Your children are not your children
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You can’t please everyone. There is a nice story about an old man, a child and a donkey. They were walking down the street and the passers-by said, „Look! They’ve bought an animal, but they aren’t using it.“ So the child got on the donkey and they went further. Again they heard the words of disapproval, „Look at these young people nowadays – an old man is walking, but a child is riding.“ They got embarrassed, and they changed their places round the corner. Again people were displeased, „The young man has got all his life ahead of him, but he’s walking on foot wearing his feet to blood, but the old man hasn’t lived enough yet!“ And so on. You can walk all your life and listen to what is right and what is wrong. What is right for one will be wrong for the other. There is nothing absolute. They say it’s bad to kill people, but medals are awarded for this during the war. Everything is appropriate somewhere and not appropriate somewhere else. Somewhere it’s a cure; somewhere it’s poison. When doctors are helpless, mother takes a child and rushes to the sorceress, though it’s wrong and unscientific. But she does it because the result is important – the child must get well. There is no absolute good or bad. Everything works with relevant dosage, circumstances and situation. At the moment when you must do something, you don’t think about what’s right or wrong. You just do it, and then, afterwards, it may turn out that you were right.
I want parents to be investors, not users. Children aren’t expenses, but investments. You invest energy, money, time and emotions into children. Think, when is it not in vain? Why are you doing it? What do you want to get? When you answer these questions to yourself, what you do is purposeful. You want your children to be physically, psychically and socially healthy. What can be the problem? When there is no such health. How can you understand it? You understand through collaboration, friendship and support interacting with children, talking to and watching them. The norm is our active and creative part in life, relevant action that we do here and now, our inner willingness to be in touch with children, understand and realize what’s happening to them, what they feel, what is important for them and what they are engaged in. We are normal, wise and adequate parents, when we stop pretending inside and working for the public, when we set free a certain space for what Tolstoy was writing about: a person can’t be taught to love, you just can remove the obstacles along the way of manifestation of love.
Questions
My son started working, but having his own money, he doesn’t share with the family. I think he should take part in the family expenses, but he is of a different opinion. How can I make him change his mind?
Why do you think you have the right to command his money? Do you think that way he should pay for his happy childhood? Expectations don’t work anyway. If you expected your child to start working and giving you part of his salary, then you had to tell him about that at the beginning. Expectations not having been clarified always end up in an offence, „partisan’s war,“ revenge and fear. You should make the situation clear, „Why do you start working? What do you want? How much will you earn? Are you ready to support the family budget? Or will you live apart and earn your living?“ You didn’t clarify anything, the child started working, received his money and suddenly learned that he had to give it to you. In other words, his mother thinks, „I want a new fur coat. Where can I get money? I’ll take from my husband and my son,“ but she doesn’t notify anybody about that. However, the child has his own plans for his money. So it happens that there’s one wage, but two plans for it. You demand, he resists, and you start racketeering, threating and blackmailing. If you don’t talk to your child, don’t negotiate, but present him with a fait accompli, you deprive yourself of clarity, stay among your own illusions, and when you face the reality, you get stressed and start attacking your child even more furiously.
Cash Dispenser
My daughter is always asleep – she goes to bed early, but still it’s difficult to wake her up to school in the morning. When she comes back home from school – she naps for an hour again. I think this isn’t normal. Is she lazy, or has she had problems at school? What should I do?
Since it suddenly started bothering you, then it must have appeared quite recently. It may be connected with some hormonal disorders, but if doctors have already examined her and told you that somatically she’s healthy, we’ll have a look at the psychological part of the case. She might get too tired. School stress is considered to be average, so for some students it’s easy, but for others it’s beyond the limits. If it’s too heavy for your daughter, then sleep is the way to protect her brain from overload. I don’t think it’s a sign of laziness. Laziness is a social diagnosis, but even lazy people wake up when something meaningful and personally important for them happens. Maybe your daughter isn’t interested in what she is doing. Nothing in her life excites her, and that’s why she often sleeps. But we also can’t ignore the fact that the number of hours she sleeps, that seems too much for you, is her individual norm and need.
