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Until women stop giving birth to children to mock them, play dolls and thus support the system of creating new «jerks,» «fools,» «dullards,» and neurotics – I will always have a job as a psychotherapist, and various social services, rehabilitation centers and mental health clinics will be abundant! Think of the birth of your child as the appearance of an individual, a new human being – perfect and beautiful, and there is no need to improve what is perfect and beautiful.
§ 1.1. Parenthood
It seems that after we are 18, when we can get married officially, the understanding of the responsibility for our lives and the lives of our children will appear all by itself. But nothing appears automatically, and when we turn to have a baby one day we simply choose one of the two behavioral models: we start doing what our parents did or, on the contrary, we step aside from a ready-made scheme and try to act against it. If my father drank alcohol a lot, I decide that I will not drink it at all, and I become so obsessed with the idea that my son wants to drink his fill. If a mother was a whore, her daughter will be a nun, but if she happens to have a daughter, the latter will become a whore, because going to the extreme a
With the birth of a child, all the ambitious dreams and plans of the parents they had before disappear somewhere and these plans are replaced by the phantoms – the images of a mother and a father. People start unconsciously copying phrases, intonation and gait of their parents. I have experienced this myself. When my first wife gave birth to a child, I was a student doing a summer part-time job away from home. When I got back after a month, 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 ca
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 ru
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 ca