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.
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, dont 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 doesnt want to go with me. I understand that its better to interest her somehow than to force, but sometimes I dont 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 dont have such an opportunity, but you must go, dont play, dont 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 its really useless to cry and will stop doing it.
How to teach a child to eat the right food? She doesnt like what we eat, so I cant teach her with my personal example. Do I have the only way out be firm?
The child definitely wont like what you impose on her, and its 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. Childrens tastes may not coincide with the parents ones and there are no universal values. Even the statement that porridge is useful sometimes doesnt 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 cant pull the child into the «healthy nutrition,» but you can create some interest to it. If you dont want your child to eat fast food, dont have such food at home. I dont 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 dont 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. Thats 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 dont want to turn family life into chaos. How to introduce some general rules and traditions?
Discipline doesnt suppress uniqueness. Discipline is a necessary condition to survive. To breathe is the discipline of life. If you dont 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 cant become the discipline, because they are not accepted as values by the family members. Its 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 shouldnt bother him/her when he/she is free he/she will come up to you. For example, everybody knows that if Im not available at the moment, it doesnt mean that they will never have a chance to talk to me. Ill 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 Years Eve. But you cant impose a tradition, it can only be created. If its 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.
Its 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 didnt 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.
Im 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?
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. Its really hard to believe that children have some inner wisdom to help them avoid danger
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. Its 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. Dont punish and dont forbid, if you dont understand what you forbid and what you punish for. Very often parents forbid something, not because theyre 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, «What will they think if my child dies?» Everybody will come up and say, «Youre such a bad mother!» this makes us shout to our children, «Stop it! Thats dangerous! Dont touch it!»
§ 1.2. The Norm
Its easy to be right, relying on the past experience, other peoples recipes and their behavioral models. Doing so, well be right in the eyes of other people, but unlikely well 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 peoples ready-made «right» models in any situation, not depending on the context, shows that people just dont 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 dont care about us they do their own business, thinking about their problems and often just dont 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 naïve.» 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 doesnt happen because doctors say they are infertile, though somatically theyre 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 isnt born disabled, but a healthy, quick-thinking, curious and creative person? What if your child doesnt 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 dont have the courage to do, something they didnt 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: «What would have happened if I had done that?» For example, «I should have finished a language school. Or was I right not having finished it? Ill send my son there, and well see what will come out.» Then, education feels like trial, torture and pangs. You didnt learn to dance in childhood go and dance, you didnt sing go and sing, you didnt play tennis go and play. Your children have nothing to do with it! These are your wishes, your failed projects implement them yourself if you want to do so.
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 didnt 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 childrens 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 doesnt consider this profession prestigious and useful, parents start terrorizing him, «This isnt the right job for you!» I dont mean here that children shouldnt choose socially aligned profession to preserve their individuality and uniqueness. I mean that parents shouldnt impose their own ideas about the «right» and «wrong» professions: «If you were a doctor, I would be proud of you.» Its 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 its impossible for them to live without their work. It doesnt matter what your children choose, support them, be beside them and, if needed, protect your childrens choice from those who criticize them.