels like trial, torture and pangs. You didn’t learn to dance in childhood – go and dance, you didn’t sing – go and sing, you didn’t play tennis – go and play. Your children have nothing to do with it! These are your wishes, your failed projects – implement them yourself if you want to do so.
Very often the woman, disappointed in her marriage, tries to bring up her son with certain traits of character she lacks in her husband, i.e., her husband didn’t turn out to be a prince, but her son is going to be the very prince she has been waiting for all her life. The father may also have some plans for the child: he wants his son to be a famous football player, and his daughter a polyglot. So children are born in the atmosphere of some demands and expectations connected with them. Sometimes these demands overwhelm parents to such a degree, that they hardly pay attention to the uniqueness of their children. Parents impose their ideas upon them not caring about their children’s abilities and desires.
Parents fancy a socially justified project for children: they want them to treat people or perform on the TV screen, to be involved in socially useful and socially acknowledged activity, so that the neighbors would come and say, «What a son you have raised!» However, if the son is engaged with something he enjoys, but the society doesn’t consider this profession prestigious and useful, parents start terrorizing him, «This isn’t the right job for you!» I don’t mean here that children shouldn’t choose socially aligned profession to preserve their individuality and uniqueness. I mean that parents shouldn’t impose their own ideas about the «right» and «wrong» professions: «If you were a doctor, I would be proud of you.» It’s not the main thing to become a doctor and treat people. More important is that your children put life into their work, do something sincere, not waiting for the praise, not hoping to earn parents’ love, but for themselves, because it’s impossible for them to live without their work. It doesn’t matter what your children choose, support them, be beside them and, if needed, protect your children’s choice from those who criticize them.
The desire to bring up «right» comes from the fear to make a mistake and possibly to be ashamed of bringing up somebody «wrong» for society. This isn’t because society can really judge us – we judge ourselves ahead, choosing to do everything right, according to the ideals (nobody knows who and when created) as the cornerstone of our upbringing. Parents get preoccupied by their own image – not to be guilty, not to be a looser. They want to have such a child so that everybody will see what a good mother you are. Then, your sacrifice and tortures won’t be in vain, and you will be able to justify your failed life for devoting it to your son: he has become such a «nice» guy – meaning that your denial of your private life and your failure to become a «friend,» a «lover,» a «wife,» a «specialist» were not in vain.
Children’s upbringing by mothers concerned with public opinion is perceived by these mothers as something ideally right. They don’t take into account the child’s potential and personality. The mother considers her child as something made of modelling clay, which can be shaped according to public expectations. Then these public ideals turn to be «dead» and not working, but the child filled with them entering the world becomes inadequate. Have you heard parents saying to their child, «Money is good. Look at businessmen – learn from them, open your own business, take a risk and start earning money.» This is never told. On the contrary, parents try to leave their children in the fairy tale, supporting their infantility and capriciousness. Because if children are weak, always cry and can’t step aside from their parents, these very parents start having the reason for life: «At least somebody needs us.»
Children, being dependent and feeling parents’ pressure, can’t decide to protest for a long time, can’t achieve anything and proclaim their individuality. Not being able to earn their living, to live separate, to be supported by friends, they are left face to face with their parents, grandparents – adults, having some rights and plans for their children. In his novel «The man who laughs,» Victor Hugo told about comprachikos (in Spanish – «children buyer»), who turned stolen kids into monsters (putting some parts of their bodies into blocks to break body proportions during physical development) and then sold them as entertainment (jesters) for the Royal court. Social upbringing reminds of the comprachikos’ actions: when we put some parts of children’s personalities into blocks, preventing natural development and somehow castrating them, depriving them of the internal harmony.
Сhildren may even die if they don’t have the environment, the ways and chances to fulfill their potential. Children understand it not at the intellectual, but at the natural level, and then they choose «not to live» – to die or fall ill. Only in the first year the child receives strong support from parents. First steps, first words, first using of the baby potty – everything is encouraged and causes a storm of emotions in adults, that’s why after birth children develop so rapidly. Then, when two-year-old children say that they will do everything themselves («I’ll cook myself, wash myself, sweep myself»), their development is slowed down by parents.
Children's willingness to take risks, crazyness, activeness and participation in life, the desire to influence, to build, to create frightens inert parents. They begin to forbid, talking about some stupid consequences, which they have never met or seen themselves. Immediately they get scared and start evaluating, «It’s bad,» «This is no good,» «You can get sick.» Parents fear that children will not need them and try to intimidate them – «You will break it!», «You don’t know how…», «You will spoil it.» Children insist – parents first bribe, and if it doesn’t work, start intimidating and punishing. This is how the Fear of Fear and Fear of Pain are formed. They paralyze children and make them passive. In addition, children grow with the feeling that things, food and neighbors – all external – are more important for parents than the manifestation of their children’s personalities.
