Early? Late? In Time? The Norm And Not The Norm In The Development Of The Child

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

On October 5, a lecture by child and family psychologist Katerina Murashova “Early? Late? In time? The norm and not the norm in the development of a child. " We offer the readers of "Pravmir" the text and audio recording of the lecture.

Norm: either there or not

Whether you think about it or not, the concept of “norm is not the norm” inevitably influences our parenting strategies. Every day, every hour, we make our choice: what to do in relation to the child, depending on what we consider NORMAL for his development. And this daily decision-making, a global choice of educational strategy would not be so difficult if it were not for one BUT. There are too many voices in the minds of moms and dads today about how to raise a child correctly.

Katerina Murashova

Previously, it was generally accepted that by the age of one year, a child should speak a few words and at least a few sentences. By the year! This was the norm. Moreover, most of the children I saw at the beginning of my practice really fit into this norm. Indeed, a one-year-old child said: “Mom. Dad. Give. Drink. Go away. Want . A child at 1, 5 years old spoke in sentences. My own daughter at 1, 5 years old read simple poetry.

Further (I am not a speech therapist and did not follow the norm in this matter), the situation still changed, and now a lot of children come to me, who are only at two years old - at two ?! - at two years old they say the same thing: “Mom. Dad. Give. Drink. I want to go to the yuchki. What's this? The norm, not the norm? Where, what happened? Are the children dull? What happened? Have your parents stopped studying with them? 25 years ago, but have you stopped now?

Some months of speech delay occurs due to diapers, it is known. Research was carried out, however, diaper manufacturers crushed them. But not a year! Why this happens is understandable: control mechanisms are late: a child with diapers should not develop this volitional control, since volitional control is late, everything else is also late. But I don’t think it’s a year.

Further, what else affects? What is the norm again?

On the one hand, our world seems to be building up tolerance, building up the idea that “let all flowers bloom”, “let us all learn from people with developmental disabilities” - that's all glorious and sweet.

On the other hand, the world is increasing its speed and momentum, respectively, the faster all this moves, the greater the percentage of children who “miss”.

If earlier the primer was passed within a year, now this primer is being passed within two months. It is quite obvious that the number of “missed” is increasing.

On the one hand, we declare more and more acceptance of otherness, the acceptance of what seemed not the norm some time ago.

On the other hand, we are increasing the pace, and the faster the wheel spins, the more fly off it.

I don’t know if this attraction exists now or not, but during my childhood there was such an attraction, it was called the “Ferris wheel”. Do you know him? They sit on it, and it begins to unwind. The faster it spins, the more people fly out. The only way to stay on it until the end of the ride is to sit in the middle. The only person left is the one who sat in the middle.

All the rest, with a certain untwisting, take off. So, the wheel is spinning, and everyone sees it, everyone understands it. There seems to be no norm as such, even medical, but on the other hand, we all understand that it exists. Today we will try to figure it out in this gap.

What influences?

First, it is influenced by where the child was born. where did he go? How did the Slavic child live? Everybody knows? Up to a year in a cradle, on top of a white rag so that the flies do not bite, tightly swaddled, neither a handle nor a leg to move, in his mouth there is a rag with poppy seed cake. All passing by swing the cradle. That is, up to a year in a trance and under drugs. These are our traditions, welcome, Russia is rising from its knees, you can return.

How did the African child live? He was born, his mother hangs him up front or behind her back, at two years old a special holiday - the child is lowered to the ground for the first time. This is not humor, these are ethnographic traditions, there are works that have studied this, for example, the excellent series of the Academy of Sciences - "Ethnography of Childhood". Until two years old, the child was either on the mother, or on relatives, or on these houses on stilts, he crawled along the flooring.

What was the explanation for the fact that our baby was lying in the cradle, wrapped and drugged? Just so as not to interfere - he was lying there, and everything is fine. They took him out of there several times a day to feed him, change his diapers. What explained the fact that the African was worn up to 2 years old? The fact that they have all sorts of deadly reptiles crawling down there. If, for example, you let him go there when he starts to crawl, he will reach for some scorpion with a pen, and - minus one baby. At two years old, something can already be explained to him, at that moment they let him down and forget about him altogether.

The European baby is being developed just at this time. One of the crazy somersaults of maternal feelings in Russia was just due to the fact that this secret ethnographic knowledge about African babies went to the masses and then began there! The fact is that with this method of keeping babies, a two-year-old African baby was much more developed than a European child, including a Russian one. It is clear why - they wore him, they talked to him all the time, he saw everything, he has much more information. Having heard about this, the glorious Europeans, including the late USSR and early Russians, immediately hung up these sling bags.

Apparently, they imagined tarantulas below and began to wear them, earning spinal hernias. The fact is that if someone once saw how African women walk, then they understand that ours do not walk like that and cannot, they have everything in a completely different way. Someone saw the running African for sure - ours cannot do that. After bringing our mother to two years, our mother can already be put in a spinal surgery clinic.

African women are allowed, ours are not. But when and who stopped it, do you understand? The main thing is that the child is happy.

Photo: Monika Dubinkaite

Further. The People's Volunteer Bogoraz was a People's Will at the end of the 19th century, he was not shot, not hanged, but exiled to Siberia. Bogoraz studied the ethnography of the Chukchi for many, many years. These are exciting works written in good Russian. People's Will in general were quite educated and able to think - those who did not have time to kill and who did not have time. He lived under Soviet rule, continued to research and continued to publish.

He also studied the ethnography of childhood, and was very amazed at how Chukchi children behave differently from the children of contemporary Russians.

Chukchi children are more wild, according to Bogoraz, cruel, they could tear into pieces small animals that adults brought them specially for this. Imagine what we have - what would we think? We would think of a psychiatrist first. What was going on there? The children were just preparing for what awaits them next.

There, adults knew how to castrate their deer teeth, so that you understand at what level everything is happening. The children were preparing for what awaited them, they were preparing for that life. To God of those times and to us today, what does it seem to be - the norm, not the norm? Of course, not the norm. But then for Chukchi children it was an absolute norm, and adults perceived it as a norm.

We have to think about context all the time. We have biology, and we can't get away from it. And we have a process of humanization, which is taking place in parallel with the implementation of some biological programs. We must always remember that this process does not take place in the jungle, it takes place in a very specific context - in the context of the family.

How to inhibit the development of a child?

Family is certainly more influential than cultural and national customs. There are several very sure ways to slow down the early development of a child, I would say, practically guaranteed (except for diapers, we are not talking about diapers). I will name them now, you naturally know them.

Doing everything for the child is a sure way to slow down his development

The first way is to do everything for the child. In recent years, more and more five-year-olds come to me and are spoon-fed. Why, why, how? Children are intellectually safe more or less. You understand, if up to five years old they feed from a spoon, then some violations will already obviously be.

Give conflicting commands to your child

I am a former zoologist, so I apologize in advance to the audience, because I cannot get away from this, this is my past, this is my youth, so I will give an example from there. My friend had a dog, a teenager. And she says to me: "A dog of rare dullness, stupid, there is simply nowhere to go further."

