â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹The kindergarten staff has been very worried about Lori for several weeks. She looked pale, self-absorbed, and unusually irritable. We asked her mother to come and talk to us. It turned out that Lori’s parents had separated. Lori’s father left his wife and daughter, his parents tried to establish custody of their granddaughter. When I asked if Laurie knew about this, her mother looked at me in bewilderment. “I didn’t tell her anything,” she replied, “the girl is still too small to understand everything correctly.”
Looking closely at Lori, we were convinced that the little girl understood that something terrible was happening. But since she was only 4 years old, she decided that she was to blame for all this.
One of the most difficult skills that parents need is the ability to tell the child about the dark sides of life. If too much truth is told too soon, it will be wrong. When a child knows about the real state of affairs, many events become less terrible and painful for him. It is impossible to lay down any hard and fast rules for all occasions, but some general principles can be helpful when deciding what to say or not to say to a child about one of the difficult topics in a conversation with him.
When a child is admitted to the hospital, this is most often his first encounter with a serious and frightening reality, but he can gather strength and cope with this difficult situation if he is somehow reassured by explaining what will be done with him. If he does not know anything about, for example, the removal of the tonsils, the natural pain and discomfort in this situation will be intensified by a sense of obvious betrayal on the part of those people whom he loved most and whom he most needed. If he visits the hospital and is told where he will be, who will be with him and why the operation is necessary, he will be able to survive what lies ahead without serious emotional trauma.
Children need to know what will happen to them so that they do not imagine anything too terrible. I once heard a four-year-old boy burst into the playground three weeks after a hernia operation and gleefully tell his friends, “I had an operation, but I remained a boy!” By telling him too little about the terrifying procedure, his parents made him anxious, imagining things.
It is best to prepare the child for an unpleasant event during the game. The mother of a six-year-old girl who was about to undergo emergency appendicitis surgery told me how they played on the way to the hospital in an ambulance. The mother portrayed herself as a little girl who lies alone at night in the hospital and misses her mother. The girl played the role of a nurse. “I was convinced that everything would be fine with my daughter when she stroked my face and said: “It’s all right, don’t be afraid, your mother will be back in the morning. Soon your tummy will stop hurting.» Playing the role of a nanny, the girl tried to calm herself.
You can warn a XNUMX-year-old child two weeks before a disturbing event, and a five-year-old only a few days. If the child is afraid and protests, you can say, “Of course you are scared. I understand how you feel, but it has to be done and in a couple of days it will all be over.” A child who cries and protests responds normally. In terms of consequences, this is better than if a child shows up in the hospital lobby, jumping happily, with balloons in both hands, only to come out two days later distrustful of anyone, too weak to cry, and having nightmares for the next three. months.
First of all, it is important that the child shows his own feelings. Don’t tell a small child, «You’re too big to act like a little one» or «Only little ones cry.» This is not true! It should be said: “If you are scared or something hurts, you really need to cry and protest.” One day, my daughter needed stitches for a deep gash in her arm. When the nurse said, «Well, don’t cry, you’re a big girl now,» the pediatrician cut her off sharply, «Don’t say that, Wendy! She is scared and can cry all she wants.” When I thanked him, he explained to me, “I learned this when I was an intern. I told the little boy not to cry and he vomited right on top of me! I realized that nature is smarter than we are, that tears are needed for something.
Do children need to know that their brother has leukemia or that their grandfather is dying of heart disease? Each family must make its own decisions about what to do in this or that case, but children must know that their questions will definitely be answered. Even if the child is not told all the facts, he must understand what is the reason for the excitement of people close to him.
One mother described to me her young son’s reaction when his sister was undergoing open-heart surgery. «He started getting bad grades and crying over nothing,» she said. “One day I just blurted out: “My dear, all the brothers and sisters are fighting with each other and angry with each other. It has nothing to do with what happened to Annie. She was born with a bad heart.» I saw how the boy’s face changed, he felt that his sister’s suffering was not his fault.
When one of the parents is seriously ill, children tend to perceive this as a loss, they are afraid that they might be left alone. They need to be reassured, convinced that they are dearly loved, that getting sick does not mean rejecting someone, and that many, many people to whom they are dear will always take care of them.
We are the only living beings who are aware of our own mortality, and it is extremely difficult for us to allow our children to realize this while they are so small and vulnerable. Probably, we can only be reassured by the fact that when a child does not know about the death of a loved one, it is even more harmful.
My grandmother died when my mother was four years old. Mom constantly asked everyone where her mother was for a year. But for all her questions, she heard only one thing: «Mom went to visit.» Finally she learned the truth from the guys in the yard. “I know that it made me a cripple for life and planted fears in me,” she recalled. “All I understood was that the person whom I loved more than anyone in the world left me. I was sure that this happened because I was a nasty girl and that my mother stopped loving me.
