Having become acquainted with the theory of social psychoanalysis of emotions, a woman asked me the following question.
You write that we can control the emotions of children. In particular, you say that a child, when he comes home from school, should behave in a friendly manner, kiss his mother. What if a child has a conflict with classmates at school? The child is upset, beaten, and so on, he has a feeling of disappointment, anger, resentment. But he remembers that his mother said: “Come home and be cheerful!” He knows that his mother loves when he is cheerful. You can’t show your displeasure to mom, so I’ll hide my discontent! I’ll kiss my mother and it’s better not to tell my mother what happened. And if I say, I will say against a calm background: “Here, mom, this happened to me!”, Although everything is seething in my soul. This is the suppression of emotions, and it is harmful, at least for children. If an adult can choose: my husband came, I met him joyfully, only then I said that this happened to me, then the child cannot do this, it is too much of a burden for him.
This is a difficult question. To answer it, you need to understand the situation in more detail, since very much is not clear from this description of the situation. The magnitude of the event that triggered the emotion is not clear, it is not clear how long ago it happened (just now or a few hours ago), and there is no data on the child, what his status is. Is he normal, is he neurotic, or is he a psychopath?
If there was an ordinary conflict at school, the child is normal, it happened a few hours ago and the child has already served several lessons, then the normal reaction of the child is to come home, greet everyone, kiss mom and tell her (if you want) about the conflict. Even complaining is fine. Discuss everything without psychos, draw conclusions and go do your homework. There is no terrible suppression of any emotions, there is no reason to worry about it.
If suddenly the conflict is not ordinary, but out of the ordinary terrible, the child was bullied for a long time so that he could not even sit in the lessons, in the chemistry lesson, which was taught by the headmaster, he broke into her, for no reason nagu.e.l, then it is an affect, a psychopathic breakdown, it is a special situation. The child is not himself, he cannot control himself in any way, and in such a situation no one will demand friendliness and smiles from him. Such really difficult emotions in a normal person need to be processed, it is rather harmful to restrain them, it is better to speak them out, throw them out in physical activity, take a shower and sleep for an hour.
Even if emotions are not difficult, if they are disturbing, it is still better to speak out and burn them in physical activity — this is always useful.
The third situation is an ordinary conflict, and the child is used to splashing out his emotions on everyone indiscriminately. This is still bad manners, and ahead — psychopathy. It is not about the dangers of suppressing emotions that you need to think about, but about the future of this child and how those who will be in contact with such a future psychopath will have to suppress emotions.
Once again: if nothing terrible happened, and the child emotionally breaks down on everyone indiscriminately, he is like a mother, that the headmistress, that Putin, he is ready to beat and destroy everyone without thinking about anything and not controlling himself, then the problem here is not suppression, but in the fact that the child behaves like a psychopath, becomes a psychopath, accustoms to psychopathic behavior.
The fourth option: an ordinary conflict, and after that the child is very worried, upset, although outwardly he behaves without psychos. Everything digests in itself. There are no complaints about the behavior of such a child, he will hug and kiss his mother, and he can tell everything to his mother, but such a child either needs to be treated, or taught to treat difficult issues of life more constructively: without upsetting himself, but thinking and mastering that which he still does not know how to do. Here the child has no suppression of emotions, but there is an inability to control oneself, an inability to solve life’s issues.
Total
In this situation, our attention should be attracted not by suppression, not by the danger of suppressing emotions, but by something else: the inability of our children to control their behavior and their emotions. We need not worry about possible suppression, but learn to raise our children so that they grow up strong, smart and well-mannered, able to manage their emotions. If a child cannot yet cope with his emotions, we will not scold him for this, we will teach him to cope with his emotions. And for this we will teach ourselves to talk to our children and teach our children to tell us everything that happens in their lives, teach them to talk well with us, parents: this is both joy and benefit.