Bulgaria, my family and I have breakfast in a cozy restaurant under hanging bunches of grapes. We already know everyone here and watch with interest how cheerful Demian (he is 8-9 years old) happily runs away from his peppy dad along the edge of the pool. They splash and throw inflatable circles. Demian completely went into courage, then dad winked at Stani (this is a young waiter), they surrounded Demian, took him by the hands — by the legs, carried him to the diving site, slowly, shook him — and threw him into the blue water of the pool. Demian thrashed his back, swam to the edge, dad gave him a hand and pulled him out of the water. Damian squatted down and put his arm around his shoulders.
The sun, the warm breeze, the gleam of bluish water, small children splashing in the paddling pool and taking away each other’s air mattress.
And then we see that Demian is crying softly: softly squelching, his shoulders are characteristically trembling. I would assume that he was still frightened when he flew into the water, and therefore now I figured out that he hit the water painfully. And so — he was offended by bad adults.
Question: how should dad behave, who noticed this in a minute too? Suit? Don’t fit? With what, with what words? How seriously to take this acted insult, how long to talk with Demian and what to do later if Demian decides to be offended further?
I asked Marina and our girls (they are already 15 years old) what they think about this.
We easily agreed that it was necessary to come up and ask for forgiveness. Ask for forgiveness, explain that «we wanted to play with you and did not want to hurt you.» When people flirt, and this happens to both children and adults, they can sometimes inadvertently make their friends hurt or unpleasant. This happens even between good friends. — Hug, sit next to him for a while. It’s okay for dad to do this.
In fact, my dad seems to have done it. But Demian continued to sit miserable and ruffled. He still felt terribly offended!
Nastya said that now she would distract him — Nastya really knows how to do it beautifully and deftly. Masha said that let him sit for five minutes, get bored and stop himself. Marina expressed the opinion that when a child sits like this, he is not just offended, but thinks about what happened. It’s great that the child thinks, analyzes his own behavior and that of adults, and there is no need to interfere with this.
Marina has an amazing ability to see the best side and the best intentions behind the actions of others, I saw something else here: the child covered his fear with invented pain and now offends himself in order to take revenge on his dad. I even think that I was more right than Marina, but I also know well another rule: if there can be several interpretations about the situation, you need to choose the one in which those around you turn out to be kinder and better. So Marina is right after all.
But it’s also not the case that Demian is now getting used to being offended and feeling sorry for himself: this is not at all appropriate for a boy, a future man. Therefore, it seems to me right, if Demian still turns sour, call him to her. Calmly and seriously — call to yourself. It won’t go anywhere, it will get up, straighten up and come up. Then you can calmly say to him: “Men do not take offense for a long time, do not sit for so long. Please take the room key (give him the key, he will take it), and please bring me my laptop. If you want to take your mask, take it too, you did great diving with it yesterday.”
It seems that this is close to Nastya’s decision, this is a «distract» strategy, but here it is not the father who serves the child, but the child does what the father told him. Well, the suggestion “men are not offended” seems to me mandatory.
What do you think?
later
Together with Marina, it seems that the situation has not yet been completed, and later, if I were dad, I would return to this situation. Maybe I would go for a walk with him, or we would sit together at a table where I drink tea, and he eats his favorite ice cream, but I would ask him to tell me how he remembers what happened there with us, by the pool.
The very process of remembering what happened, what he did, what others did and said, is a thing of exceptional importance, the beginning of the habit of conscious living.
Sometimes this is already quite enough, the child in the process of telling and clarifying questions will already understand a lot and even with a margin. If it seems that the child is not yet overloaded and you have enough pedagogical qualifications, the conversation can be continued. I think that in a calm, thoughtful manner, I would ask and listen carefully to the answers to the following questions.
1
“When we were carrying you by the arms and legs to the pool, was it a game for you or was it really unpleasant?” If the answer is «game» — good, «really unpleasant» — even better. Even if the answer is “game”, I still ask: “And if it became really unpleasant for you, what would you do?” Most often, children do not have good answers to such questions, and they really need good answers. Perhaps we would have agreed on the “Stop” rule: if he loudly and without laughing says “Dad, stop!”, Then such a game with him immediately stops.
It is clear that this applies only to the situation of the game, and not to other interactions with me, where the situation is determined by the elders.
2
«Were you hurt when you fell into the water?» — It is clear that I am interested in his answer «yes, it hurt.» Then discussion: how much does it hurt? How do men behave when they are in pain? It is necessary to formulate a rule for the future: “If it hurts seriously, ask for help, maybe even medical help. And if it hurts, but you can endure, then don’t show that it hurts and don’t feel sorry for yourself. Men do not cry».
3
And let him repeat the results of the conversation. The boy is already an adult, he can handle it. In the end, you need to start growing up sometime anyway. Maybe it’s time?
And then — again together in the pool. After all, summer, the sun, and the water is clear and blue!
Video from Yana Shchastya: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov
Topics of conversation: What kind of woman do you need to be in order to successfully marry? How many times do men get married? Why are there so few normal men? Childfree. Parenting. What is love? A story that couldn’t be better. Paying for the opportunity to be close to a beautiful woman.