How We Create A Personal Hell For Our Children

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

Those who spend a lot of time on the road always have some interesting road history in store. I have a lot of them too. Some of them, over time, I remember as funny episodes of my life, others I tell my interlocutors as a fascinating detective story. But there are stories in my piggy bank that left a heavy mark on my soul - these are my observations of how parents communicate with children. They then pushed me to write this article.

Several road sketches.

Waiting room. I hear the voice of a baby who is moaning something monotonously, but does not receive a response. Then he goes into quiet crying. To no avail. Gradually, the crying becomes louder and louder, and finally, the child shouts something with force, addressing his parents. The man breaks away from his occupation and, unexpectedly evil for a good-looking appearance, throws a three-year-old child: “Don't you dare yell at me!” This causes a new burst of crying and a new shout: “To whom it was told - do not dare to shout! Don't you dare raise your voice at me! The kid again switches to timid, powerless sobs. Already on the train, I saw that this couple had an older child, a girl of five or six years old. A quiet, complaisant creature who did not utter a dozen words all the way. By the way, throughout the entire incident, my mother never looked away from her gadget.

I reread it and feel that I have drawn some monsters torturing children. In fact, the entire type of young parents - both clothes, and Orthodox paraphernalia, and the manner of communication with each other - said that they were believers, striving to live according to Christian commandments. And then it is even more tragic, because these parents surely love their children and act according to the ideas of what is good for them.

Another kid of two and a half years old and his charming dad. Dad looks at his son with love and obvious pride, and the baby, despite his very tender age, tries to be courageous in dad's eyes. However, his puny strength is not always enough, and he no, no, and he will cry. Then dad, with all his usual tenderness, transplants the child away from himself and with unquestionable firmness informs his son that the place for tears is far from dad, and that the boy will be allowed to return to his father only after he calms down and becomes joyful and smiling again. “Dad drove me away,” overcoming crying, the baby trustingly shares his sadness with his neighbor in the compartment, swallows tears and, trying to stretch his still trembling lips in a smile, goes to his father. To his dad's credit, for whom this alienation of his son was also not easy, he embraces the boy, not putting aside, however, moralizing: "Well, now I see that this is my son, and not a crybaby."

And I must admit that I can hardly cope with my professional deformation (to catch up and do good), and conduct an endless internal dialogue in attempts to somehow process the angry question addressed to this Pestalozzi of our time: “In what pedagogical treatises are you, sir, have you read that this is how real men are brought up?"

A story about older children.

A boy and a girl - dance partners - go with their mothers to some kind of competition. There is a lively discussion of the upcoming event, mothers are sincerely interested in the opinion of the children, occupy them with games specially reserved for the road. The boy touchingly cares for the girl, patiently explains the rules of the game to her, consoles her when she loses, explains specific terms … I quietly enjoy the occasional gift of such a sweet neighborhood and dissolve in the bliss of the road.

The voice of my mother returned me to reality, angrily and somehow tiredly reprimanding her son that “everything is as usual”, and “how could you forget about it”, and “what were you just thinking about”, and much more in the same spirit. I don’t know what mistake this cute lad made, but my mother “sawed” him for a long time. Then there was a painful silence, which another mother tried to interrupt in an awkward attempt to support her daughter's partner. Compassion was read on the girl's face, and the boy turned into a wounded dignity and a dumb question addressed to his mother: "Will you ever be happy with me?"

I looked closely at the children. They are ten years old, but the girl looks about 9 years old - a carefree, cheerful giggle, can afford to "not hear" her mother, calmly takes the intellectual advantage of her partner, even receives bonuses from this in the form of concessions in games … In a word, quite happy for herself, maybe a slightly infantile child. The boy's behavior is full of not childish self-denial, and this adds to his age. In any case, I decided that this was a short teenager of about twelve, until it turned out that the guys were the same age.

I fully admit that none of the stories I have described seems to you, dear reader, especially dramatic or critical for the psychological well-being of the child. But I will allow myself to return to the heroes I love. Here is the first kid whose tearful appeals parents ignore. What message does a child receive from the people who matter most to him? "Your feelings and needs are not important, which is the same - you are not important." The naive kid tries to resist this total depreciation, but again fails. "You have no rights" - this is the meaning of the father's "Don't you dare!" His older sister not only long ago lost her illusions about her own value and rights, she looks at her brother's emotional outbursts not with understanding or compassion, but with apprehension - as if the parental anger at his timid rebellion would not ricochet over her.

“But the second story is about a prosperous relationship,” someone will be surprised. - Well, just think, - father's edification, which of us does not sin with this. I myself am very sympathetic to this dad with a clear look of loving eyes, and his wonderful son. The more annoying parental mistakes are perceived, which are not as harmless as it might seem at first glance. What does dad actually do when he says that there is no place for filial tears next to him? It's a pity, the list of "malicious" messages turned out to be impressive:

• informs his son that something is wrong with him, that he is not good enough;
• teaches not to accept oneself as a whole - joyful and sad, cheerful and tired, optimistic and offended - but only on condition of being in a rainbow state;
• splits feelings into right and wrong;
• forbids feeling. You argue that only negative feelings are forbidden by the father, and the manifestation of positive ones is just encouraged. Everything is so, but one cannot selectively refuse only the so-called negative feelings. In this struggle to exclude anger, sadness, confusion and other unpleasant feelings from the sphere of feelings, gradually any feelings cease to be available.
• leaves the child alone with his difficult experiences - does not give the experience of support, from which later the skill of supporting oneself is born.
• teaches you to neglect your feelings and needs;

What happens to the hero of the third story? After a while, our boy already trustingly turned to his mother for an explanation of the rules of the game, and the incident was settled. However, the boy once again found himself in a state of shaken self-esteem and feelings of inferiority, as he experienced painful humiliation, toxic shame. Once again I received confirmation that he has no right to make a mistake, that he needs to be perfect in order not to be again under the threat of rejection and to be worthy of mother's love and acceptance.

Observing how the boy with sincere friendliness communicates with his mother, who recently publicly shamed him, I was once again surprised at how generous our children are - they forgive us so much. And how plastic the child's psyche is - it allows the child to survive all these tragedies and survive, gaining the experience of overcoming.

How can we help our children, you ask? More about this in the next article.