I observed, I was not yet a psychologist then, I was still a zoologist then. I say: "Do you hear what you say to him?" She says: “What am I telling him? What I say to everyone, I tell him too. " She says approximately the following: “Shurik, stand, stand, Shurik! Stop, I said! Well, okay, come here, well, what are you? Well, come to me already, in the end! How tired of you! Yes, you get out of here!"

As you can imagine, a dog has a much simpler structure than a child, after all, a dog is more primitive, although they say that adult dogs have the intelligence of a two-three-year-old child, and a monkey - a four-year-old. All the same, the dog is much more primitive than the child, and the "shorty" just taught her, that is, she stopped doing anything at all. Naturally, this Shurik looked like an absolute idiot.

It would be ridiculous if such children were not brought to me on a regular basis. For children it is different, they do not start to look like idiots, for them it looks different - their social skills begin to fly, that is, they are afraid of everything. They are afraid to speak. They don't answer the question "what's your name?" - not because they don't know their names. They don't participate in children's parties because they don't know how to socially interact. They are not suitable for children in the playground. Children from this giving of contradictory commands do not come "shorty", like a dog, but their social skills are flying, a delay in social development is evident.

Photo: Monika Dubinkaite

Prohibit everything, everything is dangerous

These are also known options - do not touch, do not take, everything is dangerous. The child does not touch, does not take, and, naturally, a developmental delay is guaranteed to us.

Shorten the period of creativity development

Now I will draw you how it happens. Child development is a fairly linear approximation.

Here is our child born. The first year is building basic trust in life.

Then we went to the establishment of boundaries - "how far can I do you."

Somewhere in 1, 5 years, normally at three, the boundaries should be set, and then up to seven years there is a sweet period when creativity develops.

What is creativity development? The question "why" arises, and the child realizes the search for non-standard solutions to standard problems.

That is, "what will we have a horse?" This stick will be the horse.

"What will we have a table?" This box. "What will we have a spaceship?" Washing machine.

In my opinion, this is the most beautiful period from childhood. He is so sweet that in his right mind and hard memory something can be done with him …

But, nevertheless, very many parents reduce it to almost nothing.

How do they do it? Very simple. In the period where boundaries are being set, they do not set boundaries, they give the very contradictory commands (grandmother allows, dad forbids, and they immediately begin to swear among themselves). Until the boundaries are set, creativity has not gone - these are consistent things.

At the age of 7, I was sent to school, and development begins. Our education is left-brain, in one problem there is one answer, in the sentence: "The bird flew to the south", - the subject is "bird", there is no other. "Twice two - four", and there is no other answer either.

What are parents doing? Instead of waiting, in the period where creativity develops, they send him to a good, expensive educational developmental course, where he is taught to read, write and take integrals, if he's lucky.

And when our child grows up and becomes some kind of marketing manager, his boss will say something like this: "He's not a bad employee, but you won't get any creativity from him." Of course, you can't wait, because instead of a long period for the development of creativity, we have only a small piece.

Where to come from? This is what the family can do and what they do often enough to stunt development.

First year diagnoses

If we do not take all sorts of cultural and family delights, then what should we look at in the “norm is not the norm” option?

Neurological diagnoses in the first year of life are very important. I don't even know how to formulate it to be a beacon. Why are they important? Because they will play later. What is it usually about? We are not considering the option of gross organic brain damage. If it is, then it is a medical problem, it is medically solved. But there may be something borderline, which is sometimes now written as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and more often written as PEP (perinatal encephalopathy) or PPCNS - perinatal lesion of the central nervous system. What we are talking about? We say that ultrasound of the brain does not reveal gross organic lesions. But the neurologist sees a discrepancy between the reflexes and the age norm, which he has written somewhere there. And then he makes one of these diagnoses, respectively. What does it mean? This usually means that there were some kind of perinatal events: rapid birth, difficult childbirth, a cesarean baby, a tadpole baby, a long waterless period - an infinite number of all possible pathologies. And as a result of this, we have microorganic lesions of the brain.

What does it mean? This means that part of the nerve cells, simply put, died when all this happened. Immediately, the process of restoring the "destroyed national economy" began, that is, other nerve cells began to take over the functions of the affected nerve cells. Nerve cells, as we know, do not recover, but there is a reserve there. By the age of one year, the picture looks like this (some of the spots in the picture are erased), by the age of three - like this, these are dismantled (some more of the spots in the picture are erased), but these are still there.

Life is an energetic process. To lift this felt-tip pen, I need to spend some joules of energy, this is not even psychology, this is not even biology, this is physics. Most of you still remember that energy is denoted by the letter E. E1 is the energy of normal age-related development, which must be spent on normal age-related development, in order for a child to sit down, get up, walk, speak, all this requires energy. This is E1. But in parallel with development, we are restoring the "destroyed national economy" in a child with perinatal events - axons have sprouted, dendrites have joined into synapses, this also requires energy - this is E2. That is, the brains of our child from the very beginning work with a double load: E1 + E2. And this must be understood.

Where will it play? At what point? At school, of course. In initial training, this will play to the fullest. The child either cannot sit, or cannot collect, or lags behind, or does not describe the dictations, or does something else like that. Moreover, there are two types of violations - "hypo" and "hyper", which look the same here in the picture, but in reality they will look completely opposite.

There are two processes in the nervous system: excitation and inhibition, there is actually nothing else there. If the structures, mainly responsible for the inhibition process, have died, then what is it difficult for a child to do? Slow down. And we get this electric broom, in which the processes of excitation prevail over the processes of inhibition. He went, and then only the police would stop him. These are the children who need to run after, those children who have "ladybug syndrome", a very typical thing: a child climbs vertically on the playground on something, and then he needs to be removed. This is one option.

If the child's structures, mainly responsible for the process of arousal, have died, then what is it difficult for him to do? Get excited, of course. And we get a baby who at first looks just perfect - you put him in bed … Recently one grandmother came, and they have an electric broom. She says: “My daughter was absolutely perfect, I, of course, was not used to it, it is very difficult for me with my grandson. If you leave your daughter somewhere, then in a few hours you will come, and there you will find her. " It is clear that not all is well either. These second - "hypo", before school, everyone is satisfied. So what if he dresses a little slower than the others, do you think? You can wait for him.

And only at school it suddenly turns out that something is wrong with him. Usually, by the middle of the second grade, mental retardation is questionable, moreover, they are absolutely not mentally retarded. On the contrary, these “hypos” have a very serious social role - they are listeners. If you are told, for example, a story like this: “He loved her back in high school, but she didn't pay attention to him because she was bright and had a much more attractive high school fan base. Then she married immediately, unsuccessfully, divorced, gave birth to a child, then married again. All this time he continued to wait for her. And then they met by chance at a meeting of classmates. And she had already faded, and she already had a child, and suddenly she realized that he still loved her. They got married and now they are happy. " This is about him, about "hypo" - this is what he was waiting for all this time. A neurotic would not wait for her.

The teenagers gathered for a get-together. By the morning, everyone was drunk, who could, accordingly, had a personal life, in the morning they crawl out, crying into their vest. To whom? Her hypo. She sits there and listens to everyone, pats everyone on the head, whoever she can. Nothing threatened her honor; no one needed her at the previous stage of the party.

Parents do not like it when he waits for her for 20 years, but they like the social role of "hyper" even less, because this social role is to go to perish on the barricades. This is the one who will run, the one who will lead, and not the leader, but the "hyper".