«Good children» are «dead children.» Their parents succeeded in killing their individuality, intuition, creativity, joy, spontaneity, initiative and passion. These are scared children, having lost their childhood and the source of life. Children who are «alive» are always «crazy,» they are beyond the limits of our understanding of expedience, appropriateness and rightness and therefore they can’t be good – they will get in our hair, annoy us and bother with strange ideas and tricks. In fact, children are capable of doing absurd things (from our point of view): they can turn chairs into planes, paper into money and glass into diamonds. We don’t understand that, we don’t want to understand and immediately forbid, just in case, trying «to make an order in the dark room»: «You can’t! Boogeyman will take you up!» – «Why?» – «Just because…» – «But what have I done?» – «You mustn’t! That’s all! When you grow up, you will understand. Now you are too little to protest!»
I remember a woman came to me to consult, and I asked her to write an application for a «good son,» and she was absolutely serious writing that she wanted him to do this and that and to say so…
She wasn’t an exception – I often met parents, who «played» parents, then the «toy» broke down and they went to the psychologist: «Repair him for me. I was bringing him up, but suddenly he broke down and became unsuitable for use, uncontrolled, restless and a stupid parasite.» At the same time the mother was sure that everything was OK with her, it was only with a child that something was wrong. So first of all I consult this mother, and then get down to a child, and if the mother doesn’t understand, it’s useless to treat the child. When you communicate with these mothers, there is a feeling that their only desire is to kill children’s personality as quickly as possible and make them suitable for control, the so-called «handheld robots.» If you want to play – turn on the toy, if you lose the desire – turn it off. Well, luckily that mother quickly realized that she couldn’t get a child with the help of application. This would no longer be a child, but a doll.
I always repeat: learn to live from children. A man came to me: «I don’t know what to do – troubles are everywhere, nothing can be worth…» I ask him: «Don’t you have a son?» – «Yes, he is a year and a half.» – «Tell me about him. How does he wake up?» – «He opens his eyes and says: „Wow!“ – „How does he fall asleep?“ – „With a potato chip in his mouth. As soon as he reaches his bed, he falls asleep like a dead man.“ We all have such a little wise man and a life teacher. Unlike adults, children haven’t tasted meanness, intrigues, lies, pain, fear, betrayal, corruption – these are the only things they do not know about life. If you want to start living – look at your child and learn. He can live, but you have forgotten what it means. He doesn’t care, and you are within the limits. He lives and plays at full swing, whereas you’re dumb and lazy. If you have left your mobile at home – it can be now anywhere: in the washing machine or in the toilet bowl. This way our children try to make us conscious, responsible and included in life. It’s a perfect training for parents.
Children return us to life, but we beat them, because we don’t feel the ability to live – we have lost it, because we were beaten, and it seems we will never be able to live like they do. We shall. Learn to live from children until they become „dead.“[1 - "Dead" meaning "having lost their uniqueness, spontaneity, initiative with respect to the moment of life." Meaning children who do something to seek other people’s approval of their actions. The statistics are true for Russia.] 30 per cent of children are „dead“ up to the age of five, 70 per cent – after school and there remains only 12 per cent of „alive“ children after college. Look, how many people are a success after their college or university experience? Where are the rest? We attended the same lectures, studied in the same group and listened to the same professors. Where have they gone? Where will your children go when they grow up? They will be OK if you don’t impose your philosophy of the norm upon them and tell them what kind of people they should be, right from their childhood. Then they will stay „alive,“ they will be able to surprise, to take part in life and to become successful.
Being a parent means to be present, to realize and clearly see your role and your place next to this miracle that was born, and to create conditions and space for their development and growth. There, inside, in our center we are born with a certain potential, inner strength. And all this potential, this project, the idea of nature we bear are looking for the ways to be implemented, but come across powerful obstacles – models and expectations of parents. Parents also felt this potential long ago, but they lost it under the same methods of upbringing they practice now on their children. And instead of starting to live, they remember what they had inside back then, they get afraid and scare their children, „Can they do what they want nowadays?“ „Never mind! We were suffering, so they will suffer too.“ „He is too little to want it.“ „This is too much he wants.“ „You haven’t grown up enough.“ „When you grow up, you will understand.“ Parents are afraid of the children’s creativity and unpredictability, they are afraid of children who have Their Own Life.
