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You were quite happy together. But then a child was born, you are looking for yourself in a new role, shoveling the Internet in search of answers, reading articles and watching videos on how to and not to raise children. And you are trying to «enlighten» your husband — after all, you have already decided what kind of dad he «should» become. Stop! About why this is not necessary — blogger Ira Sergeeva.
We started dating suddenly, after seven years of friendship. Lying blissfully in the darkness of his rented room, I suddenly asked: “What will we do if I get pregnant?” Somewhere in the South-West of the capital, my therapist energetically hiccupped: “Such things should be said on the shore.” “We will give birth,” he replied.
We were both not going to give birth. This prospect seemed as far away as retirement savings. We were under 40, we wanted to travel, watch funny videos and play alien acquaintance: “Greetings, alien! Tell me how life is on your planet.» Three months later, we brought a little boy from Elbrus the size of a poppy seed, according to the application for pregnant women. So we became a family.
I am a normal traumatist, of which there are millions. I didn’t know how to be truly angry and cry cleansingly, I had a ban on disgust and a clamp on joy. In a word, the usual «dry ration» of a Soviet child. I started working with this inheritance long before pregnancy.
And so I plunged into the children’s question with inspiration. I was selective and intuitive, choosing consonant teachers. I moved along this path with caution and setbacks and pulled my husband along with me.
Like me, he simply had to believe in the theory of attachment. Do not scold the child for «bad» feelings, contain, approve. In order for us to raise our son «on the same tune.» I suddenly said: “You know, it turns out that psychologists believe that …” I sent him the best video lectures and gave examples from our childhood. Or, like a fighter, it went into head-on collisions.
The husband was embarrassed, isolated and sad. He tried very hard, but all these “stop crying” flew out of him automatically. How long, how short, but I began to reduce this activity to create from my husband an ideal father in my understanding, and here’s why.
1. Lost our «we»
We wandered around hot Moscow and pretended that he was teaching me how to take pictures. And I was afraid to drop his terribly heavy fotik. He met me uplifted, because he always ran to me. And I hugged his head and blew on his forehead. He was learning an inconspicuous dance that only I could see from the windows of the hospital. And he smuggled my favorite chocolate. And I drew a calendar and crossed out with a bold cross each day that passed on saving.
I was starting to forget those two people, completely. But first, they — we — ended up with each other. And only then they — us — had a boy. I wanted to restore this chronology.
2. I was called to be a wife, not a teacher
Teaching people is my thing, it was not in vain that I got into the pedagogical institute. But, you know, you can’t sit on two chairs with one stern. You can’t teach a grown-up guy and cultivate democracy at the same time. I believed in my pedagogical mission so much that I lost sight of an adult who went through Chechnya. Crawled through it with a sapper. And he taught himself to forge. Artistic: his unfading rose blooms forever by my laptop.
The neighbors of all our rented apartments greet him, my dentist sends funny videos to him. Maybe it just seemed to me that he needed to be pulled up in the field of human relations?
3. I want to support, not criticize.
I was a terribly anxious mother. For the first few months, I didn’t seem to be able to cope. What kind of criticism is there, I fell apart from any wary look. My mother’s visits “treated” me: she recklessly praised me for everything. She exclaimed with her creaky contralto: “Look how he loves you!” She declared that I was the best mother. And I timidly began to believe.
She opened my eyes to the beautiful, beloved, needed me. And I would like to try to do the same for my husband. Rewind, hug him more often and answer all his doubts: “You are a wonderful dad.”
4. The beauty of dad is that he is not mom
I suddenly realized clearly that I was trying to duplicate myself. Create a second Ira from her husband. But in my own childhood, I would not have pulled a double mother.
Dad was a silent man and an erudite, I rested next to him. He read aloud superbly, without emphasizing, without acting out the characters. He left me space for sensations created in me by Masters and Margaritas. He quietly taught me logic games and started aquariums with me. In a word, cheers that dad was, and a separate cheers that he was not a mom.
5. Do not interfere in other people’s relationships
Mom called herself a «buffer system» because she stood between me and dad and, as it were, softened our relationship blows. But so the problems only accumulated and loaded down on the three of us in bulk when I grew up to puberty.
I timidly think: maybe the husband and son have the right to their difficulties? They need them to be offended, hurt, breathe, reconcile. And, finally, dock securely, like a spacecraft with the ISS. My heart skips a beat when my husband takes his son to the room to «take offense.» I have difficulty with rejection, and I believe that this is it. Maybe it’s a different story for him. We are different, he has a different task from the universe and completely different mom and dad.
I don’t want to give the little man my pains. Enough with him and his own. Therefore, I still supply my husband with usefulness from the children’s topic. It’s hard to keep it to yourself. He listens carefully and gloomily. And, it seems, he does not really believe in all these psychologists. Well, okay. He will think and find something of his own. How to find mines in Chechnya. How I dug up three current works, how I found it, warmed it up, guessed among the thousands of probabilities my difficult and tender me.