The point is that these initial events have an impact on the next stages, not only in the first year of life, but also on primary school. Therefore, when we talk about the norm and not the norm, we must very seriously bear this in mind.

What else should we seriously bear in mind? Development is not linear. We cannot draw one such line, and distribute the boys Petya and Seryozha and the girl Sveta on it. We cannot say that Petya is the most undeveloped, Sveta is a little more developed, and the most developed is Seryozha. Although parents, teachers, and even psychologists often do this, this has nothing to do with reality. Why?

Because we have different scales of development

1. Intelligence, more precisely, what we consider to be intelligence. Intelligence is understood as the most unexpected things.
2. Physical development is also a very understandable thing. One child with difficulty steps over the fence, and the other child jumps over it with such a margin. It is clear that the physical development of the second is better. I mean children of the same age.
3. Social development. One child can organize a game, build peers, give them roles. The other child cannot do any of this and, in general, hardly fits into interaction with peers. Or, for example, it can only talk to adults.
4. Emotional development. This is the ability to read the feelings of other people, also be aware of your own feelings and change your behavior in accordance with what you read.
5. There is one more scale in question, I know little about it, so I will keep quiet about it for now. We would have to deal with these.

What is the norm?

We have one child, let's call him Petya. Let's say all our guys are 8 years old. Petya, Seryozha, Sveta. We roughly understand what a child should be able to do at the age of 8. We know what success he should have in school, we know his physical capabilities - what a child of eight can do, that he can jump, climb, and so on. We know approximately how children of eight years old play, how they organize their social interaction. We know little about the emotional; for some reason, no attention is paid to it at all.

Here is our Petya. Petya was initially discriminated against, Petya is a poor student, he does not really master the program, his grades leave much to be desired. Petya does not have what we tend to call intellectual development. But then, as you understand, somewhere there must be compensation - our Petya beats everyone in a row. And only one boy, who is 12, can really resist him in the yard. That is, his physical development is above the norm.

Petya's social development is close to normal, because he builds up his social roles as a courtyard bully quite well. By the beginning of the third grade, through Maria Petrovna, in part, the role of a bully was consolidated in him, and Petya agreed with this. He roughly imagines, he has enough intelligence for this, how the hooligans behave, and so they behave, therefore, Petya's social development is somewhere within the normal range. Emotional development of Petya is unknown to anyone, because his eight-year emotions are of no interest to anyone, except for one - his aggressiveness. Presumably he is lagging behind.

Next we have Sveta. Sveta is a good girl. She is not particularly strong intellectually, but she tries. There are girls like that in the second grade. If you ask Mary Petrovna, she will say: "Still, a little higher than the norm, because the notebooks are neat, she always lifts the pen." Sveta's physical development is the norm. She is a good asthenic girl, not of any particular strength, but Svetochka fulfills all the norms that are written down by the school nurse.

Sveta's social development is good, she has two girlfriends, together they can even resist Petya. He is afraid to beat three at once. They come out and say: “Petya, what a bad boy you are! Why are you doing this? No need to misbehave, Petya. Your hands are dirty, go wash them. Petya becomes satanic because of this, but he cannot do anything against the three Svetochki at once, so we will designate the social development of Sveta as good. Again, no one knows anything about Sveta's emotional development. She is so eager to be good, she is so eager to be correct, that she does not recognize her feelings at all. However, she recognizes other people's feelings, because much depends on Maria Petrovna in her well-being. That is, it still lags behind, but not like Petya.

Now Seryozha. With Seryozha, everything is more complicated. Serezha was taught to read Zaitsev's cubes at the age of three. At five he read the encyclopedia of dinosaurs and for another year he got everyone out with the Latin names of dinosaurs. Mom and Dad were proud, they said that he was probably a child prodigy. They sent me to a training-developmental program, where he also annoyed everyone with his dinosaurs, but since his intellect is good, really good, he quickly realized that there was enough, and joined the rat race, these educational and developmental ones. That is, long before school he joined these races, so everyone who observes eight-year-old Seryozha (who read The Master and Margarita was slipped by his parents, Seryozha read it), everyone is proud. Accordingly, he is seriously above normal intellectually. Serezha's physical development is weak, because there was no time - he did not climb anywhere. He is afraid of Petya to the point of insanity. You know from that anecdote about the proletarian and intellectual on the Arbat?

An intellectual in a hat is walking along the Arbat, and a proletarian in a cap meets him, and for some reason the proletarian does not like the face of the intellectual, the proletarian says to him: "What are you doing here?" And bam, in the face. Well, intellectual hop, and leaned back. And the proletarian went on. The intellectual was left lying in a puddle, supine, he was lying, looking up, and there was such a gray sky as today, the rain is dripping. He lies and thinks: "Indeed, and why am I here?"

Serezha always feels the opportunity to become the hero of this anecdote. Of course, he does not yet realize it, he is only eight, but he feels.

As for Seryozha's social development, he communicates well with adults - he can tell, he is quite polite, that is, Seryozha's communication with adults is wonderful. Serezha's communication with peers is much, much worse - peers are not interested in him. He offers himself, he does not know how to offer anything other than himself. Adults like Seryozha very much, peers - no. He does not know how to hear and understand them. Parents say that they do not understand him, because Seryozha is a child prodigy, and these are all "come in large numbers." Therefore, the social development of Seryozha, alas, is below the norm.

Emotional development of Seryozha. And again we do not know anything about him, because our Seryozha has never come across the fact that feelings can play as a resource. He always knew that intelligence can play as a resource, it was explained to him early. Since he is not a fool, he guesses that physical development could also play, he understands Petino's superiority. He also understands the social, he understands that he is not doing well with his peers, but he does not know what to do with it. That feelings can be a resource, he does not know at all, no one has ever told him about this, so he is somewhere with the others, below the norm.

Photo: Monika Dubinkaite

Who is our norm, and what is our norm? Surely half of the audience said: "Why are they all so poor?" I'm telling a story. This story made a tremendous impression on me, I still remember it. When I was still studying to be a psychologist, it was many years ago, psychology was developing at a rapid pace, because Russia opened up to the world, and many, many Varangians came to us who enlightened us. I went with everyone, I was enlightened. In addition, they helped us financially, with the money of some sugar sponsors, we opened the first kindergarten for children with developmental disabilities in St. Petersburg. And there were also ordinary children. My group was taken there for practice. Before that, they explained to us how to communicate with these children, gave us some basic knowledge.

And here is the garden itself. A large room, a carpet on the floor, a lot of toys, and such toys - you don't care about it now, you live abundantly, and I have never seen such toys, neither I nor my children - some big soft cubes, everything is bright, everything is ergonomic. And down there on the carpet there are children. I cannot say that I have not seen children with developmental disabilities before, of course, I have seen, but so many at once, I suspect that not. Moreover, I was already a mature person, I had a second higher education in psychology. The first is biological. I was a grown man with two children, but still. Someone there is crawling somewhere, someone has convulsions, someone is sitting and the head of a doll is pounding on the floor, a couple of children with Down syndrome are running, and something else. I realized that I was not particularly prepared for this.

