Playground Rules

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

Almost every woman who dreams of motherhood has some idea of how it should be. She understands that it will be difficult, that she will have to do a lot. There will be changes that will limit her personal freedom, with him, communication with people, creativity …

Yes, while you are in the monotonous everyday chores, maneuvering between the difficulties associated with feeding and raising a child, you desperately need a society where your problems will be understood, where they will give advice and reflect your worries associated with fatigue and the heaped burden of problems. It is this need for understanding and compassion that brings a woman to the playground, where there is a circle of people involved in the same problems, having similar tasks.

But there are dangerous currents here, and, following them, a young mother can run into tough disappointments, get into complex dependencies, for example, on the opinions of others, and, as a result, simply drown in conflicting opinions, advice and conclusions. It must be remembered that in addition to companions and friends, the playground can be filled with people acting out their fears and disappointments on you and imposing their projections on you. "Oh, why is he so big with you, but does not speak yet?", "Oh, why does he not share with anyone? Oh, the greedy grows …" ! "," Wow, how thin he is. He eats badly, right? " After all, good girls do not know how and are afraid to say: "Maybe this is none of your business, dear?" That is, on any playground there are enemies of your maternal identity, consciously or unconsciously sowing doubts, insecurity, depreciation. At best, this will lead to the fact that you simply stop taking your child to the playground, and at worst, you will live in the holy confidence that you are doing everything wrong and as a mother you did not take place.

Therefore, I want to offer you several rules that will help you to be on the playground in sufficient psychological safety.

First. Do not forget that the playground is a place for children, not adults. This means that relaxing and engaging in phone conversations can be dangerous for your little one. There are such unsafe things on the court, such as sand, swings, a ball and older children, and all this together can turn into problems with lightning speed. And all your "let him learn to be independent" and "I walked myself in my childhood" - will be insufficient arguments in favor of giving up control if there is a risk of getting into the nearest emergency room. It is important for the child to talk about the dangers in a calm manner, following his route, but at the same time not punishing him for making a mistake, falling or doing something wrong. After all, you do not want to take the child away from the playground with neurosis? At the same time, it is important to check the reliability of the swing, the cleanliness of the sand, the presence of dogs and dangerous objects in the foreseeable space.

On any site, there are rules that must be adhered to. This implies not only the sequence and duration of the slide and swing, but also the ability of parents to react intelligently to real and perceived dangers. Hence the following rule follows.

Second. Do not bring up other people's children, especially other people's parents. In every family there is an upbringing system to which you have nothing to do. And even if all this behavior seems wrong to you personally, you cannot change the whole system. Your comments about the child will cause irritation and aggression, but in no way a surge of gratitude for the kind advice.

The only exception can be child abuse, which you have witnessed or a real danger threatening someone else's child. Here it is enough to draw the attention of the parent that the rules of your playground prohibit, for example, hitting children. Such remarks should be made in a calm manner, otherwise you may become the next victim of the aggressor. It is important to enlist the support of other mums or dads.

If someone has offended your child, you, of course, have an obligation to protect him, but at the same time you have no right to punish other people's children. It is important to say that your child is in pain or unpleasant if he did not do it himself, and pick up the child from the area of discomfort. You can inform the parents of the abuser in a non-aggressive way.

Do not turn the playground into a "mother's" forum, where you will "measure" the success of children, give and draw reasonable and not too much advice, look for medicines and exchange treatment prescriptions. Yes, on the playground you can learn about the conditions in the neighboring kindergarten and what is the best primary school teacher in the nearest school, but treating, feeding, dressing and raising a child according to the advice from the playground is absurd!

In addition, you, as an adult woman, must have your own authoritative and proven pediatrician, gynecologist, dentist, teacher, psychologist. The advice you heard on the site is just the experience of raising one, two, well, four children, and the professional has a slightly different experience and a different representative sample. For advice, you need to go to professionals, and not carry out unspoken experiments on your own child.

Third. Dad, child and playground are quite compatible. You, of course, want the father to participate as much as possible in the upbringing of the child? But why are there so few dads on the playgrounds? Most mothers are afraid to let their child go out with dad. It seems to them that the husband is not competent enough, attentive to the child's needs, may not notice, miss, miss … That is, women themselves deprive dads of the opportunity to prove the opposite. But socialization is a very “papal” affair! Yes, and all things being equal, dad can allow you to walk in a puddle, climb higher stairs, sweat faster, which, of course, scares you, but is not a horror for a child. At the same time, the dad will react to injustice more accurately and without hysteria, will be able to give the child a sense of real security, and will not bother with trifles. That, ultimately, will lead to more successful socialization, the ability to get out of difficult situations, the establishment of more precise rules, and as a result - to the desired independence. And dad's relationship with the child will improve. Isn't that what you wanted? In addition, dads are much less likely to participate in "forums", which means that the child will not have a deficit of attention on the part of an adult.

Fourth. It is important to know the age characteristics of children's interaction and take them into account on the playground.

For example, aggression is a child's way of getting attention. If your baby is behaving aggressively, this is not a reason to panic and brand him as a fighter. Sometimes it is enough just to give him the desired attention in time, to help him carry out what he has planned, under your control. But if you do not do this, and pay attention to the child only when he shows aggression, such a pattern (behavior pattern) can be fixed in him, and he will not see other ways to attract attention to himself.

It is important to know that children under three and after three years of age can interact with each other in different ways. The peculiarity is that a child under three years old communicates with children through an adult, or, indirectly, through toys, giving his own and taking someone else's. He has his own trusted adult through whom he can safely communicate and push him to communicate directly - to go against his will, which can lead to reluctance to come to the playground at all.

On the playground, you can see that children under three years old can stay away more, not engaging in direct interaction, but observing the interaction of others, including adults. This is a very important part of development, because children catch and learn norms and rules not from our instructions, but from those examples and patterns of behavior that we demonstrate. It is not surprising if a smoking mother has a baby who pulls a stick in his mouth, trying to imitate smoking. It is foolish to take the stick, it is much more important to throw away the cigarette yourself.

Older children communicate directly with each other and play already developed patterns of behavior, acquired by them most often on the example of parental interaction. And if your dear daughter is yelling at the boys, then maybe you should reconsider your relationship with your husband?

Yes, a playground can be dangerous because all your family problems and troubles will come out in the child's behavior, which means that you will have to control your behavior before you bring the child into his first society.

Sixth. Be tolerant! Yes, it is pleasant for one child to sit quietly in the sandbox, while for another it is important to run, jump through puddles, yell and pull other children, take other people's toys. It's not your job to make diagnoses and give characteristics! It is quite possible and acceptable to try to control the processes - to establish rules where it will be forbidden to spit, bite, beat and dirty other children. Most often, the same parents are present on the site, and you, as adults, are quite capable of agreeing on the rules and how to respond to their violation. Do not allow anyone and yourself do not treat other children with food, the child may not know and not take into account the presence of allergic reactions, which means that eating on the site will irritate others. Do not take expensive and fragile toys, keep in mind that they will have to be shared - this is the unspoken rule of all sites. Teach your child to share, ask permission, say hello, and say goodbye. Do not scandal, do not quarrel, do not sort things out with adults, because your baby may be ashamed of you, and he will refuse to come here, remembering this experience of shame.

The playground is a model of society where children learn to meet, share, give in and win. They learn the basics of communication, and it is your adult example that can become for them a behavioral model, a model by which they will be guided in their adult life.