Is Parenting Like An Exam?

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

Today, in one group, I got caught up in the idea that adolescence of children for parents is like a kind of exam for parents about how they coped with raising children, something about reaping the fruits, the apogee of parenting, a graduation project. This is not only about children, but also about the parents themselves - with what baggage and stock of wisdom and patience they enter a new life with a teenager, with whom metamorphoses are inevitable.

Where else have I met with a similar thought - it's about childbirth. That childbirth is also some kind of test, that a woman gives birth as she lives.

I think you can find many more situations where a similar attitude is applied - to some significant event, as to a life exam (for example, some act in the face of death is still remembered, or what a person does after the news of an incurable disease). And I feel kind of getting on with it.

Let's remember the situation of the exam, and teachers have the opportunity to see it from two sides - both their experience of the examinee and the experience of the examiner.

An exam is an event that includes not only the area of responsibility of the examinee (of course, the nerd is more likely to pass the exam successfully than the one who kicked the bulldozer all year), but also the element of chance and luck (there are also questions that a person knows better, or, conversely, worse), and the psychophysical state of the examinee (we all remember the influence of affect on intelligence), and, oh, yes, the mood of the examiner, his attitude towards students in general or towards someone in particular. And so on, so on.

Those. the situation of the exam is not the most objective, it would be strange to draw any far-reaching conclusions about a person's knowledge if he did not pass the exam successfully enough, especially against the background of an obvious interest in the subject, a desire to figure it out, and enthusiasm. There are many reasons why a diligent student fails an object. And even the point is not that he did not care well enough - if he honestly did his part of the work, then there is also another side, some other reasons, external, which do not depend on him, but affect the result.

Those. I want to say that the exam situation is a shared responsibility between all participants, where the examinee has a little more of it. But not all! If you take the entire burden of responsibility for the result only on yourself, you can drown in a destructive sense of guilt if something suddenly goes wrong.

Perhaps when they talk about some key and significant life situations in comparison with the exam, they mean that some personal characteristics, those strategies for coping with difficulties, levels of resilience, some skills and abilities that contribute to communication and social interaction and so on - all this together creates that reaction, which, according to a person's feelings, sometimes, by the way, bypassing consciousness, is optimal. Those. at that particular moment he makes a decision that he is capable of psychologically, physiologically, and spiritually, as it is. But no matter how wonderful he is, something can go wrong, and this is not his fault.

Being a three-time mom, I have many acquaintances among young parents, and I constantly face the feelings of women that their childbirth was imperfect, that they experience a sense of guilt that they "did not pass the exam" - they shouted, swore, allowed to inject oxytocin (as if someone Someone asks) or even "allowed the Caesarean, and this is terrible, the child will now suffer all his life."

It turns out that the young mother takes full responsibility for the partly controlled, but, nevertheless, unpredictable process of childbirth. You can prepare perfectly - learn how to breathe correctly, take comfortable postures, and even practice this during childbirth, or you can forget about everything and try to do what the midwife says - but everything that happens at this moment is not at all the quintessence of a woman's entire previous life … It is possible only with varying degrees of success to predict those psychophysiological reactions that are possible, and even then.

A woman in childbirth can unexpectedly discover her new side, which she did not know about. And this can help, or, on the contrary, complicate the process, but this will not mean some kind of life subtotal. It is important to understand that childbirth is a shared responsibility with everyone who is involved in it: the woman herself, the child who may suddenly turn around somehow differently, the child's father, people who help in childbirth or are nearby.

Returning to the idea of a parenting exam while living with a teenager. It is understood that parents have been investing and investing all the years, mastering virgin soil, teaching and teaching, and then HE grows up - a teenager. And if they did everything well and efficiently, then everything goes fine: yes, there are roughnesses, but, in general, the relationship is good, trusting, the teenager roughly represents what he wants from life, has a good taste, is versatile, has consonant values for believers I was churched for my parents, I resisted temptations for everyone, I avoided Internet addiction. And so on, so on. The project is completed, everyone is happy.

What if everything is wrong? And if he smokes, swears, writes nonsense in social networks, and even with terrible mistakes, hardly finishes the ninth grade and posts pictures from the roof? The exam is not passed, the project has failed, "sit down, two"?

Alas, the feeling of guilt that literally clings to the throat of parents for not coping, not seeing, not seeing, noticing, and other "not" - all this makes you feel not only an unsuccessful parent, not only having his baby, who until recently was so obedient and promising, but who also lost hope "to make a worthy person out of a child, for whom there will be no shame."

I still do not understand much in the psychology of adolescents, but I understand that in the family each person contributes to communication, in accordance with their functions, roles, capabilities, expectations - their own and others, and so on, and the responsibility for this entire complex system lies with all its participants. Parents who make the effort to be "good enough" are already doing their best. But a teenager can still choose his own path, do his experiments and be completely unbearable. This does not mean "the failure of the project", but only the self-determination of a person who has one more foot in childhood and the other in adult life, torn from the possibilities of the second and the limitations of the first. But he can already make some decisions himself, make some choices. Are the parents responsible for his choice? Obviously not. After all, this is the choice of another person.