My colleagues started trying to communicate with these children. I also tried to communicate with the child who was beating with the doll, realizing at the same time that I feel sorry for the doll, that I am trying to distract him, because the doll is good, dear, neither I nor my children had such. If I was aware of this, then, of course, the child felt in whom I was interested. Naturally, communication with me was not at all happy for him, he yelled, pushed me away and started pounding even more intensely … That is, he felt worse. Naturally, I saw this and realized that it is better to do no harm. I, in the form in which I am, is not shown to communicate with children, who already have very serious problems. In addition, I am an asthmatic, you understand, I did not take the inhaler. I feel it is covering me, I don’t know how to get out, I stood up to the wall, growth, as you can see, I’m big. I stood up to the wall, I look, they have a sink in the group, I thought: "If I come up now and wash myself with cold water, will this be a violation of some rules?" I stand, trying to look overhead, at the toys, so as not to see everything.

Suddenly, from below, someone tugs at my pants. I look over there, there is a tiny down girl, a small one at all. The fact is that they are lagging behind in growth, so how old she is, I still don't know. Maybe she was three, maybe she was four, maybe she was five - I don't know, but tiny. I remembered that when the children were introduced to us, they called her Nastya. She stands, and the downs usually smile, but this one does not smile, she looks at me absolutely seriously from the bottom up. I think: “Is she talking, not talking? Does she understand something, doesn't she understand? " I play a crocodile smile, I know that you need to sit down with the children, we were taught this. I think I'm going to sit down and collapse, just scare the child. Therefore, I look down at her, respectively, I say: "What do you want, Nastenka?" She looks at me absolutely seriously for a while, studying, and then says: "Is it bad, aunt, uncle?" I was already led! I am silent. What can you say here? She sees, I don't react. Then she takes her hand, spits out a piece of candy on her, I suspect it is someone from ours, now such things cannot be done - then everything was possible. And he says: "Nya, aunt, suck!".

Now let's see what this child with Down syndrome did. Among a group of adults unfamiliar to him, this child figured out a person who felt bad, that is, she read the feelings of a stranger, scanning strangers in space, emotionally scanning, because intellectually, as we know, downs are seriously behind. Then she decided to intervene in the situation, that is, she did not just read it, but also decided to go and try to do something about it - it is bad for the person, to go, to do something.

Then she thought, what can be done, since the person is bad, and made a choice available to her brains: the candy is delicious, she, Nastya, likes the candy, she feels good when she sucks the candy. Therefore, if you give a person your candy, then, most likely, he will also feel better. and his condition will improve. Do you know a lot of four-year-olds without Down syndrome who are capable of this? I'm not a single one, to be honest.

What we have? Nastenka is seriously weak intellectually, children with Down syndrome are poorly developed physically. Nastenka's socialization is within the normal range, she is inscribed in her group, where she is. The others never dreamed of her emotional intelligence. Like this. Where do we look for norms?

- Is this typical for all children with Down syndrome?

- For many. They have compensatory emotional development, they read emotions, if they are accepted, then they are very tuned. They are attuned to the emotional state of other people. If it is encouraged, then it develops very powerfully and mighty. Why do those who communicate with them say that it is very positive to communicate with them? They give, they tune in to the other person and interact positively with him. They do not really understand any kind of intellectual messages, but a response emotion, feedback, like "you are my good!" they understand perfectly and are ready to work for it.

What can we say about the norms from this? Virtually nothing. It must be remembered all the time that development is not one-line. We fix something - we hang here. And the rest also exists. Actually, something determines our career growth, something else. A physically developed person feels very well physically, a social person feels accepted and in place - this is the feeling of a person in his place. Emotional intelligence gives this feeling that not only am I in place in the world, but the world also treats me well. This is happiness.

Personal context for your own child

I will say a few more words about intellectual development. There are two criteria for marking the development of the general intelligence of a preschooler. You see, in addition to general intelligence, there is the development of spatial thinking, memory, a few more cognitive things, but there is general intelligence. In a preschooler, two things mark the development of general intelligence - the difficulty of role play that the child can organize and conduct. The more complex the role-playing game that the child can organize and conduct, the higher the development of his general intelligence. This is about preschoolers.

The second criterion is the complexity of the questions the child asks. The more difficult the questions the child asks, the higher their general intelligence. There was such a sage Avicenna, when he was already old, he was asked: "Tell me, you are so wise, probably, in childhood you stood out somehow among your peers, probably, you knew the most, were able to do the most?" He said: "No, when I was in school (madrasah, probably, since he is a Muslim) there were students who knew more than me and were more skilled than me, but I was the best asking questions."

There are no other criteria at all. The speed with which the child completes the puzzles, the number of verses that the child knows, his ability to read, write, take integrals - nothing, only two things - the complexity of the role-play that he can organize and conduct, and the complexity of the questions he asks. Nothing else plays.

- Role-playing games with dolls, with little men?

- With anything. The more the child's fantasy works - that is, the child can ride a horse, which is like a real one, and a child who can ride on a stick, then put it in a corner and say: "You have hay for you" - the intellect is more developed in the second. A child who can play doctor only with a set of "Young Doctor" or a child who will say: “This will be a thermometer, this will be a set of surgical instruments, this will be a box in which we make medicine, and from this we are going to make beds now,”- this child has a more developed intellect.

- And if the participants in the child's role play are fictional?

- What then is the role-playing game?

What is the process itself? The child walks like this and says: "Once Masha said, and Misha answered her, and then Sveta came and did the following." What is the role-playing game? Role-playing is the living of the world.

- If you portray fictional characters with different voices?

- This is a good role-playing game, but a developed role-playing game, on which it ceases to exist, is the creation of worlds, that is, the world of the store, the world of the hospital, the world of star wars, the world of the school, the world of the kindergarten, the world of the magic forest. That is, the world, and something is happening in it - the child speaks in different voices, there he has fictional characters. I knew a child who had a beautiful country, a long-standing country in which the heroes were - yogurt boxes. And this life was full of passions, full of events, adventures.

- It turns out that toys are generally harmful to the child and are not needed? Is he better off playing with a matchbox than with a doctor's kit?

- Yes, especially if the toys are plastic. Plastic is a dead material. I really do not like that all the playgrounds have been replaced with plastic pieces. Yes, the less the child uses ready-made toys, and the more his imagination works in the process of creating these worlds, the better for the development of his general intelligence, this is true.

In a schoolchild, it is not known what marks the development of general intelligence, but academic performance is very often used. Recently, a very large and serious study was conducted in Moscow, it was called "Moscow Monitoring". It was either preparing to create a register of gifted children, or something like that, but the research was of high quality. How often do we have? We will put on 9 children … Why do I have a strange attitude towards Russian studies and a strange attitude towards Soviet ones? I'm a biologist - I knew how many mice it takes to draw one conclusion. When I came to psychology, I was completely perplexed about the experimental basis of psychology. Psychology pretends to be a kind of science, but at the same time they do something on nine students, then they make nine pages of conclusions - a very strange thing. Why I love Americans, because their research in this regard is clear to me - there are 900 subjects and three lines of conclusions.

So, "Moscow Monitoring" is one of the rare high-quality items. Its results have not yet been published, the psychological community is somewhat confused about this. Naturally, as you can imagine, something seeps out from under the carpet. What has leaked out: 2/3 of children with high intelligence - what is measured by some kind of tests - do not participate in any contests and olympiads. And a third of children with high intelligence do not master the program in the main subjects, they have poor grades in them.

