The Cult Of The Child, Or Education Of The "achiever"

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

"The efforts of adults are essentially aimed at making the child comfortable for themselves. My child is my thing, my slave, my lap dog. I scratch him behind his ears, stroke his bangs, decorate with ribbons, take him out for a walk, train him so that he is obedient and agreeable, and when he gets bored - "Go play. Go work out. It's time to sleep. "Janusz Korczak." How to love a child"

This story repeats itself very often in my office. So often that it has become a worked-out scenario. A child, about five years old, enters the office with his mother, sees a huge number of toys and, without greeting, begins to take them. Mom tries to smooth out her awkwardness with a compliment: "Oh, how cozy you have here! So many toys!" And I turn to the kid: "These are my toys!" The child, clearly not used to such an intention, does not react to my words. I try to take the child away from the toys, and gently repeat: "These are my toys and I do not want to be taken without permission." The child gets irritated, then calms down a little and sits on the sofa. And here I catch a mute reproachful look from my mother: "What do you feel sorry for? So many toys! He'll just look!" And I understand that this is exactly what she came with. That yes, there are no rules in their family that the child is given complete freedom, and that, perhaps, in his reactions he is much more mature than his mother, who preaches a distorted child-centeredness. No, I'm not sorry. But the fact is that I have rules, and I want them to be observed, but for some reason you do not have them. And therein lies the problem. Then the picture unfolds again traditionally: the child suddenly "realizes" that this "strict aunt" should simply be asked. And he gives out a tongue twister: "May I take this, please!" - and hears my calm: "No, you can't!" I see that the child has a clear cognitive dissonance, because, firstly, "no" is rarely said to him in a calm tone. Secondly, in general, he is told to him in completely different cases, and not when it concerns other people's things. Thirdly, he said "please", and this "magic word" still worked magically on adults! The child is not used to this "no", because now he already knows that he needs to scream and throw a tantrum, and his mother has already froze in anticipation. But for some reason there is no hysteria. And mom is at a loss. And the child himself does not understand why he did not throw a tantrum. But I know for sure that children are grateful to us for boundaries and predictability, for respect for their personality and space, and for our parental self-respect. We are grateful for the calmness, for the ease of presentation and clarity of the rules. Here my mother, in order to somehow distract everyone from her awkwardness, reminds me that I allegedly promised to "carry out a diagnosis", although the diagnosis has been in full swing for a long time … You yourself see similar stories every day on playgrounds, in kindergartens and schools. Here the mother persuades the baby: "Let Mashenka play, you see - she is crying, she will only play a little and return." And the upset kid is forced to give his typewriter to the hated Masha, only because his own beloved mother is uncomfortable in front of people. We unceremoniously violate the boundaries of our children, and then they also unceremoniously violate ours and those of others. They are unable to say no to an adult loved one, but they remember this experience for a long time. We do not teach them useful frustrations: to accept rejection or defeat, we do not teach them to defend themselves correctly without resorting to violence or to pretend or become a victim, we do not give them the opportunity to assess their chances realistically, we do not teach reasonable persistence, which do not turn around with sticky importunity. Janusz Korczak noted in the book "How to Love a Child" that a child's "give", even just a silently outstretched hand, should someday collide with our "no" "the success of a whole and huge section of educational work depends. And here is the opposite situation: a mother asks someone else's child to give her baby this toy right this very minute, in fear that if this is not done, then hysteria will break out. And it will burst out, because the child understands: it works, mom is afraid of hysteria, mom is in the grip of hysteria, here it is - mom's magic button, after pressing which, everything is possible! And he understands that the world is ruled by hysteria. The child grows up, and the hysteria is transformed into a character that begins to irritate the parent himself, but he still stubbornly does not understand what to do at the moment when the child is pushing for all sorts of benefits for himself. And he chooses a new method - the method of total prohibitions, while in any situation where the child can cause the parent to feel guilty, fear or shame, the parent resignedly agrees: "Well, come on!" In general, the phrase "Okay - on!" - the real problem of the modern parent, who is concerned about his or her maternal or paternal image and status in society. And the child in this pursuit of the image becomes a bargaining chip, an object of pride, a pearl of the collection, but not a person capable of conflicting and even uncomfortable feelings. The child has become a kind of property for the parents, he irrevocably loses the qualities of a full-fledged personality and is doomed to eternal affection for the parent. And the parent, in turn, is ready to nurse him to full adulthood, which is reached by the age of forty, deliberately forming infantilism. We want to educate a free person, but we do not teach children to respect others, like him - free personalities. We want children to make their own decisions, but we scold them for their own opinion, not giving them the right to make mistakes. We say that school grades are not important to us, but we are interested in what our excellent student received for the test in mathematics. We want them to look for something to their liking, but we do not allow them to give up their hated music lessons. We want them to read books, and we ourselves quickly flip through magazines, keeping their eyes only on photographs. We