«What to do when there are no more words?» So thought the young woman, returning from school with her fifth-grader son. Today, as usual, she listened to the teachers’ complaints and reproaches. Nothing new: lazy, talkative, does not want to learn.
On the way home, she usually gave him a scolding. That is, she repeated everything the same, but in the form of questions and not monotonously, like a teacher, but with irritation and resentment. The son was either silent or snarled. So they were assigned roles.
But on that day, something happened: did you feel more tired than usual and didn’t have the strength to repeat the pedagogical performance again? Something had to be done, of course. But what? All the words were spoken, and more than once. Even indignation and resentment require inspiration, but she had not felt it in herself for a long time, she spoke with mechanical irritation. The son answered, apparently, in the same way, taking a portion of the prescribed. In those moments there were no people more strangers to each other than they were.
She suddenly felt sorry for her son, and she unexpectedly stroked his hair. At first, he was twitching to the side, but then buried his head in her. They looked at each other. She could not hide the fact that she was unhappy and broken, but nevertheless, through it all, she smiled at him. And then she saw that in the eyes of her boy, who never — even from pain — did not cry, tears come out.
Both of us are, first of all, good people, we both love, need each other and equally experience failures.
On this day, she made several important discoveries for herself. For the first time, she failed to hide from her son that she was upset, and immediately she realized that this was right, that it did not need to be hidden. Irritation is something else entirely. It is shown only to the weak (and to the strong they experience fear or hidden hatred). Therefore, irritation unwittingly belittles. It hadn’t occurred to her before.
It formed an unexpected combination of words: «presumption of conscience.» In Russian, this meant to assume that her son had a conscience, like all people, that he himself was upset and blamed himself for what was happening. But the word «shameless» was common in her reprimands. That is, it turned out that it was her reproaches that should have awakened this conscience in him. Silly. And it turned out, most likely, the opposite.
She wasn’t alone, he was in trouble too. Why? We need to figure it out together. But precisely together, sympathizing with each other, not fighting. Probably, even after that, the son will not wake up the next day ready to storm the school heights. But she will no longer have the need for prodding, and he will no longer have the need for alertness and the desire to deceive.
After all, both of them are, first of all, good people. Both love and need each other, both experience failure equally. presumption of conscience. How could she not understand this before?