Читать онлайн «Your children are not your children»

Павел Эрзяйкин

Your children are not your children

Introduction

I hold workshops called «Parents’ meeting» and a training called «Self management» where I offer the participants to define the goals of their lives and their social roles. When we speak about such roles as «a friend,» «a boss,» or «a lover,» everything seems more or less clear, but when we define the roles «I am a mother» or «I am a father,» a complete ambiguity, ignorance and inability to understand the purpose of these roles comes out. «Why» I am a mother or a father is clear to all of us, but «what for» is an obscure subject. As a rule, speaking about the roles of a «father» or a «mother,» we think we have a duty to bring up a «good» child to be praised by neighbors and teachers, to be rewarded with diplomas of honor and even worse: we expect that someone will come and tell us «What a wonderful child you have brought up!» And for some, this may be the only understanding of the role of a «parent. »

The basic task of the book is to help parents understand their roles as a «mother» and a «father,» and to make them responsible creators and investors, but not sufferers, which is inevitable when understanding parenthood through «have to, must, ought to. » I want to help parents gain clarity, to present some functional models to bring up kids, to show how a new life begins next to them and what laws it follows when developing. There is nothing in this book that you wouldn’t know – just a description of the feelings you have when socializing with your child, while paying no attention to the feelings because you don’t realize their functionality.

More often we manipulate «proper» behavioral models, being guided by our concern to look «proper» in society. And what we call «upbringing» is really just an intrusion of the «dead,» outdated values created by God knows who and when. In our upbringing, we rely on these old models but not on the child, not on the situation we have here and now. There is no reliance on the child’s personality, which is the purpose of the child’s education. We prefer cliché, well-known behavioral models and axioms, and going easy with these models, we do not even think for a moment of how absurd they might be. For example, there is a stereotype to think of genitals as dirty parts of the body. That is why boys usually wash their hands after using the toilet.

Frankly speaking, their hands were dirty before using the toilet. But we don’t think about that and live our absurd lives doing many things automatically. There is no rational point in such automatism.

We do something if we consider it «right. » Children are more «alive» than their parents are because they are more filled with life, so far. Parents have already become «disabled» through socialization. They do everything «right» and «correct» and therefore insincere. They feel offended to follow some social laws, conforming to them, yielding and rejecting their own wishes and plans, their individuality to please the society, whereas a child ignores these laws. We try to impose our values on the children, but these values are mostly limiting their freedom, and they resist. Then we frighten and beat them. Because if our children do not match some social norms, we become «bad» parents who underbrought, underlooked, undercontrolled and undermanipulated.