Павел Эрзяйкин - Your children are not your children

I hold workshops called «Parents’ meeting» and a training called «Self management» where I offer the participants to define the goals of their lives and their social roles. When we speak about such roles as «a friend,» «a boss,» or «a lover,» everything seems more or less clear, but when we define the roles «I am a mother» or «I am a father,» a complete ambiguity, ignorance and inability to understand the purpose of these roles comes out. «Why» I am a mother or a father is clear to all of us, but «what for» is an obscure subject. As a rule, speaking about the roles of a «father» or a «mother,» we think we have a duty to bring up a «good» child to be praised by neighbors and teachers, to be rewarded with diplomas of honor and even worse: we expect that someone will come and tell us «What a wonderful child you have brought up!» And for some, this may be the only understanding of the role of a «parent.»

The basic task of the book is to help parents understand their roles as a «mother» and a «father,» and to make them responsible creators and investors, but not sufferers, which is inevitable when understanding parenthood through «have to, must, ought to.» I want to help parents gain clarity, to present some functional models to bring up kids, to show how a new life begins next to them and what laws it follows when developing. There is nothing in this book that you wouldn’t know – just a description of the feelings you have when socializing with your child, while paying no attention to the feelings because you don’t realize their functionality.

More often we manipulate «proper» behavioral models, being guided by our concern to look «proper» in society. And what we call «upbringing» is really just an intrusion of the «dead,» outdated values created by God knows who and when. In our upbringing, we rely on these old models but not on the child, not on the situation we have here and now. There is no reliance on the child’s personality, which is the purpose of the child’s education. We prefer cliché, well-known behavioral models and axioms, and going easy with these models, we do not even think for a moment of how absurd they might be. For example, there is a stereotype to think of genitals as dirty parts of the body. That is why boys usually wash their hands after using the toilet. Frankly speaking, their hands were dirty before using the toilet. But we don’t think about that and live our absurd lives doing many things automatically. There is no rational point in such automatism.

We do something if we consider it «right.» Children are more «alive» than their parents are because they are more filled with life, so far. Parents have already become «disabled» through socialization. They do everything «right» and «correct» and therefore insincere. They feel offended to follow some social laws, conforming to them, yielding and rejecting their own wishes and plans, their individuality to please the society, whereas a child ignores these laws. We try to impose our values on the children, but these values are mostly limiting their freedom, and they resist. Then we frighten and beat them. Because if our children do not match some social norms, we become «bad» parents who underbrought, underlooked, undercontrolled and undermanipulated.

It is widely accepted on the state level, that if this is your child, you «must,» «ought to,» and «have to» be responsible for him/her. Under parents’ responsibility people consider «proper» upbringing, a child behaves «properly.» The child is put to sleep in the afternoon in the kindergarten, whereas he/she does not want to sleep, and it turns out that you are a «bad» mother, because your child does not meet some requirements. The majority of parents are preoccupied only with the thought of what other people may think about them. In the supermarket a child suddenly pushes a rack of chips – his/her mother begins to shout at the child, she blushes, she is confused: what will people think? Who cares what they think! There are shop assistants. If they could not control the situation and the rack fell down, let them go and pick up these scattered chips. If they do not want to, they can post a sign «Children and dogs forbidden.» We will see if people visit them after that.

Also, he doesn’t eat green peas!

There is one more extreme example in the parent-child relationship: when parents think of a child as their property. All pain that exists in the world comes from close attachments. As soon as we start to feel attraction to something, there appears a painful desire to possess it. We want this possession immediately and to last forever, but it is impossible. When we cannot have the desired thing, or when we lose something important, we begin to reproach ourselves that we have not done enough to keep it. I think this is partly the reason of parents’ painful feelings that they are «bad» mothers and fathers.

Parents feel that they are being «bad» when their expectations about the child do not come true, as if they did not bring the child up correctly. Long before the child’s birth, the parents imagined what the child would look like: for example, a tall and beautiful, strong and brave astronaut. So when it turns out they have a medium-height, not very brave, but kind and openhearted engineer, they feel deceived. However, they deceived themselves, having created expectations that the child does not have to meet.

People reason approximately as follows: «If the children were born to me, they are mine, so children have to feel like I want them to feel, think like I want them to think, and live like I want them to live.» Even wishing the best for our children, obsessed with the dreams about their future, we sooner or later face the truth that these plans are unreal. Having realized that parents become unhappy, and every unhappy person can make ten more surrounding people unhappy, because this person will suffer, complain about the child, punish the child, then feel guilty and look for the justification of such cruelty. In the end, such a parent will turn into the embodiment of hatred, dissatisfaction and stupidity. I want you to understand: everything we have belongs to us only temporarily. We can lose everything we have at any moment. We are renters on this planet. Moreover, our children are not our property; they are not dolls and toys. They belong to themselves. We do not have the right to order them, make them love us and be liked by everybody around betraying their individuality.

Stop making your children fit some models and trying to make them suitable to use. Stop being nervous that your kids do not look like some picture you have invented. Parents are a necessary condition for the appearance of a new life, just a condition. Parents’ task is to create some space for growth until the child physically and socially develops. We are a bow, and our children are arrows. While the arrow is in the string, we are united, but after a while you will have to let it go and it will fly to its target. Parents will stay at the same place and the child will grow up, become somebody and go away. The task of the parents is to give life and not to take it back. Bring up a child who will be able to live without you, far away from you and different from you. I do not understand when parents announce, with a hidden pride, that their children went away, roamed alone and came back home. This can happen only when parents haven’t taught their children how to interact and play with the world, brought them up to be dependent and irresponsible for their lives. That is why children cannot get along with anybody except their parents.

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.

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 annoys.

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 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.