Men fall more easily into a frivolous state, becoming again careless teenagers. Women tend to show excessive seriousness, pragmatism and think about the future. Does this mean that it is more difficult for women to reconnect with their own childhood? No, our experts answer, they just do it their own way.
“I have never had a car, but I have been partial to cars since childhood,” says 51-year-old Evgeny. – Somehow teenagers rolled an old Volga into our yard. I walked past, I look – they are puffing, trying to raise it with a jack. Helped. Another time I cleaned the contacts, took out paint for them …
I walked up to my elbows in engine oil and, as a result, got so involved that I began to spend almost all my free time on this wreck. Neighbors twisted their fingers at the temple, my wife was unhappy that I was disappearing in the yard all weekend. But imagine: we almost revived this Volga! Salon pulled over, painted the hood. Communication with the boys and fussing with the car gives me such pleasure that I forget both about my age and about my problems.
The wife says: you just looked younger. Still, firstly, when you communicate with the guys, you forget about your age, and secondly, a childhood dream has come true!
Women experience mixed feelings of surprise and annoyance when their companions are reincarnated from respectable men into immediate children: picking irons for hours, playing football or spending the day fighting with computer cybermonsters. But what really worries them – the frivolity of male behavior or … an unfulfilled desire to feel like children themselves?
difference in behavior
Does this mean that it is easier for men to get in touch with their own childhood?
“In a sense, this is true,” says psychotherapist Viktor Makarov. – A man, as a rule, is result-oriented, he has a clear goal. And if he feels the need to feel like a child again (whether it be a spontaneous impulse or a conscious desire), then he realizes this much faster than a woman. It is always difficult for her to feel lightness and spontaneity: a sense of responsibility makes a woman focus on the process (how I do it), and not on the achievement (what I strive for).”
It is generally more difficult for women to switch from emotions to actions: they are often hindered by details that men do not pay attention to: for example, how they look from the outside or what others think of them.
Contact with our own childhood helps each of us maintain a taste for life.
“The behavior of men is more noticeable, they more easily demonstrate their desires and needs. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to look inward, – Viktor Makarov comments. – It is easier for men to start acting than to discuss the need for action again and again. For example, if a man wants to play football in the yard, he will get up and go to play. Women, on the contrary, find it easier to discuss their feelings and sensations than, say, call and enroll in a theater studio.
“It may seem that it’s easier for a man to feel like a child again,” says Jungian psychotherapist Madina Slutskaya. – After all, boys, as a rule, are brought up taking into account that they will play an active role in society. And when a boy grows up, he is already focused on the fact that activity is good, right.”
Nevertheless, we all know completely passive men and creative women. After all, our behavior is ultimately influenced by so many factors: our temperament, upbringing, childhood circumstances, family history and relationships with parents.
Changing Roles
And how do women manage to touch their childhood?
“On the weekends, I learn to dance the Argentine tango,” says 29-year-old Alena. “In dancing, I forget about everything in the world, it seems to me that I live in another era, in another country.” “My colleagues and I put on puppet shows on the weekends, not only for our children, but for ourselves too,” says 34-year-old Irina. “We sew dolls, we make decorations – in a word, we arrange holidays for ourselves.”
Participation in theme parties, carnivals, theatrical performances is a great occasion and an opportunity to activate your childish state, get rid of everything external and return to what we wanted from childhood and actually still want.
As adults, men still perceive football as a game. And for women, playing mother-daughter becomes a routine
“There are many holidays in our country,” says Viktor Makarov, “but, unfortunately, we do not know how to use this happy opportunity to “liberate” our inner child, because our usual feast (even with songs) does not please him. But real fun, dancing, games harmonize his condition.
For the first time, we choose hobbies and games in early childhood. An important role in this is given to the process of identification with the parent of the same gender, so girls are more likely to play with dolls, and boys prefer cars or football. But, as adults, men still perceive football as a game. And when girls grow up, playing mother-daughter becomes a routine for them. Therefore, women are looking for other ways to feel the inner child in themselves.
“In order to reunite with him, they choose dancing, painting, theater, literary pursuits – everything that allows you to free your imagination, change your usual role and has nothing to do with everyday life, work,” explains Madina Slutskaya. “Although sometimes it’s easier for some women to find themselves in “family” creativity, which does not require an indispensable exit from the house: they embroider, sew, cook unusual complex dishes”
Rejoice for real
Forgetting about the “adult” everyday affairs, we return to childhood – a time when problems and obligations were just part of the game for us. The inner child also comes to life when we put aside (albeit for a while) worries about the future and enjoy the present.
The ancient Greeks distinguished between two types of time: chronos (continuously flowing) and kairos (present time). It is to the latter that our relationship with the inner child relates.
“When I feel sad, I go to the children’s park, where my grandmother and I once walked,” says Kira, 28. “Or I just wrap myself in my grandmother’s scarf – it’s a little prickly and smells faintly of some kind of cologne, which you can’t find anywhere else now … and I dream like in childhood.”
It is not so important how we connect with the child in ourselves, it is important that we allow ourselves to do this.
We easily leave the chronological (calendar) time, when some sounds, pictures or smells carry us into dreams – at this moment the inner child comes to life. “It allows you to explore the world, invent, express feelings, be direct and open,” says family psychotherapist Inna Khamitova. – The inner child is our creativity, and it has no gender, we do not say: inner boy or inner girl.
If in childhood, for some reason, a child’s impulsiveness was tabooed (for example, absolute obedience was required of him), then all his activity and creativity will be embodied in dreams. The inner child, if we maintain contact with him, develops all the time, learns the world around him. This is what makes it possible to distinguish the manifestation in an adult of traits that came from childhood from infantilism.
The difference in the relationship we maintain with our own childhood only shows how men and women (more precisely, the masculine and feminine in us) differ from each other in the way they comprehend the world. In fact, it is not so important how we connect with the child in ourselves, it is important that we allow ourselves to do this. After all, to maintain this contact means to preserve one’s roots, and ultimately, the taste for life.
Childhood and infantilism
Sometimes we reproach our loved ones for frivolity, immaturity. How to determine if a person is really infantile? “The main sign of infantility is the inability of a person to solve the problems of the next stage of life, to be responsible for their decisions and actions,” says Madina Slutskaya. “It might look like a protracted teenage crisis. An infantile person either remains dependent on others, or acts in defiance. Sometimes he may even continue to dress like a teenager, often use slang in his speech, indulge in extreme hobbies or be capricious, demanding increased attention to himself. This applies equally to men and women. In addition, often people who are sufficiently realized and mature socially can be infantile in the family. If the interests and needs of all people close to him are subordinated to a person’s hobbies, this also speaks of his infantilism.