Contents
The main difference between a child’s psyche and an adult’s is not at all that children are dumber. Some children are much smarter than you and me, but one thing is certain: children are inexperienced and at first it is enough to simply deceive them. How often do we face this temptation: to give a child a beautiful lie, to a question asked by surprise — to answer first what “came to mind”. It is easier than at the cost of your own comfort to indulge in long, complex and not always pleasant explanations! If you don’t think the lies you gave life to are still up in the air, then why not lie? But not everything is so simple.
Dishonesty as a way out of conflict
How hard it is sometimes to withstand confrontation with a crumb! For some reason, it is impossible to give in, but seeing tears and listening to crying is also not the most pleasant pastime.
The most common situation in which parents resort to craftiness is the moment when the child is denied what they want. The «I want» that escaped from the children’s lips repeatedly made any mother shudder in the store. Each family has its own philosophy of visiting the toy departments, but the parent always knows: it’s not at all about the family budget. It is impossible to buy everything, and the best doll always remains in the window — shining and out of reach. You will easily recognize the most common parental responses in the «want» situation.
Switching attention
The attention of very young children is very unstable, and desires are changeable, like the northern lights. Even if the baby is already talking a little, you always have the opportunity to distract him in any suitable way. However, your attempts to switch the attention of the «raging» child after a certain age (2-2.5 years) become akin to ignoring and disrespecting his personality. It doesn’t matter if you say: “What a delicious pie we have at home!” or: «Look — there is an uncle who looks like a clown!», you demonstrate the same thing: the child failed to convey to you what he tried so hard to convey to you. He feels like you are brushing him off like a fly.
Some parents have a habit of simultaneously extracting «educational benefits» from the situation. For example, say: “Do you want such a squirrel? And really, what a cutie! It is very similar to the bunny that you threw under the sofa and didn’t get it for six months. ” Such a technique (manipulation of guilt) is certainly dishonest, and, like any forbidden technique, it is fined. In this case, children’s trust in you suffers.
Grotesque reasons designed to discourage the baby
This way of getting along with toddlers is more typical of their grandparents. Who hasn’t heard something like: “If we buy this expensive toy, we will starve to death” or “Don’t scream, your teeth will run out of your mouth” or “You can’t fight! You’ll break your dad’s head with a shovel” or “There is no more pacifier — the wolves ate it” or “Don’t knock on the wall — it will fall on your nose” or, finally: “If you behave badly, I will give you to the gypsies”?
Up to a certain age, this technique is quite effective. Although he leaves the baby with an elusive feeling of being deceived, he amazes to such an extent that he no longer wants to be naughty in the next 10 minutes. The main disadvantage is that such amazing statements do not at all instill in the child any skills to adapt to the world, they do not teach him to behave a little more consciously, but only serve at a critical moment as something like a verbal gag.
Depreciation
Many parents react to an unexpected “want” in this way: “Why do you need this worthless thing? She is not beautiful at all, yours are much better. The method is bad because you actually devalue not the toy, but the child’s feelings. It seems to him (and not unreasonably) that this thing is beautiful, and you defiantly do not take this into account, confusing the child.
Frank lie
For example: “The doll lives in the store. You can visit her, but you can’t take her home.” Even bypassing the “ethical moment”, one can say that such a lie, like any other, is bad because of its impracticality. It only works as long as you have the ability to maintain the illusion once created, shielding the child from the truth. At some point, the child will see a doll bought by another baby, or in some other way will penetrate the essence of commodity-money relations. And for the discovery, again, he will pay you with his distrust.
All these situations can be commented on simultaneously. Your child has the right to make his own choice, even if it is made on an emotional basis. If you can’t “get” the treasure you want, honestly explain why by trying to get as emotionally close to the little one as possible. Do not ignore the baby either directly or indirectly, respect his feelings. It is by taking seriously his desires that you teach your child to take seriously your refusal and your explanations, because they are no less weighty. If the child managed to outguess you, you have no choice but to buy him the desired toy!
Are you red or white?
Of course, a happy child should grow up in an atmosphere of universal love, friendship and mutual understanding. Of course, mom and dad should always be in solidarity in any matter. And there is no doubt that dad loves his mother-in-law, and mom and second grandmother are best friends. And what if this is not entirely true?
Every family goes through relationship crises. And any relationship between loving people is not cloudless. And also — almost every family has its chronically painful points, its secrets, its «skeletons in the closet.» It is very important to what extent the child is involved in the dark sides of life at home. It is also important when and how education is provided. Here, as elsewhere, a delicate balance must be maintained.
