Children are like sponges and easily absorb everything they see and hear around them. They absorb the mumbling of the TV, and the stories of friends, and anecdotes from the Internet, they absorb both beauty and goo. It may upset you, but most often they absorb it uncritically, without understanding, just soaking in what surrounds them. If they are played with, they learn to play. If they are scolded, they learn to scold.
In fact, children listen to their parents most attentively and absorb almost everything that is said to them. It is easy to verify this, just agree with the children for one day (or at least for an hour) to change roles: you, the parents, will be children on this day, and the children will be parents. This is a must see! It turns out that children copy us perfectly. They start talking like us, commanding and swearing like us (if you swear), saying clever instructions like us (if you say smart things). Sometimes it seemed to you that the children do not hear you, that they let everything go past their ears, that they need to repeat everything ten times — no, everything is not like that.
I watched as a teenager talked to his girlfriend and taught her about life. He spoke absolutely with his father’s formulations and his own intonations, with conviction and persuasiveness, although he did not always obey his father. Children hear us and absorb everything we tell them. This is so serious that you need to be careful: our sloppy and gooey formulations are assimilated by children in the same way as any of our other text. When you scold a child to put away their things, you are teaching him not so much to put things away, but to use abusive intonations and harsh language.
The world in which a child lives and develops leaves a very strong imprint on him. It is important that the environment is developing and educating, accustoming the child to certain ways of life.
Education through an educative environment is the main principle in the pedagogical technology of A.S. Makarenko. Makarenko achieved such mastery in raising children that he could confidently say: «Education is an easy thing.» It became so easy for Makarenko that in the colony. Dzerzhinsky, he completely abandoned educators, and 600 former offenders turned out to be in his care. There were teachers at the school, engineers at the factory, but the children’s team of 500-600 people lived to a certain extent independently. Makarenko was sure that the children would get out of bed on time on a signal, put themselves and all the premises of the commune in order. The commune never had cleaners. The pupils cleaned everything themselves, moreover, in such a way that everything had to shine, because 3-4 delegations a day came to the commune. Cleanliness was checked with a white handkerchief.