My child has to go to school next year, but he doesn’t like books, doesn’t want to learn the letters, while most children of his age can write, read and are ready for school. What should I do?
If he can’t read and write now – he will learn. There is the first school year for that. The majority of children learn quickly at school, because it’s easier to study in a group, than at home, alone, with biased parents, who don’t have teaching skills, relying on their own views about the child’s development at a certain age. In the kindergarten my daughter attended, they told parents, „We play and study with your children the whole day and they come home to relax. Please, don’t educate and don’t teach them anything. Give them some rest.“
In your case you need to sort out the problem. Watch your son. Isn’t he just „fishing“? It means that you need him reading and writing, but he doesn’t want to learn to make you „spin“ around him and worry about him. Maybe your child doesn’t care about his age-mates reading and writing. But he may be offended by your constant comparing him with somebody, and then, being offended, he blocks his own development. Anyway just leave him alone. When you stop worrying about him, he will start thinking himself how to learn to read, to write and etc.
I try to bring up my son free from stereotypes, but communicating with his peers, who have got used to following some dogmas, he becomes an outcast. I think it will end up in his losing his trust in me or his staying alone. How can I prevent this?
You’re right. You already feel that your child doesn’t trust you, keeps you at a distance, or you wouldn’t ask me anything. The purpose of our upbringing is to make the child adequate, teach him to be appropriate, essential and sufficient, but not shocking by his extraordinary looks and deeds. If we teach the child to shock, we leave him to be assessed, disapproved and finally becoming an outcast. One mother was proud telling me about her son criticizing pedagogical skills of his teacher of English right at school. The teacher said, „Either me or this boy!“ The principal chose the teacher, the boy changed schools, and at his new school he teaches his mathematician how to teach mathematics and his teacher of PE how to teach PE. This is a dreadful situation. The thing that frightens is that the boy uses his talents to make people hate him. If you know everything, and it’s too easy for you at school, pass all the exams without attending school and enter the university. You can use your abilities for your wellness, growth, development and for earning money. Or you can use your abilities for pampering your arrogance and self-importance and becoming an outcast.
All our classmates are engaged with some activity apart from school – they visit some courses, clubs or trainings. But my daughter still can’t decide what hobby to choose – she isn’t interested in anything. Is that OK?
It’s OK, if it’s the manifestation of her individuality and she is really not interested in anything now. But it may be the sign of „fishing“: I see that my mum wants me to be engaged with something, but I won’t do anything to spite her. However, fear may be the cornerstone for this situation. You might have criticized her when she was younger, when children fall in love with everything and want to do everything. You condemned something she wanted and forbade it, so now when you „push her out of the house,“ she is afraid to make her choice, because she is afraid of your negative reaction to it.
My two adult children haven’t spoken with each other for about two years. All my attempts to make them closer are in vain. I don’t understand how a sister and a brother can behave like that. The children of my friends are mostly close and friendly to each other. Why do they have so nice relations?
More often we don’t talk when we’re offended. Keeping silence we try to punish the person who insulted us, so that he/she would feel as hard, bad and lonely as we do. Your anxious taking part doesn’t become a cure, but something that makes this situation even worse and permanent. Keep out from the relationship between your children, stop worrying about them, and then they will take care about their relations themselves. Pushing and getting together feuding children won’t make it any better.
We bought a bicycle as a present for our six-year-old daughter, but she doesn’t use it. Although we had asked her before what she wanted to have as a present, she said – a toy stroller. We offered her a bicycle, because we wanted to buy something more serious. She agreed to buy the bicycle, but now it keeps standing in the corner. Why?
She hasn’t played enough with a stroller and she dreams about it, never mind what you think about her age and what she has to be fond of. She doesn’t ride a bike now only because the stroller is still more important for her now. She agreed to buy the bike, because she didn’t want to upset you; she wanted to please you, but not argue. After a while when she grows up, you will be surprised, „Why is she so secretive? Why doesn’t she tell us what she wants? Why doesn’t she share her plans?“ Because when she was six, she understood that her sincere dream isn’t so important for parents as their own opinion about what she should want and need.