Your children are not your children

Эрзяйкин Павел Артемович

So when children ask something, talk to them: «Why do you need it? What do you want to do with it? Why do you want it now?» Then it will be clear to you, why do children want this thing and you will be able to decide if you take part in buying it or not. You will be appropriate and adequate unlike the parents, who play a caring mother and a father, saying «no» to the child just because they want their neighbors to praise them: «Look! They are rich, but they don’t spoil their children! That’s the spirit!»

Involve children into earning money as into the game, which opens a range of opportunities. My mother kept saying, «If you want to eat – we’ll feed you, but if you want some luxuries – go and earn money yourself.» She helped me to get a job and didn’t take away my money. That’s why I have always known that earning money is super. A different matter is that not all better-off parents want their children to earn money, because in this case the children lose their dependence on them. Such parents often have nervous children, who are sure that they are complete zeros without their mom and dad. However, even millionaires have kids who don’t care about their parents’ money, because they know they can earn as much as they need. Thus, millionaires having bought houses for their children feel deceived and start taking offence when children refuse to live in them. Are they taking offence because their child turned to be unsuitable for manipulation and independent, not a stupid sheep? They must be happy.

My son likes only Japanese cartoons, anime. I can’t say that I’m interested in anime as well. When he tries to discuss them with me, I get bored to speak and listen about it. I really tried to understand – it doesn’t work. But I want to have something in common with my son.

You have got common life, but your hobbies may be different. For example, my wife is a hairdresser, and I’m a coach. We have different hobbies, priorities and values. We have different views on the world. I don’t tell her about motorcycles, she doesn’t tell me about hair dye – there are plenty of other interesting topics. Just accept that your son is interested in anime. Don’t criticize these cartoons and don’t try to love them like he does. Just don’t avoid him, when he wants to share with you. My daughter also tells me about her friends from the kindergarten, although I have never seen them. But I understand that at the moment when she is discussing them with me, she is eager to share with someone, and she has no other friend to tell it. I listen to her, I nod, but I don’t criticize, don’t give advice, if she doesn’t ask. Nobody asks for more from you. It’s enough that you listen to your son. The problem is that you think,

«If I’m a mother I have to tell something important and clever to my child.» We are afraid of talking to our kids because it seems that if children share we have to share as well, but we have nothing to share. So we turn our back on children. Our children don’t need anything of what you are thinking. Just be with them. It’s like when you visit your parents and they present you with three jars of mom’s pickled cucumbers and two jars of strawberry jam. It’s quite clear that you can buy everything in the supermarket, but you better take these jars, because your parents want to be useful. Give them that opportunity.

Together with my husband, we decided to give our children a certain sum of money every week. But sometimes we just don’t have it. I don’t know if we can tell our children that we don’t have money or our agreement is more important and if we have promised we should provide them with this sum of money.

When you decide to give children a certain sum of money every week, think first if you have such opportunity every week. If this sum of money appears once every three years, don’t promise anything. But once you have promised, you have to fulfill commitments.

I need to travel on business, but I have nobody to stay with my daughter because she doesn’t want to go with me. I understand that it’s better to interest her somehow than to force, but sometimes I don’t have any desire to fancy something, to picture how thrilling and fascinating the trip may be. Can I act straightforward?

If you have an opportunity to deal, do it. If you don’t have such an opportunity, but you must go, don’t play, don’t pretend – be honest. Accept the fact that there is no opportunity to deal and start direct actions – take your daughter; put her in the car and drive. Explain to your child that there is no use in crying, that you must go anyway and after a while the child will understand, that it’s really useless to cry and will stop doing it.

How to teach a child to eat the right food? She doesn’t like what we eat, so I can’t teach her with my personal example. Do I have the only way out – be firm?

