What are we? They ask

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

"Well, the children are asking …" - the standard parental excuse. Why do parents so easily and thoughtlessly submit to "child pressure"? Where does such a strange lack of will come from?

“What horrible toys they make now for children! It's disgusting to take it in your hands - but try not to buy it!"

Have you heard similar groans? I am. From parents, grandmothers, someone's godfathers - those who are directly related to raising children.

The Pravoslavie.ru portal periodically raises the question of the harm that can be caused to the child's psyche by monster dolls, dolls with signs of anorexia and other "finds" of modern business on children. And how much indignation I heard from the grandmothers in the sandboxes, many of whom are somehow even ashamed of the old fashioned way to bring out their granddaughter with lipstick on her lips and a monster doll under her arm.

However, they are ashamed to be ashamed, but - amazing! - we bought it ourselves. And this, dear readers, is the problem b Omore than the aggressive business moves of toy manufacturers. After all, they are buying! Well, in Orthodox families, maybe not. But how many quite decent, educated women, whom I know from joint walks in the park, children's circles or the school of a future first-grader, buy toys for their children and grandchildren with sadness, bewilderment - but they do! Monsters, light green hares, silly (sorry, you can't say otherwise) Mash with bears, spider-people and it's hard to even determine who else.

What parents refuse to buy (if they refuse) - grandmothers will get: "Well, he asks what I will do …". And this is the main reason that we give our children to be torn apart by hyperactive Masha with signs of mild defectiveness, monsters, robots - and "children's" cosmetics that disfigure the skin, taste and self-esteem of poor children. "Well, they are asking …"

That is, it is they, the children, who want and make decisions - which means that they are supposedly responsible. And we, poor white and fluffy mothers-godparents-grandmothers, are worried, of course, but what can we do? Theater of the absurd: adult uncles and aunts in all seriousness shift the responsibility to children!

“They ask” - and they get cartoons about deviant oligophrenic monsters (or outright prostitutes), get lipstick, varnish, clothes of crazy colors with “sparkles” and - at the age of five - high-heeled shoes. And it would be okay for an adult who bought all this to be ashamed and silent - so he also begins to “worry”: “What kind of life has gone, what they sell to people, what they show!”. Everyone is to blame, you see: the child who “asks”; the TV that “shows” is just not an adult who has chosen the role of an irresponsible child: “What can I do about it?”

Forgive me, I obviously got into swearing, but, honestly, it's already boiling. There are so many of these strange illustrations of how adults shift responsibility for the soul of a child onto the child himself …

I once saw how a familiar priest was talking to a woman who indiscriminately turned on any cartoons for the children and bought them tasteless toys, because "Well, they are asking …". He asked:

- And if they ask for money for heroin at the age of 15, you will also give it, right?

- No, why juggle, it's another matter …

- Why else? Both are harmful. A teaspoon of alcohol is lethal to a baby, and much more to an adult. And in fact, you give the baby his teaspoon, making excuses that this is not a whole bottle after all! Alcohol cripples the body, and a moronic cartoon cripples the soul. And at this age he cripples the soul no less than drugs - at the age of 15.

I thought for a long time: where does such a strange lack of will in modern adults come from? So far, I see three main reasons. The first is the simplest, external: habit. Our older generation just got used to the fact that “once they sell it, it’s probably harmless”. They grew when the GOST was observed, the quality control department operated and everything was more than unified. So, in the depths of my soul, the hope remained that since this attraction is here, it means that it is safe and tested by someone (in Ryazan, not so long ago, a child fell head down from a trampoline in a shopping center - a two-meter "jump rope" with almost no boards and without mats on the tiled floor!). Once the gum is being sold, it means you can eat it. Since a doll with fangs - well, then it’s not so scary … And adults still cannot believe that a long time ago there came a life in which the child’s mental and physical health is controlled only by the family, and not by the mythical kind uncle Styopa.

Another reason is excessive reading in the field of primitivized "glossy" psychology from ladies' magazines. Guided by scraps of psychological theories, adults are simply afraid to restrict children in general. "We do not suppress his will," "we raise a leader," "we teach him to make decisions." And poor adults have no idea that garden shrubs require pruning, and children - reasonable restrictions.

If you cut the raspberries at the root, there will be no harvest for another year, if you do not cut them at all, they will quickly degenerate. If everything is forbidden to a child, we will bring up a neurotic; if everything is allowed, it’s just a psycho. He, poor fellow, will go crazy from the sea of rights and freedoms, he will feel like a blade of grass in an open field, shaken by any winds, by any "wishlist" tormented. It is impossible to grow a leader out of someone who is simply not taught to accept rejection. What, in adult life, there are no refusals? An adult hysterical uncle will grow up, not a leader. "Filter" modern psychology, there is too much of it divorced … of all kinds.

Well, the last reason is, unfortunately, our mental laziness. Well, it’s hard to listen to a child’s tantrum (although for those children who are not kept in permissiveness, hysterics as a method of influencing adults quickly cease, being replaced by the skill of conducting a dialogue). It's hard, too lazy to explain everything, to speak, to look for arguments, examples, arguments … And then I bought it - and they left you behind. I turned on the cartoon - and there was silence in the house … And poor preschoolers in high heels walk around, twist their spines, drink pop, watch cartoons about Masha and monsters, drag these monsters with them.

I still remember how my mother once explained to me in detail, a third-grader, why it is harmful for children to wear heels, made it clear how funny it is at all to climb on stilts in order to please someone (and in fact she was engaged in ballroom dancing for many years, could run in any heel - but in ordinary life did not wear). I remember how my dad, in front of me, specifically explained that my mother does not wear makeup, because she is already beautiful. After all, they did find time for this! And to fight against chips, and to protect children from bad taste … They found time not just to "select and ban", but to explain or diplomatically ridicule the bad modern trends. I remember that we even bought a game console with my sister (so that we would not feel deprived), and then somehow so imperceptibly my dad distracted me with skis in the park, and the console "broke" - and thank God.

How can we learn and not be lazy in a reasonable and tactful cultivation of the taste of our own children …

Elena Fetisova