How a woman’s sense of self changes when her child goes to school, tells our expert, psychologist and writer Tatiana Salvoni (@tattysalvoni).
Yesterday it was just a baby, learning to take the first steps, and you, his mother, were happy to celebrate each new tooth. When a child is very young, even if he is very late, you still feel like a young, young mother. But now he goes to school, and even if you are only 25, you are no longer the mother of the baby. You are a schoolboy’s mom. Your female status and level of responsibility are changing. Immediately you feel more mature, and … more mature. You look in the mirror, you look for wrinkles on the machine. You don’t find it, but you clearly realize that it’s temporary. Not today – tomorrow they will definitely appear. Fearfully? Yes, it seems not. But you go and buy a good cream, however.
It is with her child’s school that a woman begins her first adult midlife crisis. Suddenly you understand, and after all, everything is no longer a girl. And many of the joys of being no longer suit you. Even if they are available, but now you need to behave according to age and status. Plus, a new paradigm appears – comparing oneself with other mothers of other schoolchildren. And at the same time, for many women, the school activates personal school traumas, grievances and unfinished gestalts with all overwhelmed fears, which are deeply embedded in the memory of school traumas. And… sometimes it allows you to overcome them and finish them.
One mother said that all her adult life she held a grudge against her mother for the fact that she could not take her with flowers, like others, for the first time to the first grade. Everyone was happy, and she stood to the side alone. And so it was as if she spent her entire adult life aloof from other people, in a grudge against them. She projected the image of her mother onto all people. But when her daughter was born, she made a promise to herself – to take her daughter to school as expected. That was her point.
As luck would have it, the fulfillment of this very simple promise hung in the balance all the time. She had a job, then a terrible divorce, then some other circumstances of irresistible force, up to detention in prison. And when her daughter was about to go to first grade, she just started praying for a miracle. And a miracle happened! She was released, the charges dropped, and she took her daughter to school. All those who knew her story literally cried, and she herself, too, furtively shed tears throughout the line. For her, it was like re-living her own unfortunate September 1 many, many years ago, but now in a healthy version. After that, she was able to forgive her mother, and, in principle, somehow life began to improve. And she just overcame the neurosis, albeit in such a difficult way.
Even becoming a mother of a student in most cases increases the level of personal feelings of sexuality and irresistibility. Well, still not to rise! Look what a child is already an adult (albeit a first grader), and in the mirror what a nymph.
What feelings did you have as a woman, personality and just a person when your child went to school?