Three years ago, my son and I flew to Egypt. He was then 9 years old. The plane is large, 3-4-3 seats in a row. So we flew where 4. We had two extreme places at the aisle, and a mother of about 30 years old sat next to her with her daughter.
Nothing, as they say, foreshadowed. However, as soon as they sat down, my mother began to call someone so that her interlocutor urgently hit the road from the other end of Moscow to the airport from which we flew and canceled the credit card that this lady had just issued, without understanding why. That is — attention! — she was just talking to a bank employee at the airport from idleness, waiting for the plane, and suddenly it (the decision) took shape on its own. And on the plane, Madame began to be tormented by vague doubts, and now someone needed to rescue her. Agree, that was enough to draw my attention to her.
While the lady was talking on the phone, her daughter, about 5-6 years old, painted mommy’s jeans with a felt-tip pen. Mom noticed this when it was already quite late. Moreover, the only thing she said was: “Daughter, well, you can’t do that!”
But then the girl began to anneal. She alternately fought in hysterics while lying on the floor, grabbed her mother by the hair in anger because her mother did not give her something, climbed onto the back (!) of the seat and kicked the man in the back seat with her feet, that is, created a holiday for others . Finally, this monster turned its attention to the most accessible target — my son, sitting next to her.
And I must say that my son reads avidly from the age of five. At school they even scoffed at me that I went to the library every day, although I still write with errors, and this one outdid me. He sat and calmly read the WHOLE flight. The monster rested his hands on him and began to push him out of the seat. I turned to my mother, already knowing what I would hear in response. She, looking contemptuously at us, said to her daughter: “You see, daughter, men are all goats at that age, you won’t expect anything from them,” and to me: “And your child could have yielded!” What to give up? One more place to free? There is some line beyond which you no longer get angry at impudence, it causes amazement and laughter.
Then, apparently, a motor was inserted into the girl’s ass, and she began to rush along the aisles, sweeping away glasses, food and other things of passengers.
It was already when approaching Hurghada.
What exactly am I writing for? For the sake of one phrase that this mother and daughter uttered when we had already landed.
She looked at us contemptuously again and said: “All children are like children, they play, run around, only you raised a moron, he sat with you all the flight and read like a fool!”
From the editors of Psychologos: We have posted this article as a keepsake for those parents who believe and are convinced that children do not need to be brought up, that all our children need is development. This position is formulated in different ways, from the everyday “You need to be friends with children, not educate”, to a strict formulation from the classic “Education, as the deliberate formation of people according to known patterns, is fruitless, illegal and impossible. There is no right to educate. Let the children know what is their good, therefore let them educate themselves and follow the path that they choose for themselves. (L.N. Tolstoy).
What do you think? It is enough only to develop children — or children also need to be educated?