Aha, we have arrived! We do not have any markings for the development of the intellect of schoolchildren at all. Nothing - not science, nothing. We cannot calculate the norm. If we have two such things about preschoolers, they are ironically connected: if a child asks interesting, difficult questions and organizes the role-playing game himself well, this is a child with high intelligence. Check with tests, do not check - there will be high intelligence.

- If he becomes a schoolboy, do these abilities go somewhere? How do they proceed?

- The fact of the matter is that the child who created these worlds, that is, he could create them in front of the amazed audience, and they were brilliant; he asked questions that perplexed the candidate of physical sciences; he made such hypotheses that just ah! And so he came to the first grade. They say to him: "Two cells here, two cells here." He says: "Wait, tell me why the squared notebook?" Uh-uh … Maria Petrovna says: “Silence! Two cells here, two cells here. " He says: "Let's play as if we are all the crew of a spaceship, and we are flying?" - “Silence! Zhi, Shi, write with the letter I."

- And if the child does not ask questions at all?

- This is very bad.

- But he plays good role-playing games.

- The only option that parents need here is to ask questions and answer them yourself. Children are imitators, so that at least these ligaments are formed in him, in which cases these questions are asked.

What else is important to us? Everyone knows such a thing as a bell curve. When we talk about the norm and not the norm in the development of a child, it is important for us to distinguish between developmental disorders and temporal retardation. Actually, medicine and psychology are able to do this, but parents, again, need to understand what is at stake.

What is tempo delay? This means that the child is developing, but is late, that is, at four years old he does what other children do at three, and at five he does what other children do at four years old. But its development is underway - this is a tempo delay.

What is a violation? Violation when everything goes wrong - he does not do at five what children do at three. At the age of five he does something completely different, not that at the age of three, but something completely different.

What is important for us to understand about tempo delay? 9 out of 10 children with a tempo delay will then catch up. This must also be understood. If a child has a temporal delay in development, sometime after some time he will catch up with those who have gone ahead. We all know the normal distribution curve.

If we have a tempo delay, nature is a symmetrical thing, then we have an item acceleration. Here are the kids who do at four what others do at six. At five they do what others do at eight. This is sometimes referred to as early general childish giftedness. What do we need to know? That 9 out of 10 will be back to normal. One, poor thing, will stay that way. What does it mean if we are dealing with a delay? This means that you need to calmly develop this child, he will then return to normal. What do you need to know about acceleration? There is no need to develop this child, otherwise we will form neurosis and suicidal things in him in adolescence, when this early acceleration will be compensated, this must also be understood.

When we think about the norm and not the norm as applied to our own child or to a particular child with whom we are dealing, what do we need to keep in mind? We need to make some kind of decision to begin with. Having investigated this issue, we see that there is no objective norm - not a norm to be found, but, nevertheless, we are talking about the norm all the time. Moreover, we all understand that in reality there is something under the norm. Whatever one may say, we can still say: this is not the norm at all, but this is closer to the norm, and this is just quite, quite the norm.

When we think about this as applied to a particular child, we must create our own context. Now I will explain what I mean. Only I would like to emphasize that this context should be your personal, that is, you must decide what you mean by the norm, and not the pediatrician in the clinic and not the visiting psychologist, but specifically you - what do you mean by the norm? Perhaps, by the norm you mean the possibility of full-fledged social adaptation, that is, it has adapted, has found its place - hence the norm. A socially adapted person with Down syndrome is the norm. Why? Because he is socially adapted. Perhaps you think so about the norm: he managed to adapt socially - the norm; failed - not the norm.

Perhaps you think that surviving is already the norm. In the end, we have a tolerant world, we have something else … Alive, and okay.

Perhaps you think that the norm is a person's ability to be happy. If it is possible to somehow make him so periodically (you understand that only clinical idiots are constantly happy) experiences this, which we call happiness, then the norm, then everything is fine. As soon as we formulate this context for ourselves, we immediately understand what to do. Remember, one of the options is full-fledged social adaptation, that is, found a person, he managed to adapt socially, which means that the norm.

Well, we have a child with developmental disorders, with a temporal retardation of development, with some kind of diseases - since we answered ourselves that the norm is a full-fledged social adaptation (we cannot remove a chromosome from him in Down syndrome, but we can adapt it). And here we go - chukh, chukh, chukh, we know what we can do to ensure that there is a norm.

Or we noted for ourselves that for us the norm is entering here, where the norm is for ordinary children. And the child went here or here (where there is no norm). We see, and everyone asserts to us that he will never reach here, but for us the norm is here (middle). Then what should we do? Sit down and cry, feel sorry for ourselves, feel sorry for the child, that is, we do not understand what to do.

There was a novel by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. This is a dystopia, and there they, with the help of some methods, probably some kind of genetic modifications, according to the needs of society, formed different types of people - from alpha (they are in the Greek alphabet) to plus or minus epsilon semi-cretins. And having formed them - alpha, beta, gamma, and the lower ones were epsilon-semi-cretins, they knew where they were going to take them, and socially adapted everyone. They were all socially adapted there. Accordingly, plus or minus epsilon semi-kretin worked as a lifter, raised and lowered, raised and lowered, and when he reached the top, he saw the sun there, and this made him extremely happy. I must say that Huxley still has a dystopia, he seemed to think that it was not necessary, but, on the other hand, there was a wonderful system, in this sense.

What opportunities do parents have to exacerbate or shape developmental disabilities? Early childhood development is not the limit, you can continue to work.

- How to make something happy?

- I'll tell you how to make you unhappy. And it can be turned over …

Politically Incorrect Scale and Duck Rule

- What is the last scale, about which you do not say anything?

- I don't know if it exists, because it sounds very politically incorrect. Still, there is a feeling that there is a creative concept that is not associated with either intellectual development or any of these scales. You can completely score this scale by removing that single period of creativity. I know how to make sure that there is nothing here at all - you have to set boundaries for a long, long time and quickly and quickly put them in a training-development tool - this scale will not have any meaning for you at all.

- And if it is very explicit?

- I dont know. Why did I draw it with a dotted line? What to do with this, I do not really know. Several times in my life I saw how it exists. Indeed, in addition to the general children's giftedness, about which I spoke, there is a special early childhood giftedness - this is artistic, the earliest, tested, then musical, there is even later, much simpler - the ability to solve problems with the help of logical - it is formed later. The fact is that when you see it, you cannot confuse it with anything.

They come to me and say: "Does my child have artistic ability?" I say: "Guys, if you have a special artistic talent, then you will not confuse this with anything, and you will not come to ask anyone." You know, it rains outside, or vice versa. It really cannot be confused with anything, and the feeling from this remains that through him Someone speaks, it is: "A-a-a". It happens, it is extremely rare. I have a feeling that if you suddenly meet him, then you need to stand neatly, neatly next to him … If he draws, then he needs to submit paints and leaflets. If he builds a piano at night, then buy him a piano, a drum … Somehow, neatly, neatly. It seems to me that it is not worth doing something specifically with this, because we do not know where it comes from, what it is. That's why I painted it so neatly. I must say that it does not add much happiness. Happiness is not from here.

