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How not to raise an egoist from a child: we teach independence
How to teach a kid to read, clean up, dress? These are the questions every mother asks. Anna Bykova, a teacher, practicing psychologist, art therapist and author of the book “How to become a“ lazy mother ”, told the editorial staff of Woman`s Day all about children’s independence.
– I worked as a kindergarten teacher, a school teacher, a college teacher. I watched children and their parents, made analogies. Children came across different ages, but common features could nevertheless be identified. Here is the boy Slava. Mom will bring him to the kindergarten and feed him herself breakfast. And then he will come during dinner. And he does not wait, like other parents, for the child to eat, but goes to the group and spoon-feeds him, although Slava is already four years old. Here is the second grader Pasha. He never knows what is assigned to him. This is not his concern, but mothers. Mom calls the teacher every night and asks. Because Pasha can confuse something. Here is the boy Lesha. Second year of college. Classmates joke that Lesha’s mother goes to college more often than Lesha himself. Mom comes to negotiate a retake. Lesha passes the test. Mom is waiting for Lesha in the corridor.
I’m a lazy mom. I was too lazy to feed my children for a long time. In the year I handed them a spoon and sat down to eat next. At the age of one and a half, my children were already wielding a fork. Of course, before the skill of independent eating was finally formed, it was necessary to wash the table, the floor, and the child himself after each meal. But this is my conscious choice between “too lazy to learn, I’d better do everything quickly myself” and “too lazy to do it myself, I’d rather spend my efforts on learning.”
– A small child has a natural impulse to be independent. Otherwise he would not even have learned to walk. The child himself strives to master a new activity. It is important not to block or interfere with this impulse. The second important condition is to be prepared for unsuccessful attempts, mistakes and calmly react to them. When a child learns to walk, we are ready for the fact that he will make hundreds of attempts, that he will fall many times. It’s the same with all other skills. A hundred times he will carry a spoon past his mouth, a hundred times will pour past a cup, a hundred times will put on a T-shirt inside out. The soup will oversol ten times, forget the diary, lose change, but learn.
Don’t expect him to do anything well.
– A universal answer to the question “What if a child wants his mother to do everything for him?” does not exist. There may be completely different reasons behind the same external manifestations. Does the child want his mother to do it for him because he wants to avoid a situation of failure? Because he is afraid that he will be scolded for his mistake? Because he wants to do something else at this moment? Because it was a difficult day and the child was very tired? Because subconsciously the mother wants to do everything herself and gradually transmits this idea to the child? Different reasons require a different approach to the solution.
Doesn’t want to wash and clean? Why should he really want this? There is no magic combination of words after which any child will want what an adult wants. Parents are constantly faced with the challenge of finding the right motivation or incentive. And this is always individual. What works for an older child may not work for a younger child.
At almost any age, you can invite your child to try to do what adults are doing. Offer without expecting a good result. Without the illusion that the child will immediately cope without you. A year-old can clean clothes, repeating the movement after an adult, if he is allowed to play with a brush. The three-year-old will be happy to help her mother in the kitchen. And he will wash the dishes, breaking a couple of cups. The skill grows out of the game, out of warm contact, out of joint activities. The child follows the adult – this is a natural program. It is important not to break it at the very beginning.
And the attitude is better to change. The very phrase “adult affairs” implies that it is not for children. These are not grown-ups. These are household chores that can be learned.
Don’t panic if he can’t read.
– How to teach a child to read? It depends on what to put into the concept of “teach”. Is it just to put you at your desk and hand over the primer? You can take your time with the primer. Even if you meet him at school, you will not be late. But there is an important pre-letter period when the child learns to recognize sounds, plays with his mother a game “say a word that starts with the sound“ M ”, and the like. All games with sounds are a good base for later reading. Moreover, all this can be implemented “in between cases on the go.” And if the child himself shows interest in letters, play with them. But remember that in the preschool period it is more important not to teach the child to read, not to introduce letters, but to instill an interest in reading. Teach to enjoy it. Otherwise, he will not read. If your six-year-old cannot read, but with trepidation chooses a book in the store, anticipating when adults will start reading it to him, waiting for this moment as the most fascinating event of the day, and then living on this book for some time, playing its plot, then you were able to do more than just teach to read.
It is important not to give a set of knowledge, but to develop interest
– It is more important for a child not to draw something understandable and beautiful according to generally accepted standards under the strict guidance of a teacher, but to feel the joy of free creativity. Play with lines, color, stain, come up with new images, even if they will be understandable only to the child himself. What matters is not so much the drawing as a result, but what emotions the child had in the process (the development of children’s creative abilities and the love of drawing are devoted to my recently published notebooks according to the “Blot therapy” method in the “Lazy Mom” series).
This also applies to everything else. It is more important not to give a specific set of knowledge, but to develop the child’s cognitive interest. To make it curious, so that the eyes burn with the excitement of recognition, so that new questions arise and you certainly want to find answers to them. When knowledge comes along with personal aspiration, there is no overload. Usually for this it is enough to have a curious parent nearby who is interested in conducting experiments, experimenting, leafing through encyclopedias. Who won’t shrug off children’s “Why?” I talk about all this in the book “Developmental Activities of the” Lazy Mom “.