Simple right childhood: a book for smart and happy parents (N.I. Kozlov)

​​

If the book by Yu.B. Gippenreiter “Communicate with the child. How?» — about a feminine approach to parenting, Simple Right Childhood promotes a demanding, masculine approach to parenting. Our children are smart, you can talk to them in an adult and serious way. What can come of this?

This book is for you, for smart, conscious people, for loving parents. It is clear that not all of us always turn out to be smart, we do not always act consciously, and our love for children often alternates with something else — everything happens! — however, you have purchased and opened this book. So it’s important to you. So it’s time to learn the most important science in the world — the science of raising children.

In this book:

Impartial «debriefing» of our favorites:

— why they cry, why they are offended, what they want from us and from the world, how they copy us, how they control us;

— answers to questions about love for children: what it really is and whether it is always for the good.

Tips for the indifferent:

— how to help your child, how to correct his shortcomings, how the upbringing of a boy differs from the upbringing of a girl — a biased analysis of typical parental mistakes, and after each identified set of pedagogical imperfections, the author offers practical exercises to work on oneself and correct educational shortcomings;

— many people recognize themselves in the situations described, but the author’s task is not to criticize, but to help — and to help not in theory or in the form of benevolent platitudes, but to help actively.

The most amazing thing is that in order to make children happy, each parent himself must become a perfect and happy person. The manuscript of the book was highly appreciated by scientific experts. It can be useful as a popular science workshop on education not only for parents, but also for students of pedagogical specialties, and will also be for educators, school and social teachers, psychologists and university teachers.

Simple Proper Childhood: A Book for Happy Parents

It is impossible to write a good book on parenting. The point is not that all children are different: for a good teacher this is not a difficulty, the difficulty lies in something else: in the fact that parents are different. Every parent needs their own parenting book, a book that suits their level of development and their philosophy of life. And if the level of the book «does not match» with the level of a particular parent, there will be trouble.

Unfortunately, most parents, if they suddenly decided to write a book about their upbringing of children, could take the classic “So it happened” as an epigraph, and title it “What has grown, has grown.” A minority of parents know what they are doing and why. Clever — always less.

But hello parents!

It is known: what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull. Smart and talented parents can do anything, and I can tell them amazing, fantastically working things, but if these methods and techniques fall into the hands of stupid parents, it will be bad. Even worse, it is impossible to prevent this: if you write in the preface that this book is not for everyone, but only for the most advanced parents, then you can be sure that just the most advanced parents will doubt that this is about them. They are self-critical. But other parents, who are not fit for the book, will seize the methods proposed by the author with enthusiasm. And when they do, it will be too late…

And what to do in this situation? I wrote this book anyway. I have been asked for it for many years, I promised to write it — and here it is in front of you. Realizing that this book would bring direct harm to someone, I wrote it: because the best parents need it. Once upon a time, this book should have appeared anyway, let it appear now!

This book is for you, for smart conscious people, for loving parents. It is clear that not all of us always turn out to be smart, we do not always act consciously, and our love for children often alternates with something else — everything happens! — however, you have purchased and opened this book. So it’s important to you. So it’s time to learn the most important science in the world — the science of raising children.

Do we need to educate our children?

Raising children is one thing. But educating is another. Tell me, are you raising your children?

To be honest, first of all we raise our children. We feed them, we walk them, we treat them when they get sick, and we teach them what they should know. But as for education, even interest in this is small: “What? We gave a good school, we buy educational games. What else does he need? It will grow no worse than others!” When we meet, we are more interested in talking about cooking/rags (if it’s women) and sports/politics (men). Yes? Or about education?

Not everyone is into education. When children behave well, we do not want to educate them, but to love them. I want to admire them, I want to play with them, I want to support them in their endeavors. When children behave normally, we are not engaged in education, but in our own affairs.

In the evening, we got shabby, sat at the telly for a while, then had a fight, now he is angry, and she is offended — so the day has passed, just that the child got in the way all the time … Where is the upbringing?

If children are not educated, they grow up ill-bred. Your ill-mannered daughter will marry a young man who can hardly be called an adult: he was not taught to be responsible for himself and at least put his socks back in place, he likes to spend time playing computer games and working for scrap, he is unscrupulous and unrestrained … He was simply not brought up : will that suit you?

