Let the kids into your life

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

I seem to have forever remembered how my mother and I stood in line at a savings bank many years ago - you know, there are flash memories like photographs. So I remember: a small stuffy room, at the level of my nose - legs, feet, legs, string bags, wallets. There are a lot of people, everyone is standing, shifting, sighing. At the grandmothers nibbled on the edges of the tables, slowly moving ballpoint pens tied to the table, they fill in some papers …

There was a post office nearby - there, too, you had to stand in line for a long time at the window in order to receive a parcel or make a transfer. But! For some reason, there were also real inkpots and old split pens, and it was unusually attractive - while Mom was in line, scribble something, sticking out her tongue, on a letterhead for a telegram. There were also massive lacquered booths for long-distance calls, they called there by their last name, the subscribers locked the doors tightly behind them and then shouted into the phone at the entire department, it was curious, I sometimes played mail at home.

I remember all the shops of my childhood: our vegetable shop - saleswomen in gloves with cropped fingers, the household shop - it smelled amazingly, the grocery shop - there was almost a space vending machine in it for selling draft vegetable oil, a distant grocery store - six hours in line with my grandmother for sugar, because 2 kg in one hand, and on the street there is summer and fruits-berries, milk, which we called "glass", a bakery with tied spoons - to taste bread for softness, haberdashery, laundry, where they gave out laundry wrapped in gray paper, dry cleaning …

I am not writing this to show off my phenomenal memory. I have no doubt that everyone remembers the same places just as well - because we often visited them. On the weekend, after kindergarten, after school, mom, dad, grandmother took us by the hand and walked with us on their everyday shopping and dry cleaning trip. It was sometimes boring, and then we had to figure out how to entertain ourselves, sometimes, on the contrary, it was interesting, but it was a living, real, ordinary life, in which we willy-nilly participated, observed it, learned to navigate in it in the most natural way.

Then the pendulum swung, you know where, and we began to behave with our own children in a completely different way.

- How can you lead a little one around all these savings banks ?! There is a crush, an infection, the child is bored there, let it be better to sit with his grandmother at home, work out with developing blocks.

- Crazy mother, dragging a poor baby in a sling everywhere, it's a pity to look at him!

- Children should get positive emotions, why do they need this melancholy in the queues?

- Let the children live a child's life, adult affairs do not concern them!

This maniacal desire to protect children from life in all its manifestations has led to strange and unexpected results. A ten-year-old child needs to explain in detail and on his fingers how to buy something in a store: say something, show a card, remember to take change, how to remove money … five-year-olds, laughed and grabbed each other. I know parents who, with horror, take away a kitchen knife from a seven-year-old child and write me messages on an excursion with fifth-graders like "please make sure Masha puts on a scarf!" …

We fence them off from everything. Wherever we can, we lay straws. We try to do everything ourselves: it's calmer and easier for us. One can argue for a long time about whether it has become more dangerous now on the street, but the fact is obvious: children of primary school age hardly go to the store, to school, to clubs themselves, they do not travel alone on public transport. My friend drove her daughter to school until the last call - it is unnecessary to remind that we ourselves went and went to school starting from grade 2-3. Children of big cities are practically deprived - and thank God - of the dangerous and exciting adventures of our childhood (exploring the basement, riding in an elevator car, walking on the roofs of garages), but at the same time they have also lost the opportunity to explore the world around them and have a poor idea of how it is in general. arranged.

When I wrote about orphanages and boarding schools many years ago, I learned that one of the main problems of their graduates is the complete inability to integrate into the life around them. They do not know how to live independently, because all their life a bowl of soup appeared in front of them, the movie itself began at a certain time, gifts fell from the sky, and the environment was absolutely safe. Therefore, as soon as they are pushed into adulthood, they are faced with a million questions. If the institution in which they grew up did not conduct the appropriate classes, they have no idea how to communicate in the store, how to pay for electricity, what to do if they need to send, for example, a parcel somewhere in Kostroma, they cannot even cook for themselves buckwheat porridge and instantly drain all the money that lies in their account. Therefore, there is no wonder that, according to statistics, the vast majority of them drink too much, end up in prison, lose their state-issued housing, or commit suicide. One night in St. Petersburg, I got into a conversation with a girl from the queue for free soup: the watchman from her hostel, with whom she had a conflict, took her passport from her and did not let her in, does not even allow her to pick up things from there, so she lives on the street, feeds on the watchman is terrified of the homeless and cramps. As I thought, the girl turned out to be an orphanage. She has no algorithms for solving problems in her head, or even a desire to solve them. Opening her big eyes in surprise, she watched me waving my arms and the lightning sword, and silently listened to my excited explanations that no one has the right to take her passport, that there is such a service called the "police" to call that in St. Petersburg there is an ombudsman for human rights, a bunch of state and charitable organizations that will help her, you cannot, in fact, spend the night in the entrances in November, you just have to get confused and look for them. She nodded and sighed. The next day I met her there.

