What are mothers

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

The story of how the power of maternal love can help her son become a world swimming record holder after a spinal fracture

My husband crashed in a car when the children were very young. And I was left alone with four children. And I'm a good mom, but not a very good dad. But I had to be a dad. It was still clear with the daughters, but what about the sons?

10 years

When the youngest son was 10 years old, he was pushed at school, fell back down the stairs and broke his spine. And I didn’t go for a year. I just lay there. And what do you think he was doing? Ate. What else can he do? You can't get up, here he lay, ate, read and played chess.

11 years

Time has passed, you can already walk for ten minutes a day, but the rest of the children are at school. They study, acquire some social skills, and pass the program. And the son is at home.

12-13 years old

When he went back to school, he weighed 90 kilograms with a height of 165 cm. In addition to being fat, he forgot how to tuck his shirt into his pants, properly collect a portfolio, and wrap textbooks. And teachers do not like such. And somehow he could not organize himself, and missed a lot, although the boy is not stupid. In the end, the director called me: "For deduction." Well, it's clear - the school has a high rating, they don't want weak children. Ten children from the bottom of the rating go to the garden, and ten fresh brains from the street are taken, because there is always a queue. And the son is the second from the end. I told the director: "Everything will be fine, give us one last chance." We were given six months.

On the way home, I thought: firstly, this is already the fourth child, I no longer have the strength to check the lessons, I'm tired of it. I don't even have time, I need to work a lot - to earn money. Secondly, I realized that if I start checking the grades, how he wrapped the textbooks, whether he tucked his shirt in, I would ruin my relationship with my son. And he does not have the task of becoming addicted at the age of 13 to whether his mother put a handkerchief in his pocket or not. He has other tasks. The child has a problem in what? He does not know how to organize himself around some goals, he does not even know how to set them. Yes, he likes something - he can solve math problems, he plays chess well. But he does not know how to set a goal.

I realized that as a mother and even more so as a psychologist, I must help him understand what he likes. Therefore, when I came home, I said from the doorway: “Zhenya, you swam normally for eight years, I took you to the pool. Let's cross the Bosphorus with you. We watched the video, I said something to him, in the end he agreed, but set a condition - not to go to the same pool together. And then I realized how important it was that I didn't go into his portfolio with lessons.

He began to go to the pool, train, there are five months left before the Bosphorus. But as it always happens, as soon as pleasure appeared, organizational difficulties arose. The company that was engaged in the flight, the slot (a certain number of seats giving the right to participate in the competition - ed.), The hotel, disappeared somewhere. And I know about it, but he does not. And we are already flying to Cyprus to take part in our first open water swim for 3.5 km. I swam with a crack in my hand, arrived last, but Zhenya swam first! And I understand that my child swims cool and outruns professional swimmers, but I need to tell him the truth that there will be no Bosphorus. I explained to him that we do not have a slot, and in response he asked me to buy tickets for him so that he could at least go and see how the guys started. And I cannot refuse a child this, he lived with it for five months!

I bought a ticket, he flew to Turkey and began to call from there: "Mom, I'll jump and still swim next to them, even without a chip!" Of course, I began to dissuade him: “You're out of your mind! This is dangerous". On the last day before the Bosphorus, the swimmers were shown the route, and there a terrible storm, wind, hurricane arose. And an adult man of 39 years old says: "No, I will not swim."My son bought a slot from him, made his way to the barge with which they all sighed, put on a hat, a chip and sailed 16th among six thousand athletes.

The child, who was kicked out of school a few months ago, returns home and says: "Mom, I will be the first on the Bosphorus next year!"

14 years

Then there was an important turning point. I asked my son, “Do you like swimming in open water? Okay. You will swim, I will take loans, borrow money. There are many wonderful races in the world: you can, for example, swim for a while between the Hawaiian Islands with dolphins; you can swim across the bay to San Francisco with seals; you can go to Hong Kong. Many great starts, you will participate in all of them. And I will not check the lessons, and I will buy certificates for the school that you had a cold when you were in the competition, and I will pay for all the travel, but I don’t want to know that you have a bad rating at school.” He agreed.

For three weeks the son studied at school and flies to Hawaii to swim with dolphins, then studied for a few more weeks, and flies to Beijing to then participate in a swim in Hong Kong. What kid at 14 won't like this? He visited the most beautiful places in the world, grew up, pulled himself up, sounded in his shoulders and at school he realized that it turns out that it is very easy to raise the rating. So he said: "Mom, all you need to do is listen to what the teacher says, do all your homework and properly collect your portfolio."

15-16 years old

A year passes, three exams - and all three are fives. And in the ranking, instead of the second from the end, Zhenya becomes the second from the beginning. And then the Bosphorus, and he wins it, while setting a record. But when the 11th grade was already looming ahead, the director called me to the school and said: "Take your child out of school." I think: what this time? “September has passed, the children have written test tests, your son has a maximum in all subjects. What will I teach him for a year? Take it away."

My son immediately told me that he had a plan: “Can I go to Cyprus to see a coach, study mathematics there, come to the Olympiads in winter, win them and enter ahead of schedule without exams? I have a plan for what to teach. " But I didn't have a plan … Well, I went and wrote a statement with my own hand, "I ask you to expel my child from one of the best physics and mathematics schools." But not everything turned out as he had planned for himself, and it was a very interesting moment. Zhenya arrives in the winter, writes Olympiads, and does not get two or three points, otherwise his results are completely lost. This is new for him, he finds himself in a situation where he is not successful. Everything! The bet didn't work. And in March there were only two Olympiads left. I saw how hard it was for him, but what could I do? I wrote an application for expulsion with my own hand, because I decided that it is better for a 16-year-old boy to learn how to make decisions and be responsible for them than to go to school every day. Here is his decision, here is his responsibility, here are the results. And as a mother, I can cook hot cocoa for him in the morning and say that I believe in him.

He writes the last two Olympiads … and becomes a prize-winner, enters the university and flies to Cyprus the next day. But it could have failed! This risk is a very important thing, because the person who does not achieve the goal differs from the one who achieves and demonstrates his abilities in that the second takes on tasks that he does not know how to solve. And the probability of failure there is high, and he gets into it. But the one who undertakes such a task and now knows how to utilize this failure, it is he who becomes the winner - the person who eventually realized himself.

When Zhenya set a world record, he was incredibly happy. He came and told me: “Mom, I have figured out the formula for my success. These are my abilities multiplied by your love. If you believe in your children and love them very much, I think they will be successful.