Is it possible to interest a child in learning? How to maintain your authority and not lose contact with a teenager? Why do parents not trust themselves? Children’s clinical psychologist Elena Morozova talks about the difficulties and principles of modern education.
Psychologies: Modern parents read a lot of different literature, go to lectures, communicate with psychologists and think a lot about raising their children. But at the same time, parents live their own lives, build a career, disappear at work, and children often miss their presence, communication with them. And what trends do you see, what do you like and what is alarming in the relationship between parents and children?
Elena Morozova: There are many trends. Future moms and dads are really actively preparing for parenthood, attending seminars in advance, buying books. But then they feel confused, because the books promised one thing, but in reality it is difficult to fulfill all these recommendations. I think this is one of the main problems.
Many parents do not trust themselves, not their parental intuition. They don’t develop it, sometimes they don’t even turn it on, but they trust the advice of specialists from books and trainings. Therefore, they do not always understand what to do, but at the same time they feel a high responsibility to society.
The child must certainly be sent to a special kindergarten, then to a good school. Everything must be done to make it successful and positive. Parents feel anxiety, get lost, not understanding what to do and when.
Do you think they could trust themselves more?
EM: I think it would be more correct. At the very least, it is worth developing the ability to reflect. Do not deliberately build a strategy and follow it. And grow up with the child and try to build relationships in the process of this development.
A separate question is how to build relationships with older children who have their own position when they come into conflict with adults. Here, parents do not understand: either they need to firmly assert their authority, build boundaries, or, on the contrary, follow the child and communicate with him in a soft way, realizing that he has a difficult age, a hormonal storm. What to do?
EM: Until that time, it is advisable to build relationships in such a way that the child understands: the parent will accept him in any situation, understand, and be able to share his difficulties and experiences. To have trust in each other, the desire to communicate and the ability to share responsibility among themselves.
Authoritarian parents come to a psychologist too late, when neurosis or uncontrollable behavior is already found in the child
When the relationship is already complicated by something, adults should be wiser, give in, go forward. That is, all the same, we need to build these bridges, not to lose touch with the child. And communicate with him not in an acute conflict state, but when both of you have cooled down a bit.
It is also important to understand that there are not only methods of disciplinary action, violence and pressure from parental authority, sometimes a joke, an extraordinary reaction from an adult, works more effectively. The main thing is to get in touch in any way and see, hear what is happening inside the child. And try to figure things out together.
Don’t you think that more authoritarian and tough parents are much less likely to doubt their parenting methods and turn to psychologists less often? And parents who are softer, more humanistically oriented experience more confusion and often come for help.
EM: As my clinical experience shows, they are more likely to come for different kinds of help. An anxious, humanistic, as you say, parent who is very concerned about the emotional health and well-being of the child, tries to solve some problems early on.
The authoritarian parent, who knows everything, is not sensitive to the state of the child, comes much later, when the child has already found serious problems – either pronounced psychosomatics, or school breakdowns and neuroses, or complex, uncontrollable behavior.
While the child was small, he resignedly carried out the rigid parental will, and when he became more independent, he began to conflict with his parents. That’s when adults come, but it’s already difficult to do something.
And what problems do you encounter more often in such children at school age? What is especially difficult for them?
EM: Often they do not know how to cope with stress, do not have constructive ways to resolve conflicts. They have a feeling of loneliness, despair, which leads to suicide. This is the worst thing that can be, and this is the most frequent, unfortunately, what can happen now.
Child suicide occurs when a child screams: “I can’t exist in such a relationship, you don’t understand me, I’m leaving you!”
This phenomenon is not only imposed by some suicidal groups. These are, in general, quite conscious actions of children, such a desperate dialogue with parents, when the child screams: “I can’t exist in such a relationship, you don’t hear me, you don’t understand me, I’m leaving you.”
Severe cases in their own way are anorexia or bulimia, when a child, with the help of improper eating behavior, tries to have a dialogue with his parents. Another problem is social phobia, when children are afraid of large communities, they are afraid to leave the house, they prefer solitude. They acutely feel their failure at school and stop studying.
Do you think that today’s school supports the child, maybe even corrects some shortcomings of home education, or remains a source of stress, a source of various social problems?
