Jean Ledloff spent two and a half years deep in the jungles of Latin America with the Yekuana Indians. Communication with these people made such a strong impression on her that Jean rejected Western ideas about how a person should live and raise children, and wrote this sensational book, which became a bestseller in many countries of the world. Jean brings us to the understanding that happiness is the natural state of every person; we lose well-being only because of a misunderstanding of our true needs and because of the wrong upbringing of children. Jean passionately encourages us to listen to our intuition, to understand ourselves and provide our children with a solid emotional foundation from which to live a happy and joyful life.
Now Jean Ledloff lives in California, practices and teaches psychotherapy based on the principle of succession. She lectures, speaks on radio and television around the world.
Fragments from the book
From Jean Ledloff. How to raise a happy child.
If there is any deviation from the correct behavior of the child, neither the fathers nor the mothers let it go. They don’t mess with them at all. As with Anchu’s behavior during the Vididi crisis, their expectations remain the same.
They don’t make pitying noises when a child gets hurt. They’re waiting for him to get up and catch up with them, if that’s all it takes. In the event of a serious illness or injury, they do everything in their power to help him recover: they give medicines or resort to the services of a shaman, sometimes they sing day and night, referring to the evil spirits that have entered the body of the patient, but do not express any compassion for him. . The patient, to the best of his ability, tries to survive the disease and not disturb anyone unnecessarily.
Our children, children of civilization, bear the constant burden of longing for lost love and receive hugs, kisses and gentle words for the slightest bruises. It may not be much help for their torn knees to heal, but the care they receive reduces the overall burden of pain when the child gets really down.
It is possible that the expectation of sympathy is largely a learned behavior. I don’t doubt it at all, but the confidence in themselves and in those around them (in this case, in a stranger in general), characteristic of children who came to me for help, spoke of something much deeper than just the lack of expectation of excessive tenderness on the part of adults. .
During one of the first expeditions to the Yekuana in the village of Anchu called Wananya, a boy of four years old approached me. He approached shyly, afraid to interrupt me. Our eyes met, we smiled encouragingly at each other, and then he gave me a thumbs up. On his face, except for a sincere smile, there was no pity for himself, no request to be pitied. The top of his finger and part of his nail were pierced through, and the fingertip shifted to the side rested only on the skin and semi-caked blood. As I began to clean my finger and put the tip back in its place, tears welled up in his big, doe-like eyes; sometimes his tiny hand stretched out to me trembled, but he did not withdraw it; in the most difficult moments he sobbed, at the rest of the time he was relaxed and his face kept calm. After bandaging my finger, I pointed to it and said: “Tu-unah ahkey!” (“Keep dry!”) and he melodiously repeated: “Too-unah ahkey!” I also added: “Khvaynama ehta” (“Come tomorrow”), and he left. His behavior completely contradicted my ideas about the behavior of children, about the treatment of them in emergency situations, the need for kind words as part of treatment, etc. I could hardly believe what I saw.
During another expedition, one morning I was awakened by the voice of a two-year-old child, repeating in a soft, thin voice: “Si! Si!” It was a close approximation of «Shi» — my name among the Yekuan, which he could pronounce. I leaned out of my hammock and saw Kananasi, all alone, with a cut in need of treatment. He did not cry at all and did not require support or comfort.
Another incident helped me a lot to understand, although it happened many months after I got used to the calm and relaxed attitude of the Yekuan to treatment. Awadahu, the second son of Anchu, a boy about nine years old, came to my hut with a wound in his stomach. Upon examination, it turned out that the wound was not deep and not at all dangerous, but at first glance I was afraid that the internal organs might have been severely damaged.
— Nehkuhmuhduh? (What is it?) I asked.
«Shimada (Arrow),» he replied politely.
— Amahdai? (Yours?) I asked.
«Katavehu,» he said the name of his ten-year-old brother, showing no more emotion than if he were talking about a flower.
I was already tending to his terrible wound when Katavehu and several other boys came in to see what I was doing. There was no trace of guilt in Katavehu, and no anger in Avadahu. It was a real accident. Their mother came up and asked what happened. She was briefly told that her eldest son had been shot by an arrow at the second son on the river bank.