prohibit them from social networks, and we ourselves sit for hours at the computer in anticipation of the cherished likes on Facebook. We ourselves, as children, do not know what we want and what we strive for, but we demand adulthood from them. And they become more mature than us, they take care of us and protect us from troubles, but they simply lie to us, taking an example from us. At the same time, being a good parent is a trend of modern times. Parental perfectionism permeated all spheres of life: early development schools, developmental centers for babies, shows and contests for children, children's records in art, intelligence and physical strength - everything has now become in demand, or rather, everything has begun to bring money. Against this background, the child, having become an object of pride and parental ambitions, became completely uncontrollable. Then it puts on a diagnosis of the type of ADHD or autism spectrum disorders, which are seen by many where they are not at all. And why set limits and engage in upbringing, if bad manners and arrogance have also become a "cool feature" that can be clothed in a funny fetish. And the parents themselves often include the method of reverse intention: "Yes, I am a bad mother and I am proud of it!" Relying on knowledge that they do not get from bona fide scientific sources, but from the blogs of good writing amateurs, parents make conflicting situational decisions, and children live in conditions of complete parental unpredictability, which makes children themselves unpredictable. Not being a big fan of Dr. Spock, I still think that it would be better if these parents chose at least Spock as a standard than in general, haphazardly and paradoxically, they would give the child commands where the survival program wins, which means that everything awakens in the child. what then scares the parents. But being a "bad mother" is convenient, it justifies all mistakes. True, this does not give the right to tell your child a legitimate "no", but is it worth it to get upset because of this, if the image is our everything! The whole picture is completed by the fact that we are living in an amazing time, marked by the fact that we suddenly found what we were waiting for in childhood - abundance. But abundance has come to us kind of clumsy: at a time when we can expand our desires, we are trying to make up for lost opportunities. And so, instead of going on a trip, for example, we buy ourselves another toy from the "unfulfilled dreams of bare childhood". We persistently fulfill our childhood irrelevant dreams, as if we want to eat all the candies uneaten in childhood. And if we are already sick of this, we stuff our own children with these "sweets", who generally want something else. At the same time, we, giving them everything at the first peep and cry, deprive them of their own important desires, necessary achievements and significant frustrations. And sometimes we just take away their dream … I remember how I got into a conversation in a toy store with a man who was gazing with gusto looking at a children's sophisticated jeep. He walked around the toy from different sides, clicked his tongue, opened the drawer with a set of tools, somehow smiling like a child, turned the steering wheel. I asked him why he needed this jeep, to which he replied that he wanted to buy it for his son, because he himself dreamed about it as a child. - But it was your dream, or maybe your son has another? - I suggested. And he told me how his son takes a chair every day, sits on it backwards and pretends to be driving a jeep. And he wants to please him with such a real Jeep. And I stood and thought that the child fantasizes that he is driving a Jeep, and maybe even a Ferrari, but this chair can turn in his hands into a dragon, and into a tractor, and into a spaceship. However, dad wants to deprive him of such an important and useful fantasy by giving him his specific unfulfilled dream. What for? We give our children our dreams, in the hope that they, like Prometheus - fire, will carry them further, thanks to us every second for what we dreamed for them, for what we invested in them, for insisting not to give up what we started business. But they, "ungrateful", suddenly start to "score" on their studies, leave prestigious institutes and apply to bloggers. And we … And we get offended and tighten the nuts. And this happens again completely "at the wrong time". Because we are constantly late. Rather, it seems to us that we are constantly late. Here the child is already 3 years old, but he still does not know the letters! Catastrophe! We, with enviable stubbornness, are not making a problem out of that. For some reason, parents are often interested in completely shallow things: did they eat well, did they get bad grades at school, did they sit at the computer for a long time, did they dress warmly, did they clean their room, do they study at a prestigious enough school, do they injure him our parental quarrels and does he swear at school like dad? Well, it seems like everything is like people have! But what matters to children is how we treat them, and whether we will cry and suffer if they suddenly die. They are interested in how to stop worrying about trifles and how to attract the attention of a girl from 10th B. It is important for them to understand how to avoid parental screams and how to survive in the midst of misunderstanding and constant criticism … But we do not raise people, we raise "achievers", which means that it is better to remove feelings, they prevent us from being in good shape, they make us weak and vulnerable. Personally, I was very lucky in life: I had a carefree childhood, but I also had a fairly conscious responsibility. There was a place of well-deserved praise and a parental "sorry" if the adults were wrong. They told me what I should not do under any circumstances, but what I can have my point of view on, without relying on parental experience. I could ask adults questions, but I felt how I could offend even a loving mother. I felt comfortable because no one read my diaries, and the door to my room could be closed without explanation, and they knocked on it delicately. Probably, my family also had a "cult of the child", but it looked different, and that is why I managed to become an adult.