The mother of a six-year-old boy gave birth to a premature baby who lived only two days, and then he was cremated. She told her son that the baby was too weak to survive, but when the boy asked where his little brother was now, the mother replied evasively: «I’ll tell you about it when you grow up.» The boy became very anxious, he did not go into the room alone, he was afraid to open the closet or pantry, he cried, going to school …
When his mother turned to me for help, I offered to tell my son what happened to his younger brother. She was horrified: “How can you tell a child that a baby has been burned? He’ll never get over it!» But when Steve started having nightmares and refused to leave the house, she relented. Driving one day in a car past a cemetery, the father explained to his son, as carefully as possible, what happens to a person when he dies. “Sometimes he is buried in the ground,” he said, “and sometimes he is cremated, burned on fire.” «You mean he’s not in the house?» It turns out that the boy decided that if they hide from him where the younger brother is, then, probably, the baby hid in the house and he could accidentally find him. The thought of cremation was less frightening for him.
When talking with young children about death, it is important to remember that their thinking is concrete. Understanding abstract concepts is difficult for them. A small child, remembering the deceased, does not understand that the person is no more, he will not return.
It is natural to want to protect the child from suffering, but that is also impossible. Suffering is part of life, and what children need most is to be helped to cope with dramatic experiences. They learn it from adults. If we hide our tears, then they try not to cry. If we cheer up, try to hide our feelings from them, then they, imitating us, hide their sadness. I knew a mother who, in an effort to protect her two young daughters from grief when her husband died, left them with her aunt while she went away for a month. When she returned home and held out her hands to meet them, they ran away from her. The key to this behavior is simple: she left the girls when they needed her most, when they needed her help to get through their suffering.
It is important to be honest with children, both in joy and in sorrow.
It is natural for the child to feel responsible for all the tragedies that occur in the family. They are especially worried when their parents separate, believing that they are to blame for everything. From their point of view, the reason for the divorce is quite obvious: the parents quarrel or separate because of their bad behavior.
Most children are able to survive short-term quarrels of their parents, but in any case, it will not do any child any good if the parents shout at each other, insult each other. Sometimes you may need to tell your child, “I know you’re worried because I cried this morning. My dad and I had a fight, I was angry and I was sad. It happens sometimes when people are married, but it has nothing to do with you.”
When a serious breakup occurs and the parents decide to separate, it is important for the child to know that they continue to love him and will always take care of him. Unfortunately, some adults, absorbed in their own misfortune, tell the child all the details, forcing him to take the position of an arbiter or judge. It’s one thing to say, “Daddy is a sick man. I pity him, but I just can’t help him,» but it’s quite another thing to say, «Your father is a liar and a swindler.»
At one time, children were not told about alcoholic aunts and mentally ill uncles. Today, children see and hear everything that happens around them, and perhaps they can tell you how best to treat these patients. Children who themselves experience so many difficult feelings and fantasies can understand that adults are sometimes mentally ill. They need to know that no one else is responsible, that the sick person needs love and understanding, and that a cure is possible.
Children feel better in almost any situation if they can do something, help people close to them in some way.
Some facts seem to be kept to yourself as much as possible because they embarrass or hurt children. If the mother has an abortion, it is enough to explain that this is a minor operation. If a grandfather dies bequeathing all his money not to close people, but to someone whom you know only from his stories, suffice it to say that he gave it to charity. It is always worth protecting the feelings of the child, but it is important to give enough information so that he does not fantasize, because other fantasies will be much more painful than the truth.
Sometimes it is enough to say to a child: “I really told you everything that you can understand right now; when you grow up, we will once again return to these events and talk.” This is especially true for information about sex; facts may be difficult for a child to comprehend or confuse him if he is too young to understand what is being said to him. In my youth, I was an intern for an elderly kindergarten teacher who decided to show how modern she is. She was explaining to the children about how the father rabbit and mother rabbit began to wait for an addition to the family and how they achieved this, and suddenly I heard one child whisper to another: “I know what they do and when they do it, but I don’t know why they do it.»
One way to avoid any misunderstanding is to be sure that you know what the child is asking before answering his questions, so as not to tell him more than necessary. The boy asked his mother how babies live in the womb, she advised him to ask his father, a doctor by profession, about this. “He knows too much,” the child replied, “just tell me what you know.”