What can our parents do to amplify or shape developmental disabilities? Naturally, to pedal what he already has developed. Accordingly, Seryozha should be transferred to an older class so that his social development would go down completely. To send him to some gymnasium, and preferably to a class not for his age, and say all the time that he is so smart that he can only communicate with adults, because he can only communicate with them intellectually. And these do not interest him at all, they are below his level of development. Developmental disorders will be up to suicide at different ages.

Physical development can also be pedaled, instead of a child's head a soccer ball, because his dad dreamed of becoming a football player - it's easy. It is more difficult to pedal social development, but you can cultivate social opportunists, such as: "You just don't stick your head out, you need to do this and that." And after a while, the child generally ceases to understand who he is, what he wants, what he does not want.

It is necessary early, as early as possible, to teach the child to reckon with other people's feelings, and everyone knows how to do this, but few do. “How is it? He is still small". We have a child-centered family. They come to me and say: "How can I do something?" I say: "Do whatever you want." They tell me: "How is the child better?" “I don’t give a damn. No way. You are big ducks - do as you like."

About ducks - is that clear? Have you ever seen a duck walking with ducklings? Have you seen? A duck followed by ducklings. Do you think there were ducklings who went here, went there? There were, of course, only they were eaten, they were selected by natural selection. What am I for? Because the duck knows where to go, the duck knows where it is dangerous, where it is not dangerous, and the ducklings do not know. Evolutionarily it has developed that the young of a bird and a mammal is adapted intellectually, physically, physiologically, psychologically - it is adapted to follow the female. He does not have the resources to lead him, so if we arrange childcentrism in the family, that is, we do what is best for the child, then we overload the child's nervous system from the outset. If the nervous system is healthy and strong, then we will get a capricious child. If the nervous system is already wasted by something, then we may well get a developmental disorder.

As early as possible, it is necessary to teach the child to react to other people's feelings, to recognize them and to change his behavior for these feelings, for others. The first and natural is the family, that is, mom, dad, grandmother, brother, sister, someone else. A child who is not taught, a child who thinks that the world revolves around him, lives on, does not die, nothing terrible happens to him, but his opportunity to be happy … You see, we are happier not when we receive, but when we give - this is obvious, especially in our wildly redundant world. Parents of teenagers often come to me and say: “I no longer know what to give him. I suggest to him - let you go there. And he doesn't need anything except the latest brand of iPhone.

- “As early as possible” is still what age?

- Mid-20th century study - A baby is able to read the mother's emotions and change his behavior according to what he reads four hours after birth. A one and a half year old child can quite calmly say: "Dad is sleeping, quietly." This is completely normal.

I saw one heartbreaking story with my own eyes. The child is one and a half years old, he practically does not speak. A normal child, a normal mother, play this game: the mother presses on his nose and says “b-and-p!”, And the child laughs. Such a game. Then the child has febrile convulsions and clinical death. The mother does not lose her presence of mind, begins resuscitation measures, the older girl calls an ambulance, and when the ambulance arrives, the child is already breathing. He is pumped with something, he opens his eyes. Further, of course, the entire ambulance team, mother, are standing - no one knows, no one has looked at the clock, how long has the brain been out? There can be from the norm to the plant, and no one knows, and the doctor does not know.

Everyone stands and looks - to come to life, then he came to life, but what about the personality? The child opens his eyes, focuses his gaze, as if the mother finds out, and that's it: "Ah!" The doctor says: "It seems to have passed, everything seems to be normal." The mother has a "otdnyak", she begins to pound, tears flow, snot flows, she grabs the child. The child looks at her, his brains are floating, of course, he is trying to realize something, he presses on her nose and says: "Mom, beep!" Do you understand, yes? One and a half years old child - he read her emotional state, he remembered how to do to make her happy, and he did it.

If someone is going to wait until he grows up a little, and then I teach him to reckon with other people's feelings, you don't even have to bother.

The norm is what you set for your family

What else can cause developmental disruption? Pedagogical neglect, moreover, pedagogical neglect - we are by no means talking about parents who are drug addicts or alcoholics, although these people also exist, and we in no way can write it off. But there is pedagogical neglect of another kind - to give the child a tablet and, as it were, forget, because the child sat there and that's it. Or turn on cartoons for your child.

- Do you need to deal with him somehow?

- With baby? Yes, you are absolutely right. You formulated it so precisely - you need to study.

- I mean, what exactly needs to be done?

- You need to deal with the child in accordance with his age. There are games for children of the first year of life, second, third, and so on.

- To completely deprive him of the tablet?

- Why, why? If you feel like it, for God's sake. You give to the child, if you want - give it, you do not want it - do not give it. A child up to at least five years of age has visual-active thinking, that is, he needs to interact somehow with objects, objects must be in volume, they must have different characteristics, and so on. All of these iPads use visuals and audios. Accordingly, this is the impoverishment of the world, its flattening. But this does not mean that for some reason you have to get into a pose and throw the TV off the balcony.

- Is it normal for a child to watch 15 minutes of TV a day?

- The norm is what you decided for your family. You understand that there is a family in the world where there is no TV, and the children do not watch it at all. This is the norm for them. There is an option where children watch 15 minutes a day, there is where they watch half an hour a day. There is where she and her mother sit and watch TV from morning till night.

- What is pedagogical neglect?

- Pedagogical neglect is when a child watches TV without a mother. This is their own - to take care of the child - they shift to something else: on the street, on educators, on TV, on social networks, on something else. The mother lets it go - this is pedagogical neglect. Can it not lead to developmental disorders? Of course, it can, and in most cases it does not, because more serious things lead to developmental disorders. But if something is spent there, then it can lead.

There are very special cases. Here is the brightest one that I met in my life, I can't even remember brighter. Once a woman came to my appointment with an already grown boy 12 or 14 years old. The boy looked strange, and the idea of a developmental disorder was not even hypothetical for me. He had some kind of developmental disorder - he was fat and spoke in such a voice: "My-my-my" (squeak). At the same time, he was physically large and fat.

To my amazement (I decided not to ask my mother, I decided that she would tell me herself what diagnosis was made), she presented the problem that he was not independent. I got a little crazy, but decided to talk to him all the same. This is how she presented the problem - that he is not independent and the teacher is complaining. I thought that if there is a teacher, it means that he is studying in some kind of auxiliary school, and everything is not as bad as it seemed to me at first.

I asked him: "What school do you go to?" He named me an ordinary real school. "How do you study?" I asked. “I have three fours, the other fives,” he said. My impression of the developmental disorder has not gone anywhere. Then my mother and I say: "What's wrong with him?" She says: “I don’t know. He always said that. " - "As always?" - "As always. I used to speak very badly, I did a massage for him, I did something else like that. " I say: "How are you with your friends?" “No way, he doesn't communicate with others, he is with me all the time. What to do? This is my cross. " I say, "Okay, let's try."

I gave him an assignment, he left for a week, and a week later came and reported. What were the tasks? Approach a person on the street and ask him the time; go to the store, buy a roll - some such thing. Something worked for him, something didn't work, but the process actually went on. At the same time, the guy was happy and his voice was lower. And I was happy - the process is underway.