One extreme: humanely «turn off» the child from all family problems. Another: to “bring down” everything in detail on his head, and even wait for conscious participation. In the first case, you deprive the baby of the opportunity to relate to reality in a certain way. He has a distorted reality at his disposal and feels based on it. (In addition, whatever one may say, every day brings him closer to an unpleasant discovery, which he is not ready to accept.) In the second case, you loosen the structure of family roles: by expecting the baby to participate “on an equal footing” in a family problem, you deprive him of the ground under his feet . Small children should not support their parents, protect and comfort them. Everything should be exactly the opposite.
If you, having quarreled with your husband, haven’t talked to him for 3 days, is it reasonable to tell him that you have a headache when asked by a child? The kid will decide that loving people, referring to a migraine, can easily ignore each other for days on end. If you can’t make contact with your mother-in-law, is it right to assure your child that your grandmother is a sweet person and you are in love with her without memory? In the first case, it is much better to say: “Yes, we quarreled with dad, and I am very upset,” and in the second: “Yes, my grandmother and I are too different to understand each other. It will be better for both of us if we see each other as little as possible.” There is no crime in such words. A child more than once in his life will face the fact that his loved ones quarrel, and that some people are generally incompatible with each other. It is much worse if a child grows up in an atmosphere of hypocrisy.
«Main Question»
While the baby, sitting on the floor, enthusiastically collects Nikitin’s squares, any mother feels like she is keeping up with the times. Of course, — she reflects, — it would not even occur to her, answering the question “about this”, to think of a stork, a store or a cabbage! And, of course, she will never react with something like “Small yet” or “Shame on you!” But how will she react?
The question “Where do children come from?”, as a rule, arises a little earlier than the question “How do they get there?”. And despite the fact that quite recently we have entered the even more enlightened twenty-first century from the enlightened twentieth century, for many parents the conversation may still come as a surprise. And if question No. 1 still manages to be answered evasively, then question No. 2 is no longer possible.
There is a category of mothers who, in an attempt to get away from the topic, are ready to go far enough: they agree to offer the child absolutely unnatural “childbearing hypotheses”, if only not to tell the truth. So, a child may hear that children are “buyed in a special supermarket” or “born from the navel”. Most recently, I heard with my own ears the dialogue of an infantile mother with an adult daughter beyond her years. A six-year-old girl asked «why women have children», and her mother replied: «After the wedding.» Ignoring the obvious illogicality of her mother’s reaction, the girl went straight to the heart of the matter. She said, “Mom. But a wedding is a convention!
It is a mistake to think that bees, drones, stamens and pistils will help you in the “decisive battle”. If you are not a biologist, on the contrary, this will only confuse both you and the child more. It is enough that, contrary to the stereotype, the pistil of a flower is a female genital organ, but the stamen is just a male. As for the bees, it is still more difficult with them. If you are expecting a new baby, you have a wonderful opportunity to visually enlighten the child. No need to compare yourself with a kangaroo: the child will firmly believe that people are marsupials, and one day he will demand that you put your noisy sister or brother back in your pocket. It will be much better if you just let the firstborn listen to the younger baby pushing and tell something about intrauterine development in an accessible way.
Meanwhile, the very first conversation “about it” does not oblige you to anything. It is unlikely that the topic will be raised before the child is 3-4 years old, and at this age a generalized answer is quite enough, like the classic “From the mother’s stomach”. To prepare for a more detailed lecture, you have every right to take a time out.
The basic principle of conducting such conversations is to respond at a level consonant with the child, giving exactly as much information as he can now learn. You should not tell a two-year-old about either spermatogenesis or ovulation — this is just another option for a clever avoidance of conversation. It’s also rather ridiculous to tell a four-year-old that children are “given by God”: even if you are deeply religious, it is worth considering that the baby had a completely different meaning. It is important every time to leave the little one with the feeling that he understood your explanations.
The second indispensable condition: these explanations must be truthful. Then the new information that the child will ask you later, every time, like a nesting doll, will contain the old, without causing contradictions. If after each “educational conversation” questions disappear for a while, then you are doing a good job. If the kid continues to exaggerate the topic from different angles, it means that you underestimated him: he has already digested the food offered to his mind and is again hungry for knowledge.
If you have never interfered with natural curiosity, and have never undermined children’s confidence by deviating from the truth, then the questions will logically follow one from the other. And in about a year and a half, the baby will ask you how the children «get into the mother’s stomach.» The Children’s Sexual Encyclopedia is great to help you discuss the «technical» intricacies of a life-saving procedure. I would only like to note that a five-six-year-old naturalist who asks such a question is already quite ready to hear something not only about the physical closeness of a man and a woman, but also — for the first time to talk to you about what love is.