Even a she-bear brings up her cubs, our children need education even more. The child must understand that it is impossible to run out onto the road with transport during any game, at the table you need to eat porridge with a spoon, and not with your hands, and you need to resolve contentious issues in the game first with requests, and not immediately with a fight. In the end, a small child needs to be taught to pee in a pot, and not randomly.

And this is education. And later, when our children grow up, they need to be taught independence, responsibility, respect for themselves and for people, teach gratitude and love. It will not come by itself: it comes only with education.

If children are not educated, they will educate themselves one way or another, but with each generation the level will be a little lower. In order for children to stay at the level or their level to grow, children need to be educated. Nature gives the child the makings, upbringing makes the child a man. Wrong education can kill a child’s courage and interest in life, instill bad habits, develop selfishness and allow theft. On the contrary, smart upbringing introduces the child to culture, enables the child to enter the circle of people, proper upbringing can develop in the child respect for himself and for people, courage and creativity, and create the prerequisites for his health and happiness.

I am writing this book with the smartest, most conscientious, and most loving parents in the first place. And, addressing them specifically, I say categorically: we, the best parents, need to raise children. Definitely needed! We ourselves need it, our country needs it, the children themselves need it. Raising our children is our investment in the future, it is what makes our lives meaningful.

How do we want our children to be?

A well-bred child is still better than an ill-bred one. Ill-bred children are wild children who live by their own desires and perceive everyone around them as something that they can use or that they need to fight against. On the contrary, an elementarily brought up child is already an adequate being and rather useful than harmful. Yes, he is still a child, but at least he is a well-mannered child.

A well-bred child is a minimum educational task. This is good, but not enough. And what is the task for advanced parents, for those who want and can do more?

As a rule, good parents want to raise children, first of all, healthy physically and mentally, smart (free, lively and accurate thinking), decent (respecting other people, caring not only for themselves), happy, creative and disciplined, ready to meet life’s challenges. difficulties and capable of doing big life projects in life.

Correctly. But it’s vague. Want to be clearer and more specific? You are welcome!

If I am writing this book for advanced parents, then who are these people at work and in business? I know these are leaders first and foremost. And if I write for leaders and talk to leaders, it’s easy for me to speak the same language with them, because I myself have been a leader for thirty years. And then I can say simply: our task is to raise an adult from a child, whom we ourselves would be happy to hire. If you know how to dream and can imagine the ideal employee, then your child looks like him?

Just to clarify: the ideal employee is not a dumb performer of «whatever you want.» Sorry. The ideal employee is a dream. This is not just a thinking, disciplined and responsible person, this is a creative and initiative person. Right? But more than that, the ideal employee by temperament is a leader and leader. This is a person who can be entrusted with independent and difficult projects in the confidence that he will take it upon himself and do everything.

Try it, right?

And the regular task of the head is not only to select, but also to educate employees. And if you know how to educate employees, you also know how to educate children. And you understand your tasks — raising a child into a thinking and responsible person, independent and disciplined, creative and proactive, a leader by nature.

Once you’ve made up your mind about that, parenting becomes easy. In this case, you do not have a separation between family and work: you treat respected employees at work as beloved children, and treat your children as adults and responsible employees.

Now, the next item.

More confident parents who are willing to invest in their children set more ambitious goals. Their task is to raise a child who will be ahead of them. Ahead first of all in terms of the level of culture: your child will be a more educated person than you, he will have wider erudition and deeper knowledge in areas that are important for his future. He will have better manners than you, your daughter will be even more feminine than mom, and your son will be more masculine than dad. Your children in comparison with you will be even more collected and purposeful people, and at the same time even more mentally stable and happy. Yes?

What’s next? What is the maximum task for the best, most advanced parents?

It’s scary to write about it, but I’ll risk it.

I think that the task of such parents is more than raising a well-mannered adult from a child. It is not enough. Their task is more than to give the child happiness, health and life prospects. This is not enough. And it is not enough even to achieve that your child grows up better than you, so that your child can be ahead of you. The maximum task in education for the best, for the strongest parents sounds like this: to raise children in such a way that they themselves raise children who will be the same. And not just the same, but who will raise such children, who will raise such children … — and so on.

We emphasize that one of the biggest and most important tasks is:

Children raised by you should continue the idea of ​​education according to your canons. Then — grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. The system must reproduce itself. Otherwise, the project «Child» is a short-term project, just for one life. The real project «Child» should develop into the project «Dynasty».

