Your children are not your children
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The meanest manipulation sounds like this, «I bought you this with the last money. I don’t need anything myself.» The goal is to make the child dependent, or if we have a closer look we’ll see the life position – «I don’t live and I won’t let you live either.» Love is not a sacrifice, or control, or jealousy, but freedom. Sacrificing love is a common bluff. There is no love in sacrifice, there is pain. We can’t sacrifice our life for a child. We say so if we don’t have life and have nothing to sacrifice. Sometimes a mother can only play the role of a «mother.» What else is she supposed to do if she can’t do anything except it and the child suddenly becomes independent? She will «lose her mother’s job.» That’s why when the child has troubles she feels good – she becomes meaningful, needed and she wants the child to love her for that.
In our «parent» arrogance we believe that our children have to love us. They don’t have to. When did they have time to owe us? When you had a child, it was your personal initiative. Children don’t have to love you for that. I remember once I and my wife got home late and our daughter was then two years old. We returned at night, entered the house – the daughter woke up and my wife called her to our bedroom to sleep, but the daughter said:
To be honest, you will love your children in any case – if they are poor students or excellent ones, if they are a success or not, if they lived 30 or 130 years, if they have become Nobel prize winners or thieves. Does it make a difference? They are your children. There is nothing to do about it. But some mothers use the following scheme: «My son, when you were little I was responsible for you, now you’re an adult, be responsible for yourself.» This is mother’s offence, a caprice, because really it’s a lie: no matter where your children live, who they live with, you have always been responsible for them, and they have always been important to you. Well then, try to teach your children to be responsible for their lives and actions. When you park your car, you try to place it so that nobody could hit or carjack it because you’re responsible for your car even if you’re not inside. Try to bring up your children in the same way, so that nothing could happen to them even when you’re far away. This will be your parent responsibility and duty. This will be love.
Parenthood is a miracle and wonder. Sometimes we forget that these little humans are not dolls, they have a soul and personality. Our children are not ours; they belong to themselves. Your children are not your property. You‘re just creating conditions for a new life to flourish next to you. I have an acquaintance. When he was born, he was stronger and more vigorous than his parents. They accepted his individuality, because they could do nothing about him – he gained his points anyway. It was easier for parents to let him do what he wanted, not to interfere, not to suppress his inner power, but just give him some directions. He didn’t care where to borrow money – he could ask Rossel or Eltzin – every door was opened in front of him. Having worked in Russia with a breathtaking profitability and having bought everything he could dream of, he moved to the USA, then Australia and now he lives in Canada. He isn’t impudent, he doesn’t step on the heads of others, but extremely decisive, assertive, doubtless, focused, with the sixth sense. He doesn’t have fears that our unsuccessful parents share with us.
«Being a parent is raising children», – some parents say. How do you raise children? Do you pull them up by the hair? Being a parent is not making children weaker, but making them stronger every time, developing them socially, spiritually and physically. Until now, I remember one painful episode connected with my elder daughter. She was then a little girl and I threw away some pieces of bottle glass from her room, which turned to be her diamonds (she had been saving bubble-gum inserts for a year and changed them for that debris). They were valuable for her. Was I treating them seriously? No. Was that pile of glass valuable for me? No. Was I taking pangs to have it? No. But the worst thing happened when my daughter started to cry – instead of apologizing for touching her things, I started talking some nonsense like, «Don’t bring such garbage home anymore! There may be germs and dirt…»
It’s much simpler to neglect, than to understand the meaning of the values your child cherish. It’s even more difficult to realize your mistake and apologize. To apologize to a child, parents should overpower their parental ego, not every parent is able to do it. The chain of neglecting causes children to leave home and never come back when they grow up. Because if you didn’t sow anything, you will not have any yield. If you sowed the wrong seed, you won’t be able to get back in time and sow the right one to get a good yield. It is completely useless to look back in the past with pain, sorrow, reproach, suspicion and say:
Questions
Why does my child call himself by his name? For example he can say about himself: «Max wants to drink.» What is this connected with?
There is such a notion – a «mirror» stage. First, your child sees himself as if in the mirror, then there is a transitive stage and he stops speaking in the third person about himself. Sometimes calling himself by his name, the child means a certain part of himself, that his parents accept or call somehow. Also he knows that there is one more part of him that his parents don’t accept, but scold and punish. The part the parents don’t need. So he doesn’t call this part of him by his name, because the parents don’t need this part. The child feels that when he does something his parents like, he is Max, but when he does things he likes, he is not Max, but someone else. When his parents start to accept the whole child without any divisions, he will stop dividing himself into the one, who his mother needs, and into the one, who she doesn’t need.
Sometimes a child is a «black sheep» in the family. For example, in the family of lawyers, the son becomes an actor or a clown. Why does it happen? Is that the absence of upbringing?
This isn’t the absence of upbringing, but the suppression of the children’s personality. This may not be the conscious choice of the parents, who accept the unique personality of their children and let them be what they want. Often such freedom of choice is the consequence of the successful parents’ business. They just have no time to «model» their children to fit certain image. This children are very «lucky» – the parents weren’t close all the time, didn’t impress their complexes and stereotypes on them, and didn’t shape them to the needed pattern. So unwittingly, they became the best parents ever. Their children grew up into people who know what they want, know what they can do best and do it. These children are lucky. It happens.
When is the right time to speak to a child about money?
You can touch upon this topic when children feel interest in money and start asking questions. You shouldn’t worship money and make it a life goal. It’s stupid. However, to undervalue it and lie that money is not necessary is also stupid. Teach children to think about money as energy. You have made something, created a value, which somebody will like and buy it providing you with money you can freely dispose of. That is, you get the energy and you can direct it anywhere, but before you have to create a value and make people ready to pay for it. My daughter once told me, «Let’s go and buy a doll!» – «Where will we get money?» – «We’ll ask mum.» – «Where does she get money?» – «She gets it at work.» – «How is that?» – «She cuts people’s hair.» – «She doesn’t just cut hair. Your mum cuts their hair so good that they like it and are ready to pay for it and come back to her over and over again.» Now my daughter knows: to have money you have to create something.
How to make children understand the value of money if they are from a rich family?
It’s absolutely true that the understanding of value isn’t instilled by rejections. Very often better-off parents don’t buy an expensive toy for a child saying that it is expensive. This is hypocrisy, and this isn’t the way to form a value. This is the trick of the parents, who have money, to demonstrate their power over a child, who doesn’t have it, and to provoke the child to beg, to ask, to plead, to persuade and promise something while they glory their importance and irreplaceability. You can’t say «no» only because of the price. Dualism is a wonderful phenomenon. It’s when people want to divide everything into «good» and «bad,» «good» and «evil,» «cheap» and «expensive.» The only thing is important, if it’s valuable for you or not. If you really need something, it can’t be expensive. You may be just earning little money.