The child definitely won’t like what you impose on her, and it’s OK. To teach with your own example means doing something not for the public, but for yourself. I always eat only what I like, but not the food the doctors recommend. Once my daughter came to me and said, «Granny says yogurt is useful.» – «Do you like it?» – «Yes.» – «This is the most important.» I devalue such notions like «useful» or «harmful» for her to choose what she likes, because there is no «right food» – it all depends on who is selling food today. Children’s tastes may not coincide with the parents’ ones and there are no universal values. Even the statement that porridge is useful sometimes doesn’t work and it turns out that porridge does harm to some people. If something is useful for 80 per cent of people, should the remaining 20 per cent suffer and eat this? Nutrition is very individual. Offer some choice to a child and watch what she chooses, what she is inclined to. You can’t pull the child into the

«healthy nutrition,» but you can create some interest to it. If you don’t want your child to eat fast food, don’t have such food at home. I don’t forbid my daughter to drink Cola, but I never drink it myself and I have never bought it in my life. Show the value of the food you prefer, be meaningful about how important it is to eat the right food, talk to your children, and fancy a story about healthy nutrition. Show a fat woman and ask: «Do you want to look like this?» – «No.» – «Then don’t eat pizza eight times a day.» Through visualization, through clarity you will reach your goal faster than through prohibition. Banning produces a different effect – love for what you hate. If you force – you get the resistance. That’s why some parents are surprised that at home their children eat the right food, but when they go away to the university they start eating pizza and drinking soda. That happens because when they lived at home the parents were making them pretend and spoon-fed with their «right» food.

How to introduce discipline as the way of life in the family? On the one hand we are all unique and individual, but on the other – I don’t want to turn family life into chaos. How to introduce some general rules and traditions?

Discipline doesn’t suppress uniqueness. Discipline is a necessary condition to survive. To breathe is the discipline of life. If you don’t breathe – you die, it is not discussed, it is accepted and fulfilled easily. The same is true in the family. If there are rules, but they are not fulfilled easily, they can’t become the discipline, because they are not accepted as values by the family members. It’s a great spiritual, noble and important task to create family traditions and make your family a clan. First there should be clarity – you have to explain the meaning of the traditions, so that everybody would understand the advantages of following these rules. Discipline is not an implicit subordination, but a necessary condition. In my family I created traditions of acceptance, respect and love. So all family members know that if one of us is busy, they shouldn’t bother him/her – when he/she is free he/she will come up to you. For example, everybody knows that if I’m not available at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they will never have a chance to talk to me. I’ll do what I have to and (even if everybody has forgotten), I will come up myself to ask what was the matter.

In many families parents are eager to introduce the tradition of getting together on New Year’s Eve. But you can’t impose a tradition, it can only be created. If it’s interesting at home, if home holidays are celebrated solemnly, there is an atmosphere of unity, togetherness, openness and contact – such tradition will outlive years. If there is acceptance, respect and interest to communication between family members, then everybody will visit you on New Years’ Eve.

Where is the borderline for parents’ interference or non-interference? Is the child wise enough to prevent an accident?

Accident is the way to depart this life, go away from parents. Water, fire or drugs are not the cause. The cause goes back in the past. The ways of departing this life may be different – we blame germs, glass, rivers, but, believe me, these are just the ways to depart this life, not the causes of doing it. If your child enjoys life, if he sees the opportunities for himself and understands how to use them, trust me, no disaster will happen to him.

It’s not easy for me to agree with you. I remember my mother beating me with a twig for playing in the sandpit. Now I understand that she was right – we were little and didn’t realize that we could be covered with sand.

Maybe not. Anything can happen to us at any moment. We can slip and die in our own bathroom. So what?

I want to speak about some basic signals to teach the child: what is dangerous, what is not – for the child to distinguish.

The most dangerous for life is life itself. We live and then die.

I’m speaking about being cautious, not about …

Cautiousness is the fear you have for your children. You are afraid, you forbid, but forbidding you only provoke curiosity. Inhibition has never inhibited anything for real, but provoked and stimulated action. You forbid something, but secretly children will do it anyway, otherwise they will not calm down. I want you to know what you forbid, what you punish your children for. Is there really some danger? Or are there just your personal fears, hypotheses, worries and fantasies – in a word, paranoia, behind your anxiety?