The task is to raise children who will raise children who …

Who are the people we admire? Alive and thinking, skillful and hardworking, decent and responsible, with a developed personality and freely choosing their own path, able to enjoy life and just happy — probably, this is how we always want to be ourselves, this is how we want to see our children. Our ideal is a developed and successful person, who knows what he wants and knows how to achieve it, a person-personality.

In my opinion, this is definitely not enough. Human life is just beginning here.

Such a description of life is a description of a person living at the level of the first position of perception. Hooray, you lived up to the first position. A personality has appeared, but do you see other personalities? Do you feel them? Do you respect? Are they people for you or are you the only one with a personal position? Do you have the wisdom, strength and culture to think about the prospects? To know not only one’s own history, but also to think about the history of the future? Thinking of many people in the future? What are you doing for that future life, how are you building it? And who will your children be? What about great-grandchildren?

Why is it necessary to think about it?

I want to tell you about Japan. Japan is an amazing country of educated and hardworking people. Compared to the Russians, they live so differently, collected and businesslike, that many residents of Sakhalin and Kamchatka, with whom I spoke, consider them to be aliens. But Japan was not always like this, the rise of Japan happened after the Second World War, after its complete defeat. It was a poor, bombed out, humiliated country, but suddenly they gathered and, as a single organism, one nation, began to live, develop, work hard. From nothing, on a bare rocky island, without oil and other minerals, they created a high-tech power, a miracle country that rose like a rocket and became a model of intelligent solutions for the whole world. This is a feat — a feat of an entire nation. But all this was done by specific people who woke up in the morning, ate a pumpkin when there was not enough money for sushi, who fell in love and got married. Everything that is done is done by specific people. And now they had children, and the parents wanted to give them their beautiful country, which they had made with their own hands.

What happened next? What happened next was an outwardly inconspicuous, but terrible thing. Two generations have passed, and that Japan is no more. Everything that the parents did, the children ate, and they don’t want to do anything else. Children are happy: they have money, cars and freedom. There is no one else to build Japan, and Japan (that Japan!) is no more. Japan is over.

Think about it: you can be the hero of your life three times, a strong and super successful person. You worked for two or even three, you need to erect a tall monument for your life, your fellow citizens are proud of you. And you have children. You probably think that they will take an example from you … Have we read that children always look up to their parents? But how ready are you for your children to go the other way and choose emptiness, the position of consumers who are only interested in entertainment and their own inner harmony?

If you worked heroically, but did not build the future of your family and your children, then you turned out to be simply short-sighted. You thought only of your children, only that they should be happy. But this is not enough: it is necessary to think about the children of our children and about the children further. There is no task to raise only your child: you invested — and that’s it. And then what? What did you do it for? The grandson will grow up, and when you are no longer there, he will demolish all your work.

It is important to build the future.

I have an educational covenant. My task is to raise children not just healthy, beautiful, smart, successful. My task is to raise children who will raise their children such, who will raise their children such, who will raise their children such … And the longer I provide this ladder of reproduction, the longer it lasts in the future (if not indefinitely), the more I will accomplish his task as a father, a parent. A far-sighted, honest task.

Methods of education should be selected «under the growth» of parents

It is necessary to educate children, but not everyone can be allowed into the matter of education.

Parents really are very different: there are smart and loving, there are simpler, there are — absolutely nowhere. It is not true that all parents take care of their children; It is not true that all parents love their children. It is difficult to call homeless people parents, although many of them have children, including those in different cities. On the other hand, there are such names as Janusz Korczak and Anton Semyonovich Makarenko, Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner: teachers from God who love children and know how to love children. The main mass of parents is between one and the other pole, it’s just ordinary parents. Thus, all parents can be divided into three categories: «problem», «ordinary (average) parents» and «advanced parents».

We are most often concerned with dysfunctional children, and usually such children grow up, in an understandable way, with problem parents. And one of the most traditional questions is how to prevent such situations, how to influence problem parents, how to teach them at least the basics of reasonable education?

I’ll be honest: you won’t get an answer to that question here. Moreover, I will not even put it seriously in this book: this is a wrong, this is an unproductive question.

Why? What is meant?