Start living yourself, living the children’s lives – get down on your knees and crawl together, look at them, watch them, feel them and join them. Just for a second try to forget about the project of „how it should be“ and start being, living, seeing, feeling and realizing. Not only feeding and getting dressed, but watching to see what my children are doing now, why they are doing it, and why it is important for them. If you spend some time not controlling, evaluating and harping on the same old theme, you will be able to see the process of life cognition, the discovery of the world by these little people. At that time, you just have to be there, supporting.
We become wise parents when we understand what’s happening: what is the child doing, what for, what will the consequences be? Then, we say „no,“ not because this is right for someone, but because we start feeling, seeing, realizing, that this is the only thing to do now. If the snake is crawling to the child, you have to push the child away from it with all your strength. The child can be hurt, can be afraid because of suddenness, can cry, but you have to do it. Let other people criticize you for being rude and violent. Let the child take offence and go into hysterics. The main thing is that you know what you are doing.
There is no „right,“ no „wrong.“ There is what is appropriate and what is irrelevant, what is necessary and what is excessive, what is sufficient and what is surplus, what is effective and what is purposeless. Relying on the obviousness of the situation, on „here and now“, I never think what is „right.“ Inside myself I feel if it’s worth interfering or not. When I feel it, I don’t care about other people’s advice, about how I look like in their eyes. Then, there is no pretense and formal upbringing for the public: I heard the noise, came to the children’s room, shouted, returned to the guests and they told me with respect, „How strict you are with them! Good job!“
You can’t please everyone. There is a nice story about an old man, a child and a donkey. They were walking down the street and the passers-by said, „Look! They’ve bought an animal, but they aren’t using it.“ So the child got on the donkey and they went further. Again they heard the words of disapproval, „Look at these young people nowadays – an old man is walking, but a child is riding.“ They got embarrassed, and they changed their places round the corner. Again people were displeased, „The young man has got all his life ahead of him, but he’s walking on foot wearing his feet to blood, but the old man hasn’t lived enough yet!“ And so on. You can walk all your life and listen to what is right and what is wrong. What is right for one will be wrong for the other. There is nothing absolute. They say it’s bad to kill people, but medals are awarded for this during the war. Everything is appropriate somewhere and not appropriate somewhere else. Somewhere it’s a cure; somewhere it’s poison. When doctors are helpless, mother takes a child and rushes to the sorceress, though it’s wrong and unscientific. But she does it because the result is important – the child must get well. There is no absolute good or bad. Everything works with relevant dosage, circumstances and situation. At the moment when you must do something, you don’t think about what’s right or wrong. You just do it, and then, afterwards, it may turn out that you were right.
I want parents to be investors, not users. Children aren’t expenses, but investments. You invest energy, money, time and emotions into children. Think, when is it not in vain? Why are you doing it? What do you want to get? When you answer these questions to yourself, what you do is purposeful. You want your children to be physically, psychically and socially healthy. What can be the problem? When there is no such health. How can you understand it? You understand through collaboration, friendship and support interacting with children, talking to and watching them. The norm is our active and creative part in life, relevant action that we do here and now, our inner willingness to be in touch with children, understand and realize what’s happening to them, what they feel, what is important for them and what they are engaged in. We are normal, wise and adequate parents, when we stop pretending inside and working for the public, when we set free a certain space for what Tolstoy was writing about: a person can’t be taught to love, you just can remove the obstacles along the way of manifestation of love.
Questions
My son started working, but having his own money, he doesn’t share with the family. I think he should take part in the family expenses, but he is of a different opinion. How can I make him change his mind?
Why do you think you have the right to command his money? Do you think that way he should pay for his happy childhood? Expectations don’t work anyway. If you expected your child to start working and giving you part of his salary, then you had to tell him about that at the beginning. Expectations not having been clarified always end up in an offence, „partisan’s war,“ revenge and fear. You should make the situation clear, „Why do you start working? What do you want? How much will you earn? Are you ready to support the family budget? Or will you live apart and earn your living?“ You didn’t clarify anything, the child started working, received his money and suddenly learned that he had to give it to you. In other words, his mother thinks, „I want a new fur coat. Where can I get money? I’ll take from my husband and my son,“ but she doesn’t notify anybody about that. However, the child has his own plans for his money. So it happens that there’s one wage, but two plans for it. You demand, he resists, and you start racketeering, threating and blackmailing. If you don’t talk to your child, don’t negotiate, but present him with a fait accompli, you deprive yourself of clarity, stay among your own illusions, and when you face the reality, you get stressed and start attacking your child even more furiously.
Cash Dispenser
My daughter is always asleep – she goes to bed early, but still it’s difficult to wake her up to school in the morning. When she comes back home from school – she naps for an hour again. I think this isn’t normal. Is she lazy, or has she had problems at school? What should I do?
