Reissues of Korney Chukovsky’s book “From Two to Five” have accompanied us since childhood. And so we liked these witty kids, our peers. “Grandma, are you going to die soon?” – “Soon.” – “That’s when I’ll turn your sewing machine!” We were smarter than them, we knew that the imminent death of a grandmother should cause grief, but we still liked the fools, they flattered us.
Chukovsky not only invented the genre of children’s word creation recordings, but also created a tradition of reader’s expectation. Everyone now knew that children were great linguists and incomparable masters of neologisms. Parents caught every funny slip of the little genius.
Recently, I found records that we kept when our son Serezha was just two to five. They are filled with such observations. For example, Seryozha (two and a half years old) eats curd mass and spits out raisins. He explains: “First I count the muzumchik, and then I spit out the crust.” Here it is curious and the word “I think” instead of “chew”. That is, counting as a stop, a mark, a trial, a classification, if you will. And, of course, “muzyumchik”. We no longer catch the phonetic connection between “raisins” and “music”, but here we have a musical unit of taste.
The word “drain”, from which the house is made, probably appeared from the crossing of “turf” and “log”. Because of the abundance of freckles, he called himself a “spring carrier”. Question: “Are you going to chop meat now?” Etc.
But, leafing through the notes, I drew attention to that property, that persistent motive, which, with our euphoria from children’s word creation, remains, as it were, in the shadows. Meanwhile, without it there is no childhood, no life in general. It’s just that in childhood it sounds even sharper than in adult life.
We are talking about the process of adjusting to the world, recognizing, searching for reference points. In its simplest and most understandable form, this is a problem of didactics. Seryozha puts a horse on a stick and a net on the floor. At the same time, he notices: “I got the letter A.” Mom takes an inflatable giraffe, shifts the props so that the letter K is obtained. Guesses.
I want a fret, the coincidence of expectations. It can be said that he is looking for a rhyme in the world. sometimes literally
There would be interest. Easily learned Latin letters on a chessboard. She enjoys speaking French words and expressions. It’s raining – “il ple”. Sometimes he already corrects his mother’s pronunciation. Maybe memory is the first step to creativity?
I want a fret, the coincidence of expectations. It can be said that he is looking for a rhyme in the world. Sometimes literally. About the daughter of our friends: “Does Dasha have daisies?” After a pause: “Mom, do you know this poem: “Does Dasha have daisies?”
In essence, this is the same folding of cubes. Only as cubes – marks of memory, impressions.
September. Looks at the trees in the park: “Autumn is already beginning.” – “Yes, bunny! And who told you about autumn? – “No one-oh. I reminded myself.” (Two and a half years; what a great life behind!)
The scale is easy to master. In Crimea, he always asks to sail “to the ends of the world” (three years). Our irresponsible daydreaming is taken as a guide to action. So, I describe to him how we will travel around the world, we will live in Paris. “Okay, dad. Now I’ll eat and go.”
When contact with the world (with parents) is established, you can take care of independence, show character. Run with mom to the clinic. “Seryozha, hurry, we are in a hurry. Give me a hand!” “I’ll hurry myself!” Speeds up the pace.
Continuity, unconditional love is a mandatory, natural component of happiness
But any discord that is perceived, in particular, as a violation of the rules is a tragedy. Mom got angry with him, yelled at him, kicked him out of the table and ordered him to go to bed. After a while, she looked into the room: her face was wrinkled, pitiful, tears were in her eyes. “Mom, you didn’t say goodnight to me.”
It is important to fix the moment of love, acceptance. His mother calls him from afar and, when he comes up, puts him on her knees. Eyes overflowing with joy: “Did you call me for this?”
Continuity, unconditionality of love is an obligatory, natural component of happiness. Love cannot depend on circumstances or a change of mood. Therefore, our pedagogical figures of speech either do not reach the mind of the child, or are perceived as an unfortunate mistake. “Daddy, are you happy with me?” “When you listen, you are satisfied.” – “And when I don’t obey, I’m not satisfied?” And then, in order to remove this misunderstanding forever: “I’ll go and see if the gas is turned off or not turned off.”
Sometimes, unfortunately, we are very diligent and pedagogical to the point of complete loss of intuition. Somehow, having arranged a dressing down about poor studies and inappropriate behavior, they threatened that we would send Seryozha to a boarding school. For the rest of his life, he remembered this as the most terrible event of his childhood.
Childhood, of course, hell. All the horrors, tragedies, nightmares, resentment, the feeling of abandonment, humiliation – everything is lived for the future and with incredible strength. And yet children do not leave the hope that they live in paradise. The main property of paradise is stability, the absence of change. Even the ability to sail to the ends of the world is the stability of incredible opportunities. Therefore, there are no people more responsible for the safety of the universe than children.
“Dad, when I grow up big, big, I’ll be 500-75-80 years old, I’ll be a star.” – “So what are you going to do?” – Keep the Stars. “And if one does start to fall?” “I’ll run down to the basement, take a shovel, climb the stairs, climb onto the balcony, put the shovel in and catch it.”