Павел Эрзяйкин - Your children are not your children

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 a mother can only play the role of a «mother.» What else is she supposed to do if she can’t do anything except it and the child suddenly becomes independent? She will «lose her mother’s job.» That’s why when the child has troubles she feels good – she becomes meaningful, needed and she wants the child to love her for that.

In our «parent» arrogance we believe that our children have to love us. They don’t have to. When did they have time to owe us? When you had a child, it was your personal initiative. Children don’t have to love you for that. I remember once I and my wife got home late and our daughter was then two years old. We returned at night, entered the house – the daughter woke up and my wife called her to our bedroom to sleep, but the daughter said: «No, I will better sleep with my baby-sitter Victoria.» And she went away. My wife was offended that her daughter didn’t love her, and I asked my wife, if she loved our daughter. She said: «Yes, I love her.» – «That’s nice. So your life is filled with love. Enjoy it. Your daughter loves Victoria today, tomorrow she will love Max, and then she will marry Alex and go away from home.» Children don’t have to love us. They may love us, and they may not. Nevertheless they are still our children. Some people have many children dreaming that in their old age they will sit at home like Don Corleone and their children with families will visit them at the weekend, ask for advice, respect and hallow. But children may grow up and never return home. Understanding and accepting this fact is showing parent love.

To be honest, you will love your children in any case – if they are poor students or excellent ones, if they are a success or not, if they lived 30 or 130 years, if they have become Nobel prize winners or thieves. Does it make a difference? They are your children. There is nothing to do about it. But some mothers use the following scheme: «My son, when you were little I was responsible for you, now you’re an adult, be responsible for yourself.» This is mother’s offence, a caprice, because really it’s a lie: no matter where your children live, who they live with, you have always been responsible for them, and they have always been important to you. Well then, try to teach your children to be responsible for their lives and actions. When you park your car, you try to place it so that nobody could hit or carjack it because you’re responsible for your car even if you’re not inside. Try to bring up your children in the same way, so that nothing could happen to them even when you’re far away. This will be your parent responsibility and duty. This will be love.

Parenthood is a miracle and wonder. Sometimes we forget that these little humans are not dolls, they have a soul and personality. Our children are not ours; they belong to themselves. Your children are not your property. You‘re just creating conditions for a new life to flourish next to you. I have an acquaintance. When he was born, he was stronger and more vigorous than his parents. They accepted his individuality, because they could do nothing about him – he gained his points anyway. It was easier for parents to let him do what he wanted, not to interfere, not to suppress his inner power, but just give him some directions. He didn’t care where to borrow money – he could ask Rossel or Eltzin – every door was opened in front of him. Having worked in Russia with a breathtaking profitability and having bought everything he could dream of, he moved to the USA, then Australia and now he lives in Canada. He isn’t impudent, he doesn’t step on the heads of others, but extremely decisive, assertive, doubtless, focused, with the sixth sense. He doesn’t have fears that our unsuccessful parents share with us.

«Being a parent is raising children», – some parents say. How do you raise children? Do you pull them up by the hair? Being a parent is not making children weaker, but making them stronger every time, developing them socially, spiritually and physically. Until now, I remember one painful episode connected with my elder daughter. She was then a little girl and I threw away some pieces of bottle glass from her room, which turned to be her diamonds (she had been saving bubble-gum inserts for a year and changed them for that debris). They were valuable for her. Was I treating them seriously? No. Was that pile of glass valuable for me? No. Was I taking pangs to have it? No. But the worst thing happened when my daughter started to cry – instead of apologizing for touching her things, I started talking some nonsense like, «Don’t bring such garbage home anymore! There may be germs and dirt…»

It’s much simpler to neglect, than to understand the meaning of the values your child cherish. It’s even more difficult to realize your mistake and apologize. To apologize to a child, parents should overpower their parental ego, not every parent is able to do it. The chain of neglecting causes children to leave home and never come back when they grow up. Because if you didn’t sow anything, you will not have any yield. If you sowed the wrong seed, you won’t be able to get back in time and sow the right one to get a good yield. It is completely useless to look back in the past with pain, sorrow, reproach, suspicion and say: «I had to do that in time.» When people think about the past they imagine that they take care about the future. This isn’t true. The most important moment is the one we are living now. We plant new seeds – we get the chance to harvest a new yield. Not a guarantee, but just a chance. It doesn’t matter how old our children are, here and now we must do something and then any future is possible.