The child will hear you if you are interesting to the child. You will become interesting if you are not afraid to have a private life. Suddenly you come home with a big box, close in your room and start making a model airplane you immediately draw everybodys attention and they start getting into your hair. Or youre putting on lipstick and going dating at once you get the whole crowd around: where are you going? What is he like? Only when you are interesting to people and get their attention, you can bring forward your ideas and you can influence people. Unfortunately, parents often do not even try to be interesting to their children.
We take certain obligations before children are born: we are abundant and plentiful, and we are ready to share. But if we dont have as much, our children will become a real trial to us. Then, if children eventually break cups, we tell them, «You are a sheer torture! Who do you take after?» Our life is a complete failure, because children always spot clothes, break and destroy things, dont want to study or sleep they are always making us suffer. So year by year we develop an inferiority complex in them. The whole life we make them understand that if they hadnt been born, our lives would have been much happier. Children grow up thinking that if they hadnt been born, parents would have been much calmer, not so nervous, irritable and anxious. «The only reason why my parents are not successful in life is me. I torture them, terrorize, trouble and disappoint,» a little child bears this colossal cross of the parents misery. It becomes heavier and heavier. If children dont want the cross to crush them, they start lying; inventing stories and excuses, or just go away (from home or life).
The meanest manipulation sounds like this, «I bought you this with the last money. I dont need anything myself.» The goal is to make the child dependent, or if we have a closer look well see the life position «I dont live and I wont 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 cant sacrifice our life for a child. We say so if we dont 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 cant do anything except it and the child suddenly becomes independent? She will «lose her mothers job.» Thats 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 dont have to. When did they have time to owe us? When you had a child, it was your personal initiative. Children dont 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: «No, I will better sleep with my baby-sitter Victoria.» And she went away. My wife was offended that her daughter didnt love her, and I asked my wife, if she loved our daughter. She said: «Yes, I love her.» «Thats nice. So your life is filled with love. Enjoy it. Your daughter loves Victoria today, tomorrow she will love Max, and then she will marry Alex and go away from home.» Children dont have to love us. They may love us, and they may not. Nevertheless they are still our children. Some people have many children dreaming that in their old age they will sit at home like Don Corleone and their children with families will visit them at the weekend, ask for advice, respect and hallow. But children may grow up and never return home. Understanding and accepting this fact is showing parent love.
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 youre an adult, be responsible for yourself.» This is mothers offence, a caprice, because really its 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 youre responsible for your car even if youre not inside. Try to bring up your children in the same way, so that nothing could happen to them even when youre 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. Youre 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 didnt 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 isnt impudent, he doesnt step on the heads of others, but extremely decisive, assertive, doubtless, focused, with the sixth sense. He doesnt 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, «Dont bring such garbage home anymore! There may be germs and dirt»
Its much simpler to neglect, than to understand the meaning of the values your child cherish. Its 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 didnt sow anything, you will not have any yield. If you sowed the wrong seed, you wont 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: «I had to do that in time.» When people think about the past they imagine that they take care about the future. This isnt true. The most important moment is the one we are living now. We plant new seeds we get the chance to harvest a new yield. Not a guarantee, but just a chance. It doesnt matter how old our children are, here and now we must do something and then any future is possible.
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 dont accept, but scold and punish. The part the parents dont need. So he doesnt call this part of him by his name, because the parents dont 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 doesnt 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 isnt the absence of upbringing, but the suppression of the childrens 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 werent close all the time, didnt impress their complexes and stereotypes on them, and didnt 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 shouldnt worship money and make it a life goal. Its 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, «Lets go and buy a doll!» «Where will we get money?» «Well ask mum.» «Where does she get money?» «She gets it at work.» «How is that?» «She cuts peoples hair.» «She doesnt 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?
Its absolutely true that the understanding of value isnt instilled by rejections. Very often better-off parents dont buy an expensive toy for a child saying that it is expensive. This is hypocrisy, and this isnt the way to form a value. This is the trick of the parents, who have money, to demonstrate their power over a child, who doesnt 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 cant say «no» only because of the price. Dualism is a wonderful phenomenon. Its when people want to divide everything into «good» and «bad,» «good» and «evil,» «cheap» and «expensive.» The only thing is important, if its valuable for you or not. If you really need something, it cant be expensive. You may be just earning little money.
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 dont spoil their children! Thats 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 well feed you, but if you want some luxuries go and earn money yourself.» She helped me to get a job and didnt take away my money. Thats 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 dont 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 cant say that Im 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 doesnt 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 Im a coach. We have different hobbies, priorities and values. We have different views on the world. I dont tell her about motorcycles, she doesnt tell me about hair dye there are plenty of other interesting topics. Just accept that your son is interested in anime. Dont criticize these cartoons and dont try to love them like he does. Just dont 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 dont criticize, dont give advice, if she doesnt ask. Nobody asks for more from you. Its enough that you listen to your son. The problem is that you think, «If Im 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 dont need anything of what you are thinking. Just be with them. Its like when you visit your parents and they present you with three jars of moms pickled cucumbers and two jars of strawberry jam. Its 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 dont have it. I dont know if we can tell our children that we dont have money or our agreement is more important and if we have promised we should provide them with this sum of money.