And somehow it did not work out with my mother. I felt - I was saying something, but somehow she was leaving all the time. Then I sent him to physiotherapy exercises, because physically he is obviously quite weak. And my colleague, the head of the physiotherapy department, the next day, after he came, he says: “Listen, what is he doing? What about him? Physiotherapy exercises with physiotherapy exercises, but in general what is wrong with him? " “I have no idea at all. In the card, I read, nothing like that. " When I asked, my mother said: "Yes, they examined, but nothing like that." But still, the physiognomy is pear-shaped and this is "nya-nya-nya".

I tell my mother: "Did you examine him by trisomy?" Because there is partly there, there is also this chromosome, Down syndrome, but sometimes in pieces, and then something is somewhere, somehow. What did I expect when I asked this question? I expected her to say: "Yes, they examined, nothing." Or, accordingly: “I don’t remember what was examined for, but, probably, for that too”. And then she faints! You know, like in the 18th century - hop! I rushed about, I'm not a medic. Finally, I put water in my mouth. What to do? Then she comes to her senses, and I have such insight - a psychologist, I looked at this child for almost a year, then it dawns on me, I say: “That's it, I understood everything. Have you had a child with Down syndrome? " She says: "No, not like that."

They were young with their husband, and young people are not tested, it is believed that Downs are born after a certain age. They were not ready, and she says now that she is mainly oppressed by the fact that she did not even resist. When their child was born, she was told: "Leave it, you are young, you will give birth to a normal one." My husband came, they lived with their mother-in-law, they said that they were not ready for such a thing that they needed a full-fledged child. She did not resist, abandoned the child, but it strangled her. She divorced her husband almost immediately after the birth of her second child. This child is normal, she made a down out of him. To be honest, before that, until I saw this child, I thought it was impossible. Now, this is possible.

This is about the formation of developmental disorders, this is a special case. She really needed a down, and a down was sent to her, but she refused it, she needed a child who is “my cross”, that is, we are together, we are always there, he cannot live without me - she needed a down … I say, “You know what? It's too expensive a price to pay for your gags. He must be released. Find yourself, adopt, if you have such experience of making downs from scrap materials, you know how to handle it. And with the present you will be able to. In fact, maybe that child is alive? " She says, "It's a girl." - “Okay, look for that girl, maybe you still have time. But no - you will cry at the grave. While you are looking for her, you will find others, you will be able to choose someone else. " And she happily ran away somewhere. In general, there are absolutely amazing cases.

The opportunities for parents to correct existing developmental disorders in a child are almost endless. I saw one situation, it is also beyond all limits - socially adapted microcephalus. This, from my point of view, is impossible, but I, nevertheless, saw. A female dog handler gave birth to a child and for a long time went to the doctors and asked what he was. She took him, she was also told to leave him. What is microcephalus, you understand - the brain is practically there only partially, and everything is bad with the cortex, that is, they do not speak, nothing at all.

She went to the doctors and asked: "What is he, how can I understand what he is?" One old psychiatrist, having learned that she was a cynologist, told her: “What is he? He's like your dog. You understand, some commands, probably, can be trained. He is intellectually, in everything - like a dog. " "Is it true?" - she said. "True," said the psychiatrist. “Thank you,” she said and left and stopped going to the doctors. I don't remember what his name was originally, she called him Jack. And you know, she even taught him to work out commands in dogs, that is, to develop reinforcement. She taught Jack how to throw the dogs to the dogs, clean the enclosures, and he understood a lot of commands, she said, about 150. Impossible, but it was done, Jack was socially adapted, I saw it with my own eyes.

That is, the possibilities are endless. Again, context is important. What saved this woman and her Jack? That she was given context. She was told what he was, and her context was: "And I can work with dogs." If I got a dog, then I will make sure that everything is fine with it - and everything is fine with it. Do you know what she came to me with? She doesn't need the help of a psychologist. What for? She came to ask me at what age you can switch your youngest daughter to Jack so that he can carry out her commands. So that she does not set Jack on someone or any of her offenders. Jack is huge. How old is it reasonable? I say, "Why is it reasonable at all?" She says: "We are not eternal, suddenly he will outlive us, there must be someone with him …".

Sense and Sense

- Tell me, please, to what age can the development of a child be corrected?

- Since there is such a thing as psychotherapy, in principle, you can always correct. I don’t know the age. I do not really believe in psychotherapy of the elderly, there, in my opinion, there can be no correction - if something is not there, then there is nowhere to take it, there can only be supportive therapy. In any case, until late adulthood, no doubt about it.

- Mature when?

- “Until I started to go from the fair,” relatively speaking. I dont know. Again, what is the development. Someone at 45 already feels like an elderly, elderly person who is already definitely "going from the fair", and someone has not left teenage by the age of 45.

- What is the best way to teach a child to read other people's feelings, to react to them?

- It's good that you asked this question. Everything is very simple here - feelings must be shown, that is, they must be, the child must face all the emotional manifestations that are, and be able to associate them with their behavior. He must understand that I am doing this - and this is pissed off by the mother. I do this - and she gets into a state of sentimental affection, and begins to smear pink snot on the table. Accordingly, I do like this - and everyone does not approve of me. I do it like this - and grandmother is happy about it, and grandfather, perhaps, it is annoying. A child should, from birth, face the whole gamut of human feelings and be able to associate them with their behavior.

- How are feelings connected with intellect?

- There is practically no intellect. I told you a story about Nastenka. How does this relate to intelligence?

- If he learns to read emotions and understand that this will lead to one, and this to another, he will manipulate adults.

- The child begins to manipulate adults, reaching one and a half years, automatically according to the program "I can make you." Why it is connected specifically with emotions, I did not understand. Maybe you can clarify? Let's say I know that you love poached eggs and hate cocotte eggs. When I invite you to visit, I will cook poached eggs - is this manipulation? The child knows that dad likes tea with two lumps of sugar and lemon, and grandfather drinks tea without sugar, but with two bags. And wanting to get a positive stroking, he prepares that tea for dad's arrival, and, accordingly, that for grandfather. Is this manipulation?

- If he wants to get something, he brings a seagull.

- The fact is that this is not a question of the child, this is your question. If you turn on cartoons in response to bringing a seagull, then, you must admit, this has nothing to do with the child, it has to do with you.

- You say - pedagogical neglect, but at the same time give it to development …

- You can send the child to the street, you can give the child to the development - both are close. If we are talking about a small child, and not about a more adult who receives an education, then this is close to that. Honest mothers from working-class districts when they come to me with their young children, when I say: "He is a year and a half, why did you send him to the" Clever and Clever "group?" - “Lord, to drink coffee for an hour and a half without him,” my working mothers from the tobacco factory tell me honestly. Moms with higher education often make a serious face in this place.

- How do you feel about the methods of right hemispheric development in children? Zhokhov's technique, for example.

- You know, I have nothing to do with it. I remember that I was friends with Alexander Zakharov, he kept running around with this idea 25-30 years ago, that it is necessary to develop that hemisphere, this hemisphere. The fact is that interhemispheric asymmetry is formed by the age of seven, it is actually formed with neurophysiological confirmation, so I don’t know all these taps and taps. Besides, you understand: 20% are right-handed, 7% or 8% are left-handed, all the rest are ambidextrous. I think that it shouldn't do much harm. Children are very resilient.