When a child asks a question, it will never hurt him if you say, «Tell me a little more about what you mean.» There is no need to lose self-control and get angry if a six-year-old daughter keeps asking the same question over and over: “But where were the egg and sperm before?” It’s better to ask her: «Can you tell me why you want to know this?» — and it is likely that the daughter will answer: «Because I want to know where I was before I became myself!» This is a philosophical question and cannot be exhausted by a biological explanation! It is important to interpret facts in the context of larger ideas and feelings. You are trying to teach a child about human and family relationships, and not teaching a course in gynecology.
Rarely are parents in a more difficult position than when they need to tell a child that he or she is adopted. For a long time, social authorities have been suggesting to adoptive parents that a child’s experience of adoption or adoption depends on how the adoptive parents treat him and on the form in which they communicate this to him. When a child feels loved and desired, when parents are positive about adoption, the child will be healthy and happy.
In my opinion, thinking this way, we greatly simplify this complex issue. The predominance of adoptive parents in child counselors’ appointments leads me to speculate that it’s not that they’re more neurotic or more harmful to children, it’s just that the very fact of adoption has traumatic consequences no matter how good the family climate is. Be sure to tell children that they are adopted, as they will almost certainly recognize this.
The crux of the problem, it seems to me, is that no matter what you say to the child about the biological parents, the child simply cannot imagine the circumstances in which the parents could abandon him. One mother told me that her adopted son was a sweet, adorable creature — just perfection! “All the relatives admired him,” she said, “and he was told about it all the time. But one day, at the age of seven, he returned home sad from a walk and said: “What is wrong with me that they abandoned me?”
Foster children at first like to hear about how they were found. But by the age of five or six, the anxiety that sounds in their questions becomes more and more noticeable. Before they were found, they had to be abandoned, and this is beyond their comprehension, despite any explanation. They will be able to understand this only at the age of twelve or thirteen. In fact, the happier a child lives in a foster family, the more incredible it seems to him that he could be abandoned.
It is good if the child is told about his adoption by people who love him, much worse if he receives the same information from a mischievous cousin or from a nosy neighbor. It seems to me that it will be easier for you to tell the child that he is adopted at the age when he is three or four years old. Questions should be answered briefly, without hiding or emphasizing anything. This will give the child a chance to reaffirm that he is loved before he begins to wonder why he was abandoned.
When parents provide a schoolchild with additional information about his adoption, I think they should keep in mind the fact that emotional distress is possible after this, especially in those children who are more sensitive and labile. In this case, nothing can be changed, it is necessary that the child believes that he is loved and worthy of love. You can say. “At the moment, you can’t even think that someone can leave the baby, no one you know can do this. But when you get older, you will be able to understand that even adults can get into a difficult situation and face such problems when they are forced to take such a step. I just want you to believe one thing: this has nothing to do with you, no matter what happens, we will not stop loving you.”
As with many things, the truth can make a child suffer. But our concern as parents is to help our children live like human beings, not avoiding dramatic and sometimes tragic situations.
The powerful influence of the media makes it impossible for us to keep our children safe from everything they might hear about war, poverty, hunger, racial hatred and the global threat of nuclear holocaust. A recent study shows that schoolchildren are more concerned about the threat of water and air pollution than their parents. These topics are so complex and controversial that some experts suggest avoiding discussing them with children if possible. In my opinion, this is a serious mistake.
By the time a child is four or five years old, he has already become acquainted with the imperfection of human nature. He has to deal with this every day. It is necessary to help him survive this life fact. Children need to develop a clear system of values, and we must give them our system as a starting point, not forgetting, of course, that they have the right to go beyond us, just as we have gone beyond our parents’ ideas about life. We must teach them not to despair when they hear about seemingly endless and pointless wars and about starving children in different parts of the globe, if, and this is extremely important, they feel that they and we can somehow influence it.
I can’t imagine anything more conducive to mental health than if all children three years of age and older felt they could do something to improve the lives of others. This does not mean that we will burden young children with incredible problems or make them feel responsible for the suffering of others. Rather, it means that a three-year-old can help you bake a cake for a solidarity fair that will go to children in Africa; that a ten-year-old child can be supported when he writes a letter to the president about what worries him, realizing that this is a serious manifestation of citizenship. Let the child know what hunger strikes are for peace and demonstrations of students and students for the improvement of their situation.
What should we tell children? The truth as we see it, realizing that the truth most often has many shades. Truth in limited doses, protecting them from what they cannot understand or have no right to know.
We must give our children the opportunity to suffer, suffer and triumph when there is strength to overcome suffering. Whatever is tragic in life, it includes beauty as an integral part. To mourn death is to affirm life, to admit defeat is to hope for a new attempt at victory, and so on. When we share all this with children, we prepare them for life.