Talk to me mommy

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

That cute creature who just with the good intention of reviving the wall painting has concentratedly destroyed a new tube of your lipstick, undoubtedly, will present many more surprises for his mom. The science of upbringing is eternally imperfect, if only because no one has yet managed to bring up ideal children, not even the Ulyanov family.

And what kind of ideal child is he? The one who has never fallen or the one who knows how to rise? In principle, all the variety of methods of traditional education comes down to these two extremes. One - so as not to fall - from"

to be able to climb - like "are you a man or not a man ?!". But even at its best - keeping the golden mean - It is very problematic for today's parents to engage in upbringing as thoroughly as our grandfathers and grandmothers.

The fact is that any good upbringing presupposes: a child needs to be grazed like a goat in a meadow. If you miss one, two, it's gone. "A child, like an adult, understands perfectly well when he misbehaves," says Dr. Benjamin Spock, a wonderful expert on children. "Deep down, he feels guilty. He wants to be stopped. But if the child is not stopped, his behavior may become even worse, as if he wants to experience to what limit of bad behavior he can go."

It's great if in our time a woman manages to fully devote herself to children, but nevertheless most of us have to devote so much time to work that there are only a few hours left to graze. But even in such a situation, it turns out, there is a way out, if you learn that the main parental task is to be aware.

This seemingly simple idea was suggested to me a few years ago by Oleg - the editor-in-chief of an advertising publication, an extremely busy man, a father of two children. His wife, Anna, is a court reporter, one of those fanatical journalists, every day without a line. With a complete lack of time for upbringing and any kind of assistance from the grandmothers, they managed not only to raise their wonderful son and daughter without any problems, but to make them their friends and assistants.

“Once we realized, - said Oleg, - that we were missing out on children. It was a difficult period, my newspaper had not yet got on its feet, and Anya had just got a job. But then an extremely unpleasant thing happened - we lost a fairly large amount of money, and not just somewhere, but at home. For the first time in a long time, we gathered a family council and talked with our children. difficult, because the eldest confessed to the theft, it was then that we realized the main thing - we need to talk to children more often. listen … Since then, they have taken it as a rule - every evening children tell us how they spent the day, what the teacher said, with whom and where they walked. The details are important here. At first, I had to arrange something like an interrogation in the role of a kind investigator. And now they themselves every evening vying with each other to talk about their events, it has become a habit. We have them at a glance, we see how they live, we know all their friends, and we also know how many troubles we can save our children just because we were able to explain some things to them in time."

I confess, however, that I failed to fully apply this original method to my own daughter. Perhaps it was a late start, or maybe it's a matter of the difference in children's characters, but the obligatory interrogation every night stubbornly turned into an interrogation and nothing more. However, following the golden rule "if something doesn't work out, come from the other end", I just became seize the moment.

Now - and this is sacred - as soon as my child says something like: "And we had a medical examination today" or "Teachers are so strange," - I urgently leave everything and listen, clarify, agree or object. Let the conversation sometimes take only 15-20 minutes, but during this time I am doing the most important thing that a mother can do: get to know the child.

A typical misconception of parents is that they already know their child well enough. How could it be otherwise, because he grew up before their eyes! Recent theories developed by psychotherapists challenge this belief. Here is what the founders of the method of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour say: “Each of us perceives this world in our own unique way. Words in themselves are meaningless and this becomes obvious when we listen to foreign speech that we do not understand. We give meaning to words by fixing associations between these words and objects or experiences of our life. We do not see the same objects and do not have the same experiences … It is very similar to Rorschach inkblots, denoting different things for different people."

The consequences of our negligence in dealing with children can be unpredictable. We, classmates, are still amazed at how absurdly Zoya disposed of her fate - a clever and beautiful woman who was predicted a brilliant career due to her unique abilities in languages. Having barely graduated from school, Zoya began to give birth to children from different, unsuitable for marriage, men. Today she has two girls and a boy, she works as a nurse in a hospital, making simply inhuman efforts to feed the whole crowd together with her mother. At the same time, oddly enough, she does not feel any discomfort, as if her fate could not have developed in a different way. Once upon a meeting, Zoya recalled one incident.

As a girl, she had to be treated by her mother's gynecologist for a small inflammatory process. Once, turning to Zoya's mother, a friend very confidently uttered the fatal phrase: "You know, your Zoya will probably never have children." It is difficult to say whether this was exactly the phrase. But this is exactly how it was deposited in the child's head, and at the cost of her well-being, Zoya nevertheless refuted it.

The American psychologist Eric Berne, who has become popular with us, claims that one careless phrase of an adult can become the fate of a child. His sensational books "Games that people play" and "People who play games" seem to be a solid theory only until you become more observant and understand how much authority adults are for a little person.

If we proceed from the fact that the word is silver, and silence is gold, then the parental word should be worth the weight of platinum. And here is not the best way out - easy ways, like when you impose your beliefs in a directive way.

My colleague Irina still recalls with a shudder the sad story of her first love. Irochka corresponded for a long time with a boy from the naval school, and during the holidays he came to their aunt's small seaside town. And Irochka jumped up such a huge boil in her eye that there was no way to meet her lover. The boy called every morning, and Irina put everything off and postponed the meeting under various pretexts. As a result, he began to call twice a day, and the ominous barley did not pass. Finally, Irina's mother could not stand it. "You have to be honest in everything," she said. "If your relationship starts with a lie, then nothing good will come of it. Tell him everything as it is, if he loves you, then he won't look at barley." Piously believing in parental rightness, Ira did just that. You can imagine the end of the story, at least when he returned to his school, the boy did not write any more.

Fortunately, Irina did not become a pathological liar as a result of this little personal tragedy. She has a prosperous family, as happy as the family of her parents. And the reason here is not at all in my mother's lectures, but in the fact that since childhood, using the example of Ira, she saw how a happy and loving family lives and gets along.

If your child grows up in such a loving family, then all he really needs is a little attentive communication with the most beloved, beautiful and significant person for him. If this is a person for him - YOU, put aside business and learn something new about his merits and demerits, his peace and wars, doubts and victories. As the wonderful Dr. Spock said, "You might find it surprising that, when studying parenting methods, scientists have come to the conclusion that good, loving parents intuitively choose the best decisions. Be natural and don't be afraid of mistakes."