- You say that such a topic has slipped through that at school children are averaged.

- No, what are you, they are not averaged.

- They kill creativity.

- Nobody kills creativity there. It's just that our standard curriculum is built on the left brain, that is, one problem, one solution. This is actually true. Or do you want to say that a truly creative person will say that there are four subjects and five verbs in the sentence: "The bird flew south"? Of course not. There is one subject and one verb. Learning is based on this, so do not shorten at least the period of creativity.

- Go to school at eight years old?

- Oh, individually, absolutely. Someone needs it at six, someone at eight.

- A lot of people started using homeschooling. How do you feel about this, don't you think that this child somehow hurts in social development?

- Yes, good. Listen, our nobles have been educated at home for generations, and not to say that our nobles were such a completely lagging class. Of course, everything ended badly for them. But on the other hand, after all, everything ends badly for everyone, you understand that the ancient empires all collapsed, I'm not talking about Akhenaten.

The point is that children are a very unstable system. If a mother wants a head hernia and wants to teach the child at home, she has the right to do so, this is her child, she wants to eat it with porridge. Remember, phrases from school essays, I love them very much: “What I gave birth to, so I will kill you,” said Taras Bulba and walked three meters away. But, of course, this must be borne in mind: if we give a child home education, then somewhere we must provide him with social development too. We will have to organize this too. If in the school version we do not have to organize this, the child will walk with us, and then they go from school together, then they still go to the circle, to the extended day and somewhere else, then to the mother who took up the education of the child at home, about this need to think. That's all.

- Tell me, please, are there any norms for the development of twins? What should you pay attention to?

- Twins are usually always a little late. This is okay because they are either fixated on each other or they are halving. I remember that twins, a boy and a girl, came to me - there the boy could count, the girl could read, they were 6 years old. The teacher said that they were both mentally retarded. It's okay. The point was that the boy knew how to tie shoelaces, and the girl knew how to fasten buttons. And the boy tied both, and the girl buttoned both. If you really want the norm, then they must be separated and dealt with separately with one, separately with the other, otherwise they will share something.

- Did I hear correctly that the parent within himself determines what is the norm for him?

- Sure. And not within yourself, but it is desirable to somehow bring it into consciousness, that is, if you determine this at an unconscious level, then you will have to live according to Jung: the collective unconscious.

- Then the parent interacts with social structures - kindergarten, school, which have this curve.

- This is if he chooses. Just now they asked the question that you can choose not to interact with the school, for example.

- Let's say he chooses interaction. And the school says: "Your child is not the norm." And in my head there is an understanding that my child is the norm. As then? What are the actions of the parent?

- The parent chooses the wrong thing, "the norm or not the norm" his child. And he chooses what is the norm for him. For example, he chose: the norm is a full-fledged social adaptation. And then he leads his child along the route to full-fledged social adaptation. If, for example, a child has some obvious developmental disorder, the same Down syndrome, since we talked about him, then the parent teaches him as best he can and leads him to full-fledged social adaptation, for example, to work in a supermarket next door, where everyone will love and joyfully accept him. The point is that we make a decision about the route for our child if he has any discrepancies with the general facial expression of our structures.

- If we are not talking about the parental context, but, say, about the educator who works with these children - can he determine his own norm within himself?

- Yes. Moreover, he does it, we cannot do anything about it. The teacher always does this. If a first grade teacher has a feeling that a child who sits for 45 minutes, raising his hand from time to time is the norm, and a child who cannot do this is not the norm, we need to keep in mind that she has this.

- It is then worth changing the teacher, if we see that her stable norm contradicts, how would she constantly spread rot on the child?

- Think, weigh.

- Is there any concept of a sufficient number of people in a group for the socialization of older preschoolers and younger students?

- No, well, what are you? It very much depends on the temperament of the child, on the strength of his nervous system. There are children who cannot stand the crowd at all; a child cannot be brought to any holiday.

- If he has only one friend, and he communicates with him all the time?

- If a child has one friend with whom he communicates, this is already good, especially if we are dealing with a child in whom the process of inhibition prevails over the process of arousal. As a rule, they have one friend - this is the absolute norm for them. And if a child cannot establish contact at all, except with one child, of course, one must work with this - try to bring him together with someone else.

- If he is one on one, then he can.

- If he can establish one-on-one contact with any of these five children, then everything is in order with the child.

- Can the concept of a norm be different for left-handers and right-handers?

- Sure. The fact is that our culture, material culture, is arranged under the right-handers. Let's say in Japanese culture - no, they write from top to bottom and eat with chopsticks. We, of course, find it harder for left-handers.

- What to do with them?

- To do nothing. At one time I hung out with Zakharov, who believed that something should be done immediately with this, but I still did not understand what. Nothing. Accept as it is, and be aware that in the material world, which is arranged for right-handed people, left-handers face additional difficulties. Just as a child with glasses has additional difficulties, a child with flat feet has additional difficulties. So what?

- Do you already have a feeling that everything inside him is arranged differently?

- This is an illusion formed by American films, mostly.

- Can I talk about very little ones? How can a deviation from the norm be diagnosed earlier, if they are not obvious, the same micro-lesions of the brain?

- If in the first year of life the neurologist made some diagnoses, no matter what, then this should be remembered. You don't need to do anything special with this, just remember, because it can be played in senior preschool and primary school age.

- What to do about it?

- Look, everything I can say about this is written in my book "Mattress Children and Catastrophe Children."

- As a biologist, tell me, do all the Caesars have such defeats?

- No, of course, not for everyone, although our medicine considers Caesarea to be a risk group.

- And if hypo- and hypertonicity was put on at birth?

- It doesn't mean anything either. You need to know what it was, but, as a rule, in 19 cases out of 20 it does not mean anything.

- To what extent can a child be influenced if, when assessing norms and non-norms, they were labeled with some kind of labels?

- If you have the slightest opportunity to stop hanging any labels on your child, including "very gifted child", stop always.

- How? If this is done by the parents on the playground, the teacher at the school?

- If possible. You are not 24 hours with your child, but if there is the slightest opportunity to stop it, you need to do it.

- How much is it necessary to participate in the games of a preschool child?

- How pleased you are.

- If you just want to endlessly play with him?

- I recommend that you conduct an experiment: give yourself free rein, play with it endlessly. When you feel sick, you will understand.

- You spoke about plastic toys. How do you personally feel about the Lego constructor?

- He's so sweet.

- Tell me, are there any beacons that something very clearly takes vitality? Now there is some simply terrible situation with suicides among 18-year-olds. Where to look for these roots?

- I think it's individual. To put it this way: you know, the whole point is that in 2, 5 the borders were not set … no. I think that after all these are individual things. But very suicidal things are, of course, early childhood giftedness. If you suddenly got it here, and you started to play it, you need, of course, to watch, watch and watch. Because, you know, it will come back to normal. By the end of adolescence, by the age of 15, 16, 17, 18. He lived 17 years gifted, and then he understood, or he was told: "Are you like everyone else, why are you freaking out?" And he himself sees that he is like everyone else, he cannot do anything else - this, of course, is horror. It's better not to play it at all.

Katerina Vadimovna Murashova

Practicing child and family psychologist with over 15 years of experience

Children's writer

Prepared Tamara Amelina