Troubled children and problem parents

In this kitchen, neither the windows nor the dishes have been washed for a long time. There are cigarette butts and an unfinished bottle on the table, in the next room on a sagging sofa, the one who did not finish watching football on TV is sleeping in a crumpled T-shirt … in fact, no one knows when she will return. Here live those who will politely be called problem parents, although they don’t even consider themselves parents: it’s just that bedbugs get on the couch, and they have children … Problem parents can’t cope with the tasks of upbringing, neither with the children themselves, nor with themselves — Yes, and do not set themselves such tasks. They do not raise children, not only and not so much because they do not know how, but rather because they do not care about children at all. Children are more of a hindrance to them in life, and when children fall under their feet, they take out their mood on them.

How to teach the education of such problem parents? Once again, the answer is no. This is not the kind of soil in which the seeds of enlightenment can rise. Writing articles for them and having conversations with them is useless: these people don’t read books, they don’t listen to lectures and webinars. Writing articles to them and talking to them about not beating children is pointless, they won’t hear it. With regard to problem parents, education is not required, rather juvenile justice is required here, but this is already a conversation that goes far beyond psychology.

But, perhaps, to act differently — to deprive such parental rights and take the upbringing of such dysfunctional children into your own hands? After all, there are orphanages-boarding schools? Unfortunately, there is nothing to please us here either: the investments are colossal, and the results are negative …

Today criminals, alcoholics and drug addicts are leaving children’s homes, where more than twenty billion dollars are invested annually into Russian society. According to official data from the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, only 10% of graduates of Russian state orphanages and boarding schools adapt to life, 40% commit crimes, another 40% of graduates become alcoholics and drug addicts, 10% commit suicide. Are you ready to raise criminals, alcoholics and drug addicts with your own money (after all, all this is done with your money)?

In Singapore, this problem was solved in a different way: mothers who give birth and abandon children are offered sterilization in exchange for solving the housing problem: they are given state-owned housing. After 20 years since the beginning of this social experiment, we can talk about quite positive results: the cultural level of people is growing, the country is flourishing.

Note that in fact it is possible and necessary to work with children of such parents, but in other ways. What? The only successful approach known to us is the approach of A.S. Makarenko. He knew how to turn juvenile lazybones, thieves and bandits into decent and worthy people, but we will talk about this later.

What parents do with their children

Ordinary parents are not the worst parents, but not quite perfect either. These are normal, ordinary parents, which are the majority. Dear colleagues, normal parents, how would you answer this question: do we bring up our children?

If by upbringing we understand the deliberate actions of parents aimed at inculcating skills and habits useful for life, turning a child into a person, then we, ordinary parents, do not educate our children. Children draw something from us themselves, but we do not educate them. Shouldn’t parental reproaches and lectures be called upbringing when we get angry with our children? The maximum that we teach children in these cases is to lecture and reproach …

Want a picture that will remind us of us? Don’t be afraid: the picture will be quite nice. So…

A cheerful company arrived at the boarding house. How good! You can yell songs all night and overeat with meat. Here it is — rest! A bit boring for a one year old. Mom is busy, she needs to joke and flirt with friends, so when the baby comes up to her, they laugh at him (stumbled, hides behind mom — very funny!) Or sounds “Leave me alone!”.

Morning, the company has breakfast. So that the child does not interfere with her mother’s communication, she gave him toys and chats with friends. Occasionally, as if remembering the child, she turns to him and addresses him with something random, for example: «Show the letter A.» However, she immediately turns away, so the child does not respond to her request.

Note: the mother’s request was not fulfilled. A trifle? A trifle. But if later the question arises: why does he not obey?, then the answer is here. The child has already remembered that you won’t get through to your mother, and, on the other hand, her requests can be ignored.

Meanwhile, one of the friends turned to the child: he held out the letter. The child reached out with his hands to take it, and the friend, instead of giving it into his hands, put the letter on the child’s head and the letter fell. Funny, is not it? Everyone laughed, and the child looked at his mother carefully. Yeah, mom laughs. So, you can be naughty, and he throws the letter at his mother.

— Just don’t throw it! Mom screams and laughs. The child does not yet know the words, but he hears intonations: they are cheerful and provocative. So, everything is correct, and with a battle cry he already throws the letter into the glass on the table … The glass did not break, but the adults are no longer happy.

— Well, stop it quickly! Mom screams sternly, raising her eyebrows.

The child looks at his mother. Schizophrenia? Uncle did — everyone liked it. He did and everyone liked it. And now for the same thing — they swear. They allow it themselves, they scold it themselves … Since you swear, I will pay you! I cried.

«What’s wrong with you!» Everyone laughs, you alone cry all the time! — Mom is even more angry because the child is already completely distracting her from her friends …