Another problem of these children is the consumer attitude arising from the satisfaction of adults with their needs. They do everything for them, but they do nothing for anyone. Children from orphanages have always had both of these problems, but until recently I didn’t think that they suddenly fell on the heads of children from the most prosperous families. They do not know anything from the life around them, from which we have protected them, sometimes literally, and are accustomed to being dressed, entertained, taught, cleaned up after them, everything is always given to them, but they owe nothing to anyone … I am going from lectures to a private school, and the head teacher warns me:

- Keep in mind: we have cottage children.

- Sorry?

- Well, children who never went outside the fence of a cottage without parents, a guard or a driver. They don't know anything about what's behind the fence. In their life, only the closed territory of the village and the school …

However, this is not only a problem of "cottage" children. Now, quite often, quite ordinary "district" children - just like the orphanages, like the children of millionaires - have no idea what a savings bank is for ("drag a child into a breeding ground for infection ?!"), how to cook potatoes themselves ("they'll cut themselves! burn! ") and what to do with the same package to Kostroma (" it's easier for me myself "). Experts say that due to the change in the communication system, the gap between modern parents and children is wider than ever, but it seems to me that we ourselves, with our own hands, dug a hole for ourselves.

… In my daughter's class I do excursions. And I’ll tell you this: the most fascinating lecture in a wonderful museum cannot be compared in terms of the degree of interest to them with a visit to a production facility. They hold their breath as they watch the lettuce grow on the endless plantations of the agro-industrial complex, as the bewitched watch the stamping of sweets in the chocolate shop and freeze in front of the machine that mixes the dough at the bakery. All this hypnotizes and fascinates them, because they have no idea where what comes from. They have no idea how and where the simplest things around them came from and how they were made: pencil, sour cream, dress, and so on. Therefore, one of the first tasks I set myself was to take the children to the farm. A real farm, where they will get an idea of where at least part of the food comes from, how it happens, what rural labor looks like.

On the farm, the kids went a little crazy. They enthusiastically kneaded the mud on the way to the pigsty, squeaked with delight, looking at the freshly laid eggs, wide-eyed, looked at how a cow was milked, secretly chewed ears of grain, boldly patted the withers of goats. At my request, on the farm, butter was knocked down with them and bread was baked. It is negligible, but at least some part of everyday magic - the transformation of grains and milk into our daily food, which happens every day in factories and farms, which we do not think about, but they do not know anything. It was our excursion of the year, they remembered it for a long time.

… Another amazing feature of our time is that our children have little idea of what we, their adults, do most of our lives. Now it is not customary to take children to work (an invariable part of childhood for many of us), few people think of organizing excursions for the children of employees around their organization - and it is very, very sorry, because for a child, dad and mom disappear for the whole day, no one knows where. do not know what, after which, thanks to who knows what and it is not clear how money, things, food appear in the house. Let's add to this the fact that, in comparison with our childhood, many mysterious professions have appeared, the name of which does not mean anything to the child. Who was with us, except for all understandable doctors, builders, scientists, locksmiths and teachers? Perhaps engineers and accountants - but, as a rule, this could be explained. Now the parents are through one thing - copywriters, managers, marketers, designers, merchandisers, hi-techs, PR specialists, smm managers, baristas, buyers and God knows who. It is absolutely impossible to understand what a dad with that name does at his work or why he sits at the computer all the time if dad does not bother to explain, or even better - to show what he does after all.

Several years ago, I was surprised to find that there is nothing more attractive to my daughters than hanging around with me all day about my daily affairs. It is especially great when we do this on public transport, sit side by side and can chat, play as much as we like, and have fun, looking into each other's eyes. We stop by one of my jobs, and a proud child carries to wash a mountain of tea cups that have been accumulating for several weeks - and from the way he is completely sincerely praised and thanked, he understands that he has done the necessary and important. He walks with me quieter than water and below the grass along the corridors and attentively listens to my explanations - who, what and why is doing here. He happily walks into the shops with me - the benefit of the queues is now in the form in which they were in our childhood, no. He listens attentively to what the bank is for and what they do in it. He comes with me to have tea and a pie at my favorite coffee shop. He drives home tired and happy.

I am writing all this, lying in bed, surrounded by paper handkerchiefs, mugs of tea and water, pillows, thermometers and other familiar attributes. For a long time I realized that my mother's illness is a forced independence for children. We'll have to go to the hairdresser ourselves, talk to the craftswomen and pay. You will also have to go to the store, because Mom needs honey and lemons. We'll have to cook dinner ourselves. No, mom cannot get up, mom can only give precise instructions in a dying voice. If mom crawls out into the light of day, she will be very upset when she sees a puddle in the corridor. Mom needs to take the tea and feed her. I was shocked by the proud face of my child when he brought me the food he had prepared on a tray.

The next day the youngest was in charge of the kitchen. Three times I came to ask if the dinner turned out delicious.

Of course, delicious, dear. The most delicious in the world.