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When you decide to give children a certain sum of money every week, think first if you have such opportunity every week. If this sum of money appears once every three years, don’t promise anything. But once you have promised, you have to fulfill commitments.
I need to travel on business, but I have nobody to stay with my daughter because she doesn’t want to go with me. I understand that it’s better to interest her somehow than to force, but sometimes I don’t have any desire to fancy something, to picture how thrilling and fascinating the trip may be. Can I act straightforward?
If you have an opportunity to deal, do it. If you don’t have such an opportunity, but you must go, don’t play, don’t pretend – be honest. Accept the fact that there is no opportunity to deal and start direct actions – take your daughter; put her in the car and drive. Explain to your child that there is no use in crying, that you must go anyway and after a while the child will understand, that it’s really useless to cry and will stop doing it.
How to teach a child to eat the right food? She doesn’t like what we eat, so I can’t teach her with my personal example. Do I have the only way out – be firm?
The child definitely won’t like what you impose on her, and it’s OK. To teach with your own example means doing something not for the public, but for yourself. I always eat only what I like, but not the food the doctors recommend. Once my daughter came to me and said, «Gra
How to introduce discipline as the way of life in the family? On the one hand we are all unique and individual, but on the other – I don’t want to turn family life into chaos. How to introduce some general rules and traditions?
Discipline doesn’t suppress uniqueness. Discipline is a necessary condition to survive. To breathe is the discipline of life. If you don’t breathe – you die, it is not discussed, it is accepted and fulfilled easily. The same is true in the family. If there are rules, but they are not fulfilled easily, they can’t become the discipline, because they are not accepted as values by the family members. It’s a great spiritual, noble and important task to create family traditions and make your family a clan. First there should be clarity – you have to explain the meaning of the traditions, so that everybody would understand the advantages of following these rules. Discipline is not an implicit subordination, but a necessary condition. In my family I created traditions of acceptance, respect and love. So all family members know that if one of us is busy, they shouldn’t bother him/her – when he/she is free he/she will come up to you. For example, everybody knows that if I’m not available at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they will never have a chance to talk to me. I’ll do what I have to and (even if everybody has forgotten), I will come up myself to ask what was the matter.
In many families parents are eager to introduce the tradition of getting together on New Year’s Eve. But you can’t impose a tradition, it can only be created. If it’s interesting at home, if home holidays are celebrated solemnly, there is an atmosphere of unity, togetherness, ope
Where is the borderline for parents’ interference or non-interference? Is the child wise enough to prevent an accident?
Accident is the way to depart this life, go away from parents. Water, fire or drugs are not the cause. The cause goes back in the past. The ways of departing this life may be different – we blame germs, glass, rivers, but, believe me, these are just the ways to depart this life, not the causes of doing it. If your child enjoys life, if he sees the opportunities for himself and understands how to use them, trust me, no disaster will happen to him.
It’s not easy for me to agree with you. I remember my mother beating me with a twig for playing in the sandpit. Now I understand that she was right – we were little and didn’t realize that we could be covered with sand.
Maybe not. Anything can happen to us at any moment. We can slip and die in our own bathroom. So what?
I want to speak about some basic signals to teach the child: what is dangerous, what is not – for the child to distinguish.
The most dangerous for life is life itself. We live and then die.
I’m speaking about being cautious, not about …
Cautiousness is the fear you have for your children. You are afraid, you forbid, but forbidding you only provoke curiosity. Inhibition has never inhibited anything for real, but provoked and stimulated action. You forbid something, but secretly children will do it anyway, otherwise they will not calm down. I want you to know what you forbid, what you punish your children for. Is there really some danger? Or are there just your personal fears, hypotheses, worries and fantasies – in a word, paranoia, behind your anxiety?
Why paranoia? There is the whole science of job safety at the enterprises. Why does it exist? Because there is some accidental statistics and they try to explain to the workers, what actions can lead to traumas or death. I think in the same way we have to explain to our children what may be dangerous for them. It’s really hard to believe that children have some i
You all have seen neglected children, who hang around in the streets and are subject to many dangers not having the slightest idea about them. We can argue here until midnight – you have a million of examples, I have more. I just want you to be conscious parents, not guided by such notions as «right-wrong» or «good-bad.» Be adequate. Don’t punish and don’t forbid, if you don’t understand what you forbid and what you punish for. Very often parents forbid something, not because they’re anxious about a child, but because they want to look good in the eyes of other people, because they feel embarrassed for the child. And their hypertrophic fear for the life of the child comes from a thought, «What will they think if my child dies?» Everybody will come up and say, «You’re such a bad mother!» this makes us shout to our children, «Stop it! That’s dangerous! Don’t touch it!»