My daughter, wonderful Lana, is 7 years old, and our friends recently showed her a computer game with Grandma Greni. Lana played the game with pleasure, but it seems that the game also played with her — she began to be afraid of this very Grandmother. In fact, Lana was not noticed in cowardice before, but now she doesn’t stay alone in the room in the evening, and if she needs to go to the second floor, then Lana calls adults with her. An unexpected task even for me, considering that I myself am a psychologist, I have been consulting and conducting trainings for 10 years. I went through everything: I thought about the secondary benefit, and about transfers, and about the lack / overuse of attention, and about post-trauma … I went over everything — it doesn’t add up. I thought not to pay attention, it will go away on its own — no, it does not go away. Well, I think, since I myself can’t figure it out in my swamp, then I’ll go to a child psychologist, let him look from the outside and decide everything. Through friends I found a good, experienced one, but our conversation went in a completely unexpected direction for me:
— Your daughter has suppressed aggression. She projects her repressed aggression onto Grandmother and through her tries to express and relive this repressed aggression. Tell me, Maria, do you allow a child to express aggression at home?
— Don’t even know. — I found it difficult, — And how is it expressed?
“Well, can she yell at you?” hit, for example?
— Bump!? Me!? Of course not!
— Well! I’m talking about this to you. If the child is angry, he may yell at you and hit you. This is fine. Don’t ban it! It is impossible to suppress in a child his natural aggression!
To be honest, I was frozen in a daze. Confused, she somehow murmured: “You know, neither in my family, nor in my husband’s family, it was somehow customary to yell at my mother and, moreover, to beat her …. I don’t even really imagine it!”
— Yes, that’s the problem. And so you yourself could not deal with the situation with your child. This is your problem too! A healthy child should be able to be angry.
— Well … she can be angry ….
Yes, she should be able to express her feelings.
— What about sports? Dancing? She is very athletic!
— This is not enough. If you want to solve your daughter’s problem, you must deal with both your attitudes and Lana’s repressed aggression. You need to work with this.
— But as? I can’t imagine my daughter yelling at me or hitting me tomorrow. It won’t even cross her mind… What should I do in this situation?
“Well, provoke her to get very angry with you. Let him scream and hit you. And you accept it and do not scold her later.
I left in thought. I thought, thought, and decided — all this garbage! Dear colleague messed something up. Suppressed aggression is the aggression that a person does not recognize in himself. And we never scolded our daughter for feelings or emotions. She may well get angry, kick her feet if she doesn’t like something — maybe we never punished her for this. We just did not pay attention to it — if you want to be angry, go and be angry. We have a different rule: “You can be angry, but you need to do the job!”. “I won’t! I do not want!» Lana could scream and stomp her feet. We reacted to this calmly: “Lana, this must be done. Let’s do it!» Therefore, I do not agree: suppressed aggression is not about Lana. We allowed her emotions and taught her to keep the goal in her head. Taught to achieve their goals, despite emotions. This is called social adaptation. In general, I’m right!
But, nevertheless, I tried to be softer with Lana. I began to react softer to her manifestations of childish anger, allowed her to be quietly angry with us, began to persuade her, calm down, wait — and watched how this affects Lana. Well, it had a bad effect on Lana. Lana became less and less controllable, requests to do her homework or put away toys now began conversations and altercations … I didn’t like all this at all, and I decided to return to my past life. Well, let Lana be afraid of Grandmother — but there will be order at home.
But time passed, and a few months later I had a meeting with another child psychologist. Authority in his circle, author of books on children’s problems. Of course, we immediately started talking about the children, I told about Lana’s fears (they continued), and the psychologist agreed to help us. We came to her for a consultation together with Lana, Lana drew a non-existent animal there, and the psychologist delivered a verdict:
— Lana has a delay in the formation of female role behavior. She cannot feel like a girl, she has a violation of gender identity!
I was so dumbfounded. Lana doesn’t feel like a girl? Will these five sexes affect me in Europe?
Maria, are you praising Lana?
Yes, often and with pleasure. “You can do it, you can do it, well done, come on!” — this Lana hears from us from morning to evening.
— In any case, you need to urgently deal with her sexual self-identification! She must feel like a girl! Your situation in the house, apparently, does not encourage her to reveal the feminine in herself. She should be able to feel weak, tender, defenseless. How do you feel about tears, whims?
— You can cry. It is not customary to be capricious in our house. That is, you can be capricious, the main thing is to do what you need. If you want to be capricious, then there used to be a “crying room”. Now there is some time to calm down, and if it doesn’t work out, then there is a “calming corner”. But neither the room nor the corner have been used for a long time. They are needed only for whims.
— Here! — the psychologist was delighted, — I’m talking about this! A girl must cry, a girl must act up! She’s a girl! She must be a girl!
— And how will she continue to work with her boss? I think slowly.
«She’ll learn how to control it like a woman!» Great power is hidden in a woman!
I imagined how she would manage me and dad like a woman. When I tell her to brush her teeth or say no to something, now she can pout, snort and obey. Should I listen to the snort and give in? So then I can’t do it! We will always help and pity our daughter if she needs it. We will support her in her affairs, hug and say that we love and always protect, and we do it. But encourage whims?
I said that I was grateful to the psychologist, but I think that we will not have whims, and this is my decision. If a girl is necessarily tears and whims, then let her grow up as a boy.
— Mum! Yes, how can you?!? This leads to infertility! We have a very big problem of psychological infertility in our country now! And this is mainly due to the fact that a woman does not feel like a woman!
— Well, when she becomes infertile, if so, then we will solve the problems of gender identification. In the meantime, let him learn and become a man. And when she grows up, let her go to psychologists and become a girl!
“Yes,” the psychologist listened to me. — I see that your gender identity is also violated. You are a very private person. You do not perceive new information. I noticed that even when you play and fool around with your daughter, you do it not sincerely, not on an equal footing. You are still a mother. It makes your daughter lonely.
“Aaaah… isn’t that normal?!?” I was surprised again. — Maybe let her play on equal terms with her friends? Will I still be a mom?
So we parted. Arriving home, I watched with pleasure how Lana turned in front of the mirror in a new dress, and in the evening I admired how slyly she persuaded her tired dad to read a book to her. She flirts, be healthy, I would still have to learn from her! And the next days, when I came to school, every time I saw how she skillfully (and where did she get it from?) Twisting the boys, how her classmates argue for the right to carry her briefcase, how for the right to be paired with her and keep her by her side. two of the coolest guys in her class had a hand in hand fight … Actually, Lana is a star in her class!
And I calmed down. I calmed down and decided that Lana was all right with identification, and with determination, and with her mother …
To psychologists — contact, but may common sense be with you!