Where and where
“Mom, will our violet wither in winter?” “Yes, but a new one will bloom in the spring.” “And this one, what’s the end of it?” “All living things come to an end.” «I don’t want to be finished.» “You will never die, you will live forever.”
Uninvented Dialogue
Psychologists have long been interested in the question: at what age do children begin to be occupied with the problem of life and death. Numerous serious studies have shown that the notorious Freudian question «Whence?» worries the child much less than the question «Where?», and for the first time this happens much earlier than is commonly believed. Three-year-old children already quite seriously ask their relatives: “When do people die?”, “What happens to people after death?”, “And you, mommy, will you die?” or: «And I — too?». It has been observed that parents tend to «not notice» the non-childish problems of their children, even if this requires great effort from them.
Psychoanalyst Irvin Yalom described David, an ordinary boy of one and a half years. David had recently learned to walk and was eager to grab and explore everything he could get his hands on. One day he found a dead bird in the yard. According to the parents, the boy looked stunned and did not try to touch her. Then he gestured for her mother to put her on a tree branch. When the bird flew down from there, not up, David was ready to cry and demanded to return the bird back.
You, for sure, vaccinate your child in a timely manner, and it does not occur to you to wait until he acquires natural immunity after having had tetanus. The way of conducting such conversations should be reminiscent of preventive vaccination: a little bit of the truth, in accordance with age. The task of adults is not to protect the child from the inevitable meeting with the truth, but to give information in a dosed manner and help to process it. Otherwise, the truth will one day “fall on the child’s head” in full, and this will be excessive stress for him. What should and should not be said is a separate issue, but in any case, we must understand why we choose one or another version of education on the topic of death. For whose benefit is this choice made — the child or the parent? Maybe, claiming that you are protecting the baby from premature trauma, in fact, you are just avoiding an unpleasant conversation?
The child is most frightened not by an exhaustive answer to the question, no matter how sad it may sound, but by the unknown and parental confusion. It may seem to parents that, «not noticing» children’s worries and cheerfully reacting «off topic», they convey to the baby their faith in the best. In fact, the persistent unwillingness to delve into the proposed topic is felt not as support, but as ignorance and callousness. Each time «falling» into this void, the child begins to guess that this is one of your weak points. And instead of bravura confidence in an eternal happy life, the child plunges into a vague inexplicable fear of something so terrible that even all-powerful adults are afraid of.
Keep in mind that not knowing something, children make it up, and their speculation can be even scarier than the truth. Not having received an answer to his question, but assuming that there is an answer, the baby goes to look for him in another place. And there he most likely finds ridiculous or creepy tales of other children about witches, vampires, the dead, forever lying in the cold earth awaiting resurrection, a black hand or a coffin on wheels.
To begin with, separate your own fear of death from the task of answering a child a specific question. And the first answer to it may sound schematic. “Dead means that person is no more and never will be.” Next — you make specifics as necessary and adjusted for age. From an atheistic standpoint, death is like eternal sleep, and this metaphor can be safely resorted to. To all questions like “Does he see us?”, “Does he hear?”, “Will he come again?” — you answer «no», no matter how much it hurts you. And if the baby cries, you console him not with stories about eternal life, but with kisses and hugs. If you wish, add that we need to remember the departed because they live in our thoughts and memories.
If you are religious, the perspective from which you invite your child to look at the real state of affairs will be somewhat different. But regardless of whether you use such concepts as «heaven», «hell» or «reincarnation» to help, you must remember that the child is asking you about this life. And this life after death in any case ends. Of course, our parental feeling rebels against the fact that the child to whom we have given life, directly declare that this life is finite. But if you try to deceive a child with a cheerful look, you are caught. Pretty soon the day will come when you will not only have to tell your little one that there is no eternal life, but you will also have to admit that you lied.
When we talk with our inquisitive child beyond our years, there is a great temptation to be a little cunning, slipping away from a difficult or unpleasant topic. But it is worth remembering that in the end you are only deceiving yourself. Yes, a two-year-old baby is still too small to independently separate the wheat from the chaff. He eats the “dish” served to him without even chewing. A three-year-old is already nervous when she feels a “strange vibration” coming from her mother, and then, if her mother is often insincere, she learns to tune out her conflicting feelings. And thus, it destroys its own spontaneity and insight in the rudiment. At the age of five, such a kid is a virtuoso of self-deception. He knows how to «believe» obvious lies, and he himself does not always know when he is cunning, and when he is telling the truth. He still does not know that in important matters he almost does not trust either himself or his mother. It turns out that momentary convenience was bought many times on credit, and now everyone is forced to pay with interest.