How does a child form a good relationship with himself and the world? Do the material well-being of the family, good toys, early development matter? Psychologists Svetlana Krivtsova and Galiya Nigmetzhanova are convinced that it’s all about the special attitude of adults. In the new book, The Art of Understanding the Child, experts note three of its components.
1. Respectful attention
Your child needs you so that he can feel respectful attention to himself — thanks to dialogues with you on various occasions, your comments and questions. You must become his benevolent (do you wish him well?) mirror. The mirror cannot show what is not there. It only shows what is there.
Many parents are attentive and observant. But not everyone is kind. There are mirrors that, with the best of intentions, reflect imperfections. They even exaggerate.
Children need respectful attention: they need someone nearby who will notice and show them something good, strong, healthy in themselves. That is why this attention is respectful.
One can agree with the statement that a child is a book that must first be read by an adult. But like the reader, like the book.
How the child will see, feel himself depends on what he now hears from us. The worst can happen: if he cannot bear bad feelings for himself, he will simply stop wanting to know and notice himself.
Of course, justice does not mean only praise. It can also be a calm discussion of failure.
Therefore, it is so important for parents to have an open mind, to see not only what worries them now. For example, if an adult notices only whether his daughter is healthy or sick (“How do you feel? Are you sick?”), This will become the most important feeling in life for the girl.
She will learn to recognize whether she is sick or healthy, and, most likely, will willingly and readily meet ailments, because she already knows herself like that, and the parent reacts to them with great attention.
But this is an example of narrow attention. A truly attentive adult is the one who notices emotional states: fatigue or a surge of strength in a child, his interests, halftones and nuances of mood, which he himself, perhaps, does not yet recognize.
What else can an attentive adult notice?
- Abilities, small successes, improvements. In this case, his task is not to praise and admire, but to calmly state: “Now you can do it.”
- Effort and diligence, how the child copes with difficulties. In this case, his task is to teach the child to evaluate the complexity of the task by how much effort he has to make.
“We have to sometimes look at our children to realize that it is, in fact, a miracle that a child has a will of its own, even if it is now directed against my will.”
This is how existential psychotherapist Alfried Lenglet reminds us of the importance of respectful attention for a person to grow up.
2. Fair assessment
Your child needs you to be fair to him. Fair self-esteem grows on the basis of respectful attention, thanks to it, an idea arises of what is mine and what is not suitable for me.
But in order to treat yourself fairly, you first need to know the fair treatment from other people. All children are very sensitive to injustice.
This experience can hurt, bring pain. “I was treated unfairly” means that they do not see me, and what happened does not correspond to my value, how I feel about it.
A fair attitude, on the contrary, means that adults not only noticed, for example, what the child did, but also correlated it with what he can do, what he wants, with who and what he is. What is an important achievement for one, is a low result for another.
In this case, they say: “You don’t seem to have tried very hard today!” All teachers know this.
Justice requires to correlate actions, achievements, successes with one’s own child, with what resonates in him, and does not correlate only with formal, external criteria.
When we see children, relating them to their own values, and in this they are fair, they become ready to try again and again.
Of course, justice does not mean only praise. It can also be a calm discussion of failure. If it is fair, it also awakens a desire — only now to correct the mistake, improve the result, «try again.»
For a child, it is important not only that he did not succeed this time, but also that he is significant to others. He is not indifferent! And in the eyes of an important adult for him, he can be what he is.
3. Recognition of value without any conditions
Your child needs you to recognize and confirm the value of his being in the world without any conditions (that is, unconditionally). For the formation of «I» everyone needs the recognition of value from other people.
Others make personal judgments about us, either explicitly or implicitly. We learn what they see in us, but we also learn how it is for them — what they saw in us.
How do they perceive our words, deeds, features, how does this affect their essence? How valuable am I to you — regardless of politeness, conventions, circumstances? These questions can be answered only if other people have a position in relation to us.
“There are many things about you that are not like me. And it’s great!”, “You are different, and I appreciate it.”
This attitude of an adult in relation to a child is the most difficult and most necessary for both. It is not easy to appreciate what is incomprehensible and not like ourselves: otherness is always a challenge! Is always!
This is the most serious test of parental maturity, true personal maturity, and not ostentatious confident well-being. And this is important for a child, especially for a child with special needs or simply born «not into mother / father’s breed.»
When parents appreciate the child for who he is, they kind of give him back to himself.
What does the child feel? Some general attitude towards oneself, showing through in every act and every comment of the parents. And he accepts precisely this attitude as worthy of himself. Through the attitude of others, above all adults, his essential must again come to him.
When parents appreciate the child for who he is, they kind of give him back to himself.
“Why appreciate her? At the age of six, she never learned to read! Everyone in our family read very early, I was already writing historical novels at her age. What can I appreciate my daughter for? These words of my mother are a manifestation of her immaturity.
What is a mature position? Again and again remind yourself: «My daughter is different, not like me.» And ask yourself: “What is she like? What is not in it, what is not yet? And what is in it?
When parents find it difficult to recognize the value of their child — other than that he is their child — this indicates that they have not yet seen him in his essence. Recognition and approval are two ways to show your recognition of the value of the child.
«What you do, I find good!» — such an attitude of adults strengthens the «I» and is transmitted to the child as a way to value himself. This is more than a fair estimate. It means that «parents see me correctly,» but the child may not feel approved of himself as an individual.
By recognizing your worth, there is a feeling that you have the deepest right to be yourself.