Three Mistakes Of Upbringing: How Not To Kill Omnipotence In A Child

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

Today I propose to discuss very common mistakes in parenting. Alas, both parents and teachers in preschool and school institutions admit them. All this, of course, is purely my vision of the problem, and you can both agree and dispute everything written here.

It's about how unlucky and frustrated people are made. Look around - how many people have succeeded in this task.

So let's go sequentially. I decided to reduce these three mistakes of upbringing, on which a person disappointed in life rests, to three "whales":

1. Criticism
2. Comparison
3. Depreciation

Everything here seems clear and obvious. It is possible to educate a strong and capable personality by protecting the child's attempts and achievements from value judgments, without comparing him with other children and without devaluing his experience and results of efforts. But in reality, everything is not so simple. Most parents regularly criticize their children, set them up as peers and do not attach importance to insufficient (exclusively in their opinion) achievements.

Legends can be made about how stupidly the school system is built in the post-Soviet space. The biggest nonsense is the grading system that makes everyone equal. It provides for the same level of knowledge and assessment of creativity. For example, an assessment in singing or drawing. And it's a no brainer that there are people who are more capable of drawing, as well as the physiological features of the structure of the respiratory system, the speech apparatus and, accordingly, vocal abilities.

Ever since I started working with parents, I am faced with the fact that they cannot give an answer to a seemingly simple question:

What is parenting?

Can you give an answer? I received the criteria, rather even the requirements for the child, as an answer. Usually they boiled down to prohibitions and restrictions, at best - to instilling moral norms.

Is it so? For me, upbringing is creating favorable conditions for the development of a happy person.

In these terms, I include five important points:

1. Unconditional acceptance
2. Competent support
3. Appropriate help
4. Recognition of effort
5. Personal example

I would like to dwell on each "whale" in more detail and discuss alternative ways of motivation and education … Believe me, the results will delight you.

Keith one: Value judgments and destructive criticism

When I talk about the inadmissibility of evaluative criticism, I mean replacing any criticism with one or more items from the list.

Let's look at all this from the other side. What is criticism? This is an emphasis on shortcomings.

How can a person focus on the correct execution of a task if his attention is artificially fixed on mistakes?

The subconscious mind does not analyze. It reinforces the information that comes in more. And what do we get as a result? A person who knows what the error looks like and what is "wrong", but does not have the right answer.

Think about it, it really is. This understanding underlies a more robust, in my opinion, concept of upbringing.

I suggest that you try to accept the fact that every effort is valuable, regardless of the outcome. And any person is OK, in fact, regardless of the results of their efforts. This is what parents should give to children - this is unconditional acceptance. This acceptance avoids evaluativeness and criticism.

If your child is a value for you without conditions, then any of his efforts and efforts, any result or lack thereof, are valuable.

This is not easy, dear parents and educators. This is work on yourself. But it will pay off. Motivate your child, do not press on his aspirations. In any work done, there is always a successful part and shortcomings. Give the child the opportunity to take advantage of what was done, to record the sequence of correct actions and a positive emotional reaction to the result. Believe me, this is better than a sad memory of misspelled lines and fatherly abuse.

It is really difficult to refuse criticism, because for many years it was she who was regarded by teachers as upbringing. But to nurture a leader and a self-confident personality, you need to learn to praise.

Kit Two: Comparison

At first glance, it seems that setting a child as an example to other children or adults is a great way to set an example to follow. But in fact it sounds like "Vanya (or any other fellow from the kindergarten / class) is better than you, you are worse than Vanya."

For a child, parental recognition (or acceptance) is equal to love. Do you understand? If you accept and acknowledge Olga from the class to be smart and beautiful, "not like you, dunce," then you love the Sheep, but not your child. I know, I know it isn't. But I work with children and so they hear your comparison. I have heard it literally many times - my mother does not love me, she loves (insert name).

In order not to be unfounded, I suggest you remember when your parents came from the parent meeting and talked about other people's successes. I can swear that at the age of 40 you will remember the name of your "role model". The child will also not forget your comparisons.

What can replace comparison? Nothing. It's really useful, but it's worth changing the vector. In order for a child to grow up in the confidence that he is valuable, capable and loved, it is enough to compare him with him. Your child (or student, or pupil) is constantly learning, mastering something new and surpassing himself. Daily! And if you focus his attention on what he has excelled himself in, you will be surprised at the progress.

Confident people are confident in themselves, not in the superiority of others. You can read the books of successful people a thousand times, but the best teacher is your own experience. And only meaningful experience is fixed as a useful skill. This I mean that if a child hears "This house came out much better than the last one! You are smart!", Then he will get the skill of building a house from his experience, from what he did well with his own hands. And no stories about the exploits and successes of Olga can be compared with what passed through the hands of a child.

Keith three: depreciation

This is another scourge. Adults often have their own ideas about what their child is or is not capable of. And when the child does not correspond to these fantasies, the child is either criticized, or compared, or devalued.

What is depreciation in essence? This is a denial of significance. If mom or dad thinks that the child did not try hard enough, they can break the notebook with equations, ignore two of the five correctly solved examples, and in addition to voice something like "Is this a drawing?" This devalues any effort.

Devaluation of the child leads to the fact that any activity causes protest. Why do something and make even minimal efforts if they are not noticed and devalued. You may think and argue that the effort is worth it for your own sake. But we learn to perceive something as good or bad, important or unimportant from the reactions of significant people. And how can a child understand that it is important and good to make an effort if it is devalued?

Neither you nor the teacher at school can really know how much effort has been put in. But you can be absolutely sure that the effort was made. And they demanded concentration, motivation, giving up their desires, knowledge and skills. Yes, maybe not in the amount you expected. But enough for recognition. So why not admit it? It is not necessary to elevate the failure of your expectations to a feat, but try and find the part that is done well and point it to it.

Summary:

Usually, all three mistakes do not come from objective reality, but from internal conflicts in the head of adults. The most common cause of this conflict is shame. Parents are ashamed of the failure of their children. Shame is a social feeling, it is instilled in us from childhood - "What will people say", "Aren't you ashamed."

In fact, a child is not a running horse that you can put on and then show off to neighbors. This is a person, a separate person. He doesn’t know much, he doesn’t know how much, but he doesn’t have to. It is important to give unconditional acceptance - acceptance without "if" or "when". The value of each person is the fact of his existence. The rest is a nice bonus or not.

A successful person is a person who knows that she can do anything. And this comes exclusively from childhood, when a person is loved just like that, always.

Is it worth completely abandoning a negative assessment? No. But it is worth learning to give it correctly - to speak when it was better, how else can you do it and suggest thinking.

The child is an omnipotent being. Children are not afraid of anything and can do anything. Therefore, many abilities are recommended to be developed in childhood. Although by and large, the main rule of helping a child in development is not to interfere.