— Yeheduhmuh? (Really?) she said calmly.
She left to do her business before I finished treating the wound. Her son was assisted; he did not call her; she had no reason to stay. The only one who was excited was me. What’s done can’t be taken back; the best treatment possible under those conditions was provided, and even the other boys did not need to stay. They were back to their games before I had finished. Awadah didn’t need any moral support, and when I applied the last plaster, he went back to the river, to his friends.
His mother proceeded from the fact that if he needed her support, he would come to her, and she was always ready to receive him.
Keep out of danger
American children are probably more protected by protective devices than any other child in the history of mankind, and therefore the least expected of them is the ability to take care of themselves.
It is very appropriate here to cite the story of one family that I heard. Parents were very worried that the pool in the courtyard of the house was a danger to their little child. It was not about the fact that the water in the pool could suddenly rise and carry the baby with it, but rather that the child could fall or throw himself into the pool. They built a fence around the pool and always kept the gate locked.
It is quite possible that with the help of the parents’ explanations, the child, without thinking about it at all, learned very well the meaning of the fence and the locked gate. He understood so well what was expected of him that, once finding the gate open, he entered it, fell into the pool and drowned.
When I heard this story, which was told to me in order to demonstrate the need to constantly protect children from their inherent ability to harm themselves, I could not help but think of that pit in the village of Vananya, next to which children played all day long without any supervision and at the same time remained whole and unharmed. These two separate cases, of course, do not mean much, but they well reflect the differences between the two cultures. Yekuan children find themselves in a huge number of potentially dangerous situations. One of the most impressive dangers is the ubiquitous presence of sharp machetes and knives that can be stepped on, dropped, and played with freely. The little ones, still not knowing anything about handles, took knives by the blades and, in front of me, waved them, clenching them in their plump fists. They not only did not hurt their own fingers and did not cause the slightest harm to themselves, but if they were in the hands of the mother, they managed not to hurt her either.
In the same way, children playing with firebrands, stumbling and falling with them, climbing over the threshold of a thirty-centimeter-high hut, never touched themselves, or the hanging dry palm leaves covering the roof, or their own or someone else’s hair with hot coal. Children, like puppies, played near the hearth without the intervention of adults who respected them.
The boys, starting at about a year and a half, were trained in archery with sharp arrows; however, some enthusiasts carried a bow with them almost always when they were on their feet. Archery was not limited to any designated areas; besides, there were no «safety rules». In the two and a half years I spent with the Yekuan, I witnessed only one arrow wound, which I mentioned above.
In addition, the dangers of the jungle await the child, in the vast untrodden expanses of which it is easy to get lost and where you can easily injure your bare feet and naked body when walking. Not to mention more obvious dangers like snakes, scorpions and jaguars.
And in rivers, strong currents are even more dangerous than anacondas and crocodiles, and a child who swam further than his strength and abilities allow him, with a high degree of probability, can break on rocks or numerous underwater snags. The depth and speed of the familiar part of the river varies from day to day depending on the amount of rain that has fallen upstream, so knowing the dangers today may not help tomorrow. Children who bathe and play daily in the river must accurately assess their strength under any circumstances.
Most likely, the child’s confidence in his abilities depends on the responsibility assigned to him. The ability to take care of oneself in most Western children is only partially used, and most of the care is taken over by the parents. With its inherent aversion to excess, the continuum eliminates just as many self-preservation mechanisms as others have taken on. As a result, effectiveness is reduced, since no one but the child himself can constantly and carefully be on guard of all the circumstances around him.
The less responsibility for the safety of the child will be assumed by the mother in our society, the faster and more fully the child will become independent. He himself will understand when he needs help or support. It is the child who should be the initiator of communication. Of course, this is not about depriving the baby of the opportunity to resort to the help of the mother, but she should offer a minimum of guidance and intervention.
An overprotective, dependent child becomes when his initiative is constantly intercepted by an excessively caring mother, and not when the baby was held in her arms in the first months of his life, which was especially important to him.