I immediately noticed the changes that had happened to my wife. The girl I had married disappeared. There was my mother-in-law in her behavior, intonation and facial expression. Then I started noticing my father’s grimaces and gestures in my own behavior – that was how the «father» stereotype familiar from childhood woke up in me.
There can be even worse, when to the copying of other people’s behavioral models mothers add their memories of how they played with dolls in childhood. Parenthood is a game, but not with dolls. Being a parent is staying in touch with the child here and now. This way you can be appropriate and adequate. The other day a woman came to me and said, «I have a problem. I have to go to work in the morning.» – «Do you have to go to work? This is not a problem.» – «But first I have to take my child to kindergarten.» – «Do you have to take your child to the kindergarten? This is not a problem as well.» – «But the child does not want to wake up.» – «You bet! Everybody wants to sleep in the morning. There isn’t a problem here.» – «But I have to take her to the kindergarten.» – «You have to. Just do it.» – «But she screams and shouts, she does not want to wake up.» – «That’s right. You force her to do what she does not want – she screams. It is OK. What’s the problem?» The problem is that the child turned to be «alive» and her reactions were beyond her mother’s expectations. It is not difficult to wake up a doll, even in the morning. Just take it by the leg, throw into the stroller and go to the kindergarten. But a child is a personality; you will have to negotiate with a child. I tell my 5-year-old daughter in the evening: «Shall we have a record on how much you will cry in the morning?» – «I’ll be smiling!» – «Will you?» In the morning she runs into my room smiling.
You can bring up children through a game or an agreement, when both sides have commitments and win. If you cannot come to an agreement – just wake your children up and take them, thrusting, to the kindergarten. In this case, you should not be confused about their screams and shouts that can wake up your neighbors. Try to understand that children are absolutely unwilling to go anywhere early in the morning. They want to sleep and they are absolutely indifferent to your job, where you must not be late, because your job isn’t valuable for children. Not criticizing and punishing children for their natural reaction, you take them to kindergarten, promising to talk in the evening and explain why your job is important and why they have to go to the kindergarten and etc.
Many people understand parenthood as a situation when children depend on parents, need them. Children need me, because I feed, dress and give advice. We feel disappointment when our expectations fail to come true, because, unlike a doll, children often do not want to sleep, eat or take a shower. Children have their own feelings, their individuality does not want to fit our idea of parenthood, and this drives us up the wall. When a 3-year-old child says that he will cook breakfast, wash the floor and clothes, parents get scared, «What’s up? We haven’t played enough with the child, but he doesn’t need us anymore.» Parents are shocked. Just because they have not become parents yet – they play parents. That is why when they feel losing control over a child, they start punishing and suppressing the child.
The biggest delusion is that if you frighten and punish children, they will grow up obedient and good. Looks like an idea with a collider: nobody knows what will happen if we activate it – may be the whole world will explode – but they still try to start it. The same thing is with parents: they beat children not thinking about the consequences, shout at children not thinking about the consequences, not being here and now interacting with them, trying to understand them even for a moment. Everything children have done is incorrect, everything children think is not right. Some parents do everything to make their children feel useless, insignificant, stupid and weak, and that is why children start having emotional and communicative problems. Many adults can recollect such an episode from their childhood, «First parents suppressed me, and then I grew up, started going to the gym, bodybuilding turned me into the heap of muscles to feel strong and never feel small and insignificant. Then I had my own child and I did not know what to do with him/her. So I started frightening and punishing the little creature because I was confused and embarrassed in front of the child and I started feeling weak and insignificant like a boy from my childhood who I had been running away from all my life.»
We can’t forgive children for reminding us how weak we were in childhood, and this leads to the following behavioral algorithm:
The first stage. We start insisting on something and it turns into persuading, though we feel that the child doesn’t want to do what we suggest. Our persuasion simply provokes the child to tell us «no.»
The second stage. Bribery. We try to make the child «prostitute» for a candy. For example, «you will go for a walk after you do your home task.»
The third stage. Blackmailing. When mother gets angry, does not talk or takes offence.
The fourth stage. If blackmailing does not work, parents proceed with threats.
The fifth stage. Violence (beating) – the ultimate degree of weakness and hopelessness of parents.
All these stages define psychological and social consequences for children, which appear when they become parents themselves.
We must understand that until we drag along the dusty bag of insults rooted in our childhood, we cannot provide our own children with a happy childhood. When we gave birth to our children, we lost the right to be losers, to be sick and unhappy. With every newborn child we get a new reason to live, be successful, abundant, joyful and enterprising. The more children, the more reasons. But there is a stereotypic opinion about children as an additional burden in our hard life. So saying that children should live a happy and plentiful life we are equipping them to fight on the territory where we have lost our battles, because we lack courage, will, discipline and responsibility. If we want our children to be responsible, we have to be responsible ourselves. If we want them to be successful, we have to be successful ourselves. If we want them to be punctual, we have to be punctual ourselves.
The child will hear you if you are interesting to the child. You will become interesting if you are not afraid to have a private life. Suddenly you come home with a big box, close in your room and start making a model airplane – you immediately draw everybody’s attention and they start getting into your hair. Or you’re putting on lipstick and going dating – at once you get the whole crowd around: where are you going? What is he like? Only when you are interesting to people and get their attention, you can bring forward your ideas and you can influence people. Unfortunately, parents often do not even try to be interesting to their children.
We take certain obligations before children are born: we are abundant and plentiful, and we are ready to share. But if we don’t have as much, our children will become a real trial to us. Then, if children eventually break cups, we tell them, «You are a sheer torture! Who do you take after?» Our life is a complete failure, because children always spot clothes, break and destroy things, don’t want to study or sleep – they are always making us suffer. So year by year we develop an inferiority complex in them. The whole life we make them understand that if they hadn’t been born, our lives would have been much happier. Children grow up thinking that if they hadn’t been born, parents would have been much calmer, not so nervous, irritable and anxious. «The only reason why my parents are not successful in life is me. I torture them, terrorize, trouble and disappoint,» – a little child bears this colossal cross of the parents’ misery. It becomes heavier and heavier. If children don’t want the cross to crush them, they start lying; inventing stories and excuses, or just go away (from home or life).
The meanest manipulation sounds like this, «I bought you this with the last money. I don’t need anything myself.» The goal is to make the child dependent, or if we have a closer look we’ll see the life position – «I don’t live and I won’t let you live either.» Love is not a sacrifice, or control, or jealousy, but freedom. Sacrificing love is a common bluff. There is no love in sacrifice, there is pain. We can’t sacrifice our life for a child. We say so if we don’t have life and have nothing to sacrifice. Sometimes