Modern childhood: what is it. Ten things that distinguish the childhood of modern children from ours Childhood of parents in a modern school

From the editors of Letidor: we bring to your attention the text of the report of the vice-president of the Russian Academy of Education David Feldstein , presented in July this year at a meeting of the Board of the Russian Book Union. The full title of the report is "The nature and degree of changes in modern childhood and the problems of organizing education at a historically new level of development of society." In our publication, we shortened the title not only because it is long. It seems to us that the report really tells more about the changes in children, but there are no specific proposals for changing the education system. In addition, the changes in childhood noted in the article are mostly negative, and in some cases this assessment is rather controversial. The author also underestimates the role of the parent community in the development of new forms of education. However, it seems to us that our readers will still be interested to hear the assessment of modern children from the point of view of such a well-known figure in Soviet educational psychology as Academician D.I. Feldstein.

The problem of Childhood, which has always been exacerbated in the tense situation of the development of the Society, acquires particular complexity in modern conditions. The definition of the state of Childhood as the basis of reproduction and the bearer of the future society has a special meaning, giving rise to many questions.

What is Modern Childhood?
What factors determine its real state?
What are the possibilities, the strategy of constructive actions?

It is necessary to understand Childhood not as a set of children of different ages, but as a special holistically represented social phenomenon of the reproduction of society. The analysis carried out by scientists of the Russian Academy of Education shows quite serious diverse, diverse, multilevel changes occurring in childhood - both positive and negative. The child has become no worse or better than his peer twenty years ago, he just became different.

Firstly, in the shortest five-year period, starting in 2008, the cognitive development of preschool children has sharply decreased.

Secondly, the energy of children, their desire to act actively has decreased. At the same time, emotional discomfort increased.

Third, there is a narrowing of the level of development of the plot-role-playing game of preschoolers, which leads to underdevelopment of the motivational-need sphere of the child, as well as his will and arbitrariness.

Fourth, a survey of the cognitive sphere of older preschoolers revealed extremely low indicators in those actions of children that require internal retention of the rule and operation in terms of images. The underdevelopment of the internal plan of action and the reduced level of children's curiosity and imagination are clearly recorded.

Fifth, attention is drawn to the underdevelopment of fine motor skills of the hand of older preschoolers, the lack of graphic skills. The lack of volitionality - both in the mental and motor spheres of a preschooler - is one of the most disturbing, reliably established facts.

At sixth, there is a lack of social competence of 25% of children of primary school age, their helplessness in relations with peers, inability to resolve the simplest conflicts.

Seventh, as the data obtained over 15 years (from 1997 to 2012) show, the number of children aged 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old with speech development disorders has significantly (almost 2 times) increased (from 40 to 60%, varying in different regions). An increasing number of children have serious problems with the ability to read and understand the text.

Eighth, the unwillingness of a significant part of today's schoolchildren to study is a serious concern.

Ninth, the activation of the communication process at the adolescent stage of ontogenesis and the increased need to present oneself to the world are blocked by the lack of appropriate structures that are adequate to the needs and capabilities of a growing person.

tenth, an unfavorable trend is the impoverishment and limitation of live, tactile communication of children, including adolescents, with peers, the growth of loneliness, rejection, and a low level of communicative competence. If in the early 90s many teenagers were distinguished by a feeling of loneliness, but at the same time their anxiety was in 4-5 places in terms of the strength of manifestation, then in 2012, anxiety among 12-15-year-olds came in 2nd place.

Eleventh, there are more and more children with emotional problems, who are in a state of affective tension due to a constant feeling of insecurity, lack of support in a close environment and therefore helplessness.

Twelfth, in adolescent children, regressive changes occur in the brain supply of cognitive activity, and the increased activity of subcortical structures due to the hormonal process leads to a deterioration in the mechanisms of voluntary regulation.

thirteenth, observations in the dynamics of the physical development of children revealed a tendency to a progressive decrease in the rate of their longitudinal growth, an increase in asthenization of the physique, and a lag in the increase in muscle strength.

Fourteenth, in the population of modern growing people, a large group is made up of children who are characterized by an unfavorable, problematic course of mental development in ontogenesis.

