Do not put pressure, do not enter its territory, do not restrict … In a sense, modern parents are much more difficult than their predecessors: raising a child is more and more like walking through a minefield. One wrong step and the relationship will be ruined. What to do to avoid this?
Recently it turned out that my 16-year-old son, along with classmates, stayed overnight at school. In the morning, a cleaning lady found them sleeping. The administration immediately connected the incident with the news from VKontakte and decided that the next step for our students would be to jump under the train.
I’ve seen those jumps before.
— Can you act like an adult?
“I can, but then you should act like an adult.”
The number of books, articles, instructions on what can and cannot be allowed in relation to children has long exceeded the capabilities of one mother’s brain. But even what you manage to master knocks down the settings and breaks the patterns of parental behavior. Because all the recommendations set in an extremely liberal mood and skillfully frighten the hellish consequences of at least some tough approach with terrible examples from life that you don’t want to repeat.
“The mess in a teenager’s room reflects the confusion in his soul”, “you can’t break into a child’s room and insist that he pack his things: this is his territory, learn to respect its boundaries”, “every child has the right to privacy and his secrets»…
When I collect socks on my son’s territory, I feel like a criminal, because «this way he will never learn to keep order himself»
Now, when I (less and less often) collect dirty socks on my son’s territory, I feel like a criminal, because “that way he will never learn to keep order himself.” And my mother, a woman of the old school, is of the opinion that if you make the boy’s bed every day, then he will someday get used to making it himself. I don’t know, I haven’t gotten used to it in 16 years, but my grandmother does not lose hope.
Authoritative sites are full of articles about the imperfection of the education system in our country, about how much extra knowledge the program offers to schoolchildren, how harmful the load is and how terrible the stress that children receive at school.
And only the lazy did not speak about the syndrome of an excellent student. Everything is “out of character” here: excellent students are neurotics who spend their lives in fear of making a mistake, they are perfectionists who do not take on a task if they are not sure that they will complete it perfectly, and according to statistics, there is not a single excellent student among millionaires. And so on and so forth.
How to insist on doing homework in such an informational environment? How to scold for deuces?
The need for control immediately comes down to the issue of trust. And this is a very important question.
The children themselves do not seem to read all this, but they hold the blow, as if they were trained by psychologists and human rights activists. You won’t spoil them.
How can I give you! The muzzle directly asks for a brick.
What is this, a threat of violence?
And how to talk to them? The need for control immediately comes down to the issue of trust. And this is a very important question. For, as we know from ourselves, as well as from the speeches of experts, trust is the foundation of any relationship. Unless, of course, we are interested in having good relations, and for life.
— Where are you going?
— To Dana with an overnight stay.
Let his mom call me.
What distrust! It’s a shame ma…
Once again I don’t ask why the clothes smell of cigarettes, and if I ask, I prefer to believe that it was “the guys were smoking nearby”
Distrust towards the child embitters him and causes a desire to do it out of spite — right, psychologists? And yes, I understand that a teenager needs an eye and an eye and that in which case I will be “itself, mother, to blame”, but also go into conflict with my son and pull him with constant “where are you?” I really don’t want to.
Moreover, «the child, whom the parents always suspected of something bad, in the end lives up to expectations.» Although my mother (again, in the old fashioned way), if her grandson, in her opinion, is late, calls him a hundred times, sometimes even with rhetorical questions like: “Do you have a conscience at all?”
Another popular thesis from newfangled educational articles: if a child is tightly controlled, he does not have the opportunity to learn to be responsible for his actions, make decisions, and cope with crisis situations. And, once «in the wild», he seems to be lost and all the time looking for the hard hand of the leader. And in the end, either nailed to the one who replaces him with an authoritative mother (severe father), or simply remains a sissy (daddy’s daughter) for life. By the way, some parents are fine with that. Me — no.
Therefore, I don’t ask again why the clothes smell of cigarettes, and if I ask, I prefer to believe that it was “the guys were smoking nearby” …
Burdened with all this information, I do not try to read my son’s correspondence on social networks.
Moreover, they say, there is a more subtle connection between the control over children and their behavior in the future. So, teachers argue that young people who did not manage to try forbidden fruits in adolescence (when cigarettes, alcohol, and something worse may well not be liked), having seized upon already in their student years, they go all out and cannot stop.
For the most forbidden is perceived as the sweetest — this is how the human psyche is arranged. You need to try everything on time, experts say. Since it is those who started late who most often fall into heavy addictions.
Burdened with all this information, I can’t go through my pockets looking for cigarettes, and even more so I don’t try to read my son’s correspondence on social networks. The very social networks in which the minds of children and teenagers are manipulated, where there are groups of suicides and other horrors.
Who do you take me for? Am I stupid enough to jump under a car?
He’s no fool, but the mother — a guide and a victim of modern parenting — feels like a fool when the principal asks why she didn’t know where her 16-year-old blockhead sleeps. He told me that he was going to Dana, and I decided to trust him.
If you cannot and do not want to be a tough controller, all that remains is to believe in love.
Eternal balancing between “advise” and “press”, between “worry” and “hysteria”, “encourage” and “spoil”, “punish” and “embitter”. And while you are a parent, you will always be confused and pathetic. It is rightly said that in relations with children it is not necessary to include a “parent” — one must remain an adult.
Usually it doesn’t work.
You stand in front of him, talk about the benefits of reading and the harm of smoking, about a hat in the cold and computer games at night, and he listens to the end and says: “Your cheek is dirty with something.”
That’s all the pathos.
One day he left, and I asked him to tell me when he would return, and to call in general, to keep me informed of his movements. “Yes, what can happen to me?” – habitually otbrehalas son. And I suddenly remembered that I should answer: “It’s nothing with you, but something can mess with me. And I want to know where to look for you…” And it helped.
If you cannot and do not want to be a tough controller, all that remains is to believe in love. Yours and his.