EM: It depends on the atmosphere that is created in the school. There are unique schools, fortunately, I know such ones, which become a powerful developmental environment for a child. The psychologists there are amazing with children. Pupils find adult confidants there for themselves, with whom they can communicate and solve their teenage problems. But such schools, unfortunately, are very few.
The school causes a lot of stress in children, especially the rating system, preparation for the exam
More often than not, the school causes a lot of stress, especially the rating system, preparation for the exam, when it’s not about learning, but about the fact that you need to pass exams well at all costs. In this situation, children often experience nervous breakdowns.
There are known cases of suicides after failed or not so well passed exams. In the spring, when the pressure is especially high, children often come to me for psychological support before exams. We have to explain to their parents that the USE is not the result of a lifetime, that it can be passed at another time or passed not with such a good result, and not all life is just that.
And how to motivate children to study not with the help of a carrot and a stick, but with the help of some things that are of interest to them? How to arouse in them a desire to learn, to learn – not for the sake of grades, but for the sake of their own development?
EM: It is worth thinking about this much earlier: it is important for a small child to create conditions for active knowledge of the world around him. Give him complete (but safe) independence in this. So that he is not afraid to try, experiment, learn, discover the world around him. If this is incorporated, then it is easier to work with motivation.
When I ask students what they enjoy doing, they often fail to answer.
It is desirable that parents themselves be passionate about something, so that they have a favorite pastime, a business in which they are well versed and to which they could introduce the child. It is important to visit somewhere together, travel, go to museums, make some discoveries, read together and surf the same Internet.
Ask your child what he is interested in and why. That is, to be able to talk to him without imposing on him the knowledge that seems important to you as an adult. Give him the opportunity to try one, the other, the third and see what he enjoys.
When I ask schoolchildren: “What do you enjoy doing?”, they often cannot answer. They do everything, but under duress, and do not even know that something can be done with joy.
But there are areas in which children feel more competent than their parents – for example, in the field of information technology. They find information faster, download the program, they can teach parents a lot. How does this affect the authority of parents?
EM: Of course it does. Many parents are delighted when their one-year-old children take gadgets and begin to manipulate them. And it is very good that we can learn something from children. In general, education is mutual learning, mutual enrichment. I myself learn a lot from my children, I ask, they are happy to share knowledge.
But this does not negate the authority of parents, respect for them. Because we are still wiser by virtue of experience, we are more stable, we know that a lot can be overcome, experienced. We are able to help and support them in many ways, to learn and discover something together. So their advantages in some way should not be afraid, they do not interfere, but, on the contrary, enrich us.
Question about grandparents. One of the recent sociological studies showed that in families where several generations live together, children are more successful, they study better at school. Don’t you think that grandparents now live less with their children and grandchildren than, say, 30-40 years ago? And how does their presence at home affect the child?
EM: Extended families are indeed becoming rarer. At the same time, I often observe families in which fathers and mothers are in conflict with their parents, do not allow them to raise their grandchildren. And it has a bad effect on the emotional state of children. It seems to parents that they have cut off additional and unnecessary influence, that they themselves are the masters of the house and can do everything at their own discretion. So it seems to be easier for them, but this simplicity is primitive.
There is a lot to learn from grandparents. They often make their correct, intuitive discoveries, they know how to calm the child, how to give him the opportunity to cope with a difficult emotional state, how to gently resolve the conflict.
The more emotional connections a child has with other people, the more confident and stable he feels.
Young parents are still learning what grandparents are good at. When they have the opportunity to peep it, discuss it, the child lives much easier. The more emotional connections he has with other people, different influences, opportunities – not contradictory, not conflicting – the richer his inner world and the more confident and stable he feels.
Unfortunately, there are not so many families where grandchildren have the good fortune to communicate with grandparents. Increasingly, nannies, educators, tutors are engaged with children, who, with all their experience and professionalism, raise a child in other traditions, perhaps far from the traditions of your family. And you need to be ready for this.
The interview was recorded for the joint program of Psychologies magazine and radio “Culture” “Status: in a relationship”, radio “Culture”, December 2016.
About expert
Elena Morozova — an employee of the Department of Child Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Russian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education, a child clinical psychologist, director of the public organization “Neslisnye deti”.