Your children are not your children
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Why paranoia? There is the whole science of job safety at the enterprises. Why does it exist? Because there is some accidental statistics and they try to explain to the workers, what actions can lead to traumas or death. I think in the same way we have to explain to our children what may be dangerous for them. It’s really hard to believe that children have some inner wisdom to help them avoid danger…
You all have seen neglected children, who hang around in the streets and are subject to many dangers not having the slightest idea about them. We can argue here until midnight – you have a million of examples, I have more. I just want you to be conscious parents, not guided by such notions as «right-wrong» or «good-bad.» Be adequate. Don’t punish and don’t forbid, if you don’t understand what you forbid and what you punish for. Very often parents forbid something, not because they’re anxious about a child, but because they want to look good in the eyes of other people, because they feel embarrassed for the child. And their hypertrophic fear for the life of the child comes from a thought,
§ 1.2. The Norm
It’s easy to be right, relying on the past experience, other people’s recipes and their behavioral models. Doing so, we’ll be right in the eyes of other people, but unlikely we’ll be happy. We have two ways to live: either you are right or you are happy. People become happy when they clearly see and understand what they have to do here and now and they do it. Immediately, depending on what and with whom these people interact, they get response and reward. Using other people’s ready-made «right» models in any situation, not depending on the context, shows that people just don’t understand what is happening, what it means for them personally and how to react in order to be appropriate, essential and sufficient. Something brand new, just born, unique and unlike anything else is placed into an old, well-known pattern. This never happens without aggression or anger, and it gives temporal and insignificant effect. Therefore, life seems unhappy and useless, because all efforts bring no reward.
Many parents are looking for some «norm» and want to be «right» in the eyes of other people. But this is paranoia because other people don’t care about us – they do their own business, thinking about their problems and often just don’t see us. However, it seems to us that everybody is looking at us, so for some passers-by, we play our performance called «I am a good parent,» losing our children, their trust, losing the ability to be precise and wise.
It is considered that to be a parent is to comply with some norms and rules to meet the demands of society – the irrelevant demands god-knows-who created. But the second party of the child-parent relationship is not the society, but a child, never taken into account, because he/she is «little and na"ive.» Parents try to look «good» in the eyes of other people and loose contact with children, therefore losing the ability to influence them. The drug addicts have «the best» and «the rightest» parents. Believe me, they have the most caring, attentive and sacrificing mothers. Once a woman came to me to consult. She was a very «correct» mother. Her husband committed suicide, her elder son went to prison, her daughter was a whore and her younger son was a drug addict. She was furious; she was stomping her feet, blaming school teachers, society, drugs, bad company in the street, movies and time itself. She was always right, but because of this, her husband «went beyond the veil» and her children went into the street. This mother was like a neutron bomb, because her rightness destroyed everything around leaving nobody alive and her family preferred being elsewhere, not close to her.
Sometimes I consult women who want to become mothers, but it doesn’t happen because doctors say they are infertile, though somatically they’re healthy. I ask these women, «Why do you need this child? Who told you that you need this child?» They get offended, considering this question a foolish one, «I need a child to take care of him/her, to spare the child, to educate, to nurse, to treat when the child is ill…» This answer demonstrates that such future mother has already projected a child as some helpless creature, demanding her permanent attention, yearning for the mother and missing her. Then I ask a question, «What if your child isn’t born disabled, but a healthy, quick-thinking, curious and creative person? What if your child doesn’t need your help and the attention you have got in store for him/her? Your child may disappoint you by such independence. Then what?»
Having been born individual, inimitable and unique, children immediately find themselves tied by their parents’ concepts of how it should be done «right.» Moreover, to this «right» parents add something they were eager to achieve, but failed. Something they regret, something they don’t have the courage to do, something they didn’t have time to complete or something their own parents were against in childhood. And now as adults, they still have no determination to complete something, trying to fulfill it with the help of their children. They want, let say, to see what will come out not taking any risk. They want to conduct an experiment:
Very often the woman, disappointed in her marriage, tries to bring up her son with certain traits of character she lacks in her husband, i.e., her husband didn’t turn out to be a prince, but her son is going to be the very prince she has been waiting for all her life. The father may also have some plans for the child: he wants his son to be a famous football player, and his daughter a polyglot. So children are born in the atmosphere of some demands and expectations connected with them. Sometimes these demands overwhelm parents to such a degree, that they hardly pay attention to the uniqueness of their children. Parents impose their ideas upon them not caring about their children’s abilities and desires.
Parents fancy a socially justified project for children: they want them to treat people or perform on the TV screen, to be involved in socially useful and socially acknowledged activity, so that the neighbors would come and say, «What a son you have raised!» However, if the son is engaged with something he enjoys, but the society doesn’t consider this profession prestigious and useful, parents start terrorizing him, «This isn’t the right job for you!» I don’t mean here that children shouldn’t choose socially aligned profession to preserve their individuality and uniqueness. I mean that parents shouldn’t impose their own ideas about the «right» and «wrong» professions: «If you were a doctor, I would be proud of you.» It’s not the main thing to become a doctor and treat people. More important is that your children put life into their work, do something sincere, not waiting for the praise, not hoping to earn parents’ love, but for themselves, because it’s impossible for them to live without their work. It doesn’t matter what your children choose, support them, be beside them and, if needed, protect your children’s choice from those who criticize them.
The desire to bring up «right» comes from the fear to make a mistake and possibly to be ashamed of bringing up somebody «wrong» for society. This isn’t because society can really judge us – we judge ourselves ahead, choosing to do everything right, according to the ideals (nobody knows who and when created) as the cornerstone of our upbringing. Parents get preoccupied by their own image – not to be guilty, not to be a looser. They want to have such a child so that everybody will see what a good mother you are. Then, your sacrifice and tortures won’t be in vain, and you will be able to justify your failed life for devoting it to your son: he has become such a «nice» guy – meaning that your denial of your private life and your failure to become a «friend,» a «lover,» a «wife,» a «specialist» were not in vain.
Children’s upbringing by mothers concerned with public opinion is perceived by these mothers as something ideally right. They don’t take into account the child’s potential and personality. The mother considers her child as something made of modelling clay, which can be shaped according to public expectations. Then these public ideals turn to be «dead» and not working, but the child filled with them entering the world becomes inadequate. Have you heard parents saying to their child, «Money is good. Look at businessmen – learn from them, open your own business, take a risk and start earning money.» This is never told. On the contrary, parents try to leave their children in the fairy tale, supporting their infantility and capriciousness. Because if children are weak, always cry and can’t step aside from their parents, these very parents start having the reason for life: «At least somebody needs us.»
Children, being dependent and feeling parents’ pressure, can’t decide to protest for a long time, can’t achieve anything and proclaim their individuality. Not being able to earn their living, to live separate, to be supported by friends, they are left face to face with their parents, grandparents – adults, having some rights and plans for their children. In his novel «The man who laughs,» Victor Hugo told about comprachikos (in Spanish – «children buyer»), who turned stolen kids into monsters (putting some parts of their bodies into blocks to break body proportions during physical development) and then sold them as entertainment (jesters) for the Royal court. Social upbringing reminds of the comprachikos’ actions: when we put some parts of children’s personalities into blocks, preventing natural development and somehow castrating them, depriving them of the internal harmony.