Significant progress has taken place in the process of individualization and socialization of children, especially clearly manifested in adolescence. Starting in 2007, adolescents have come to the fore strong-willed And somatic value orientations. There is a negative dynamics of cultural and social value orientations. Adolescents, already presenting their view of the world, their voice, position themselves in relation to the world of children and the world of adults, creating a variety of informal associations that satisfy their need for self-expression, shocking, challenging and demonstrating their relationship to the world.

Influencing factors

Among the factors that determine the fundamental changes in children are, firstly, marketization, the ethics of the market, which strengthens the orientation of children towards consumption, as well as adoption, which separates the child from the cultural traditions of society.

Secondly, marginalization, the growth of deviations. Children are given diagnoses that were previously given to adults when antidepressants are used for aggressive children. Today, boys are able to sympathize with other children only under the age of 8, girls up to 9-10 years. And boys can rejoice until about 7 years old, while girls practically do not know how to do this. In Childhood itself, many of the structures that formed it collapsed, relations between children changed, and “horizontal ties” became noticeably more complicated.

It should be noted that the changes in the modern child are associated not only with the socio-cultural processes that have transformed society, but also with the intensive evolutionary self-development of the modern person. The category of gifted children is growing all the time. Today's children later go through two growth spurts or two developmental crises.

The first leap, called adolescence, in our days, judging by the available data, falls not at the senior preschool age - six - six and a half years, as thirty years ago, but at seven - eight years.

The second jump, called puberty, associated with the process of puberty, also moved from fifth to sixth to eighth to ninth grade for girls and ninth to tenth grade for boys.

There is an unfavorable prognosis for further changes in the sphere of general mental development and the formation of the personality of a growing person.

Firstly, low level of development of parental motivation. Today, children, including adolescents, who are characterized by an orientation towards adulthood, do not want to grow up.

Secondly Today, adults have become indifferent to other people's children.

Third, most importantly, there is a loss of responsibility of adult society for children, a loss of public control and involvement of the Adult World in Childhood. All this is happening against the background of the degradation of the educational component in education.

The most important actively psychologically influencing factor in the development of Childhood is the change in the living space into which the child enters today, starting from infancy. Today, the Internet objectively increasingly “covers”, first of all, growing people. 93% (!) of teenagers constantly not only use, but, in fact, live through the Internet.

The consequences of the introduction of new information systems create huge problems of different levels and plans, affecting the growth - development of a person. The modern electronic communication system is distinguished by the ability to construct a real virtuality, reliably imitating reality on the screens of video equipment. The resulting screen dependence in the absence of a differentiated attitude leads to the child's inability to concentrate on any activity, hyperactivity, increased absent-mindedness. Children "grab" only separate fragments of diverse, fragmented information, which puts pressure on the process of their thinking, forming, in particular, the so-called "clip" thinking.

"Danger,- as Sidney J. Harris writes, - not that a computer will one day begin to think like a person, but that a person will one day begin to think like a computer”.

The risks are not just children leaving the real world for the virtual, but the risks of being subjected to harassment, aggression, bullying (“cyberbullying”, “trolling”) on the same Internet. Risks associated with filling the Internet with a mass of sites promoting anorexia, drugs, extremism, nationalism, calling on children not only to hate others, but also agitating for causing pain and harm to themselves.

Requirements for the new education system

An important factor that needs to be taken into account and studied is the very transitional nature of the modern era, which puts us all in an extremely difficult situation due to the lack of a national idea. It is necessary to develop appropriate conceptual and theoretical schemes for the new content of education, and new methods, forms, means of encouraging children to effectively acquire knowledge. This requires a serious modernization of the historically obsolete education system - a revision of all its components - goals, principles, content, technologies, criteria for assessing quality and effectiveness, aimed at the creative self-realization of a growing person, shaping him as a personality adapted to constant changes in the development of society.

Education, which worked well in the past, is no longer able to adequately prepare a creative person. The danger that the great Russian philosophers, starting with Vladimir Solovyov, warned about as early as Vladimir Solovyov, the danger of the degeneration of mankind into "animal humanity", due to the fact that the growth of material needs outstrips the growth of spiritual needs, has really grown.

"In fact, almost a miracle, Albert Einstein said half a century ago, that the present methods of teaching have not quite stifled the holy curiosity of man".

Today, general and special knowledge and skills acquired by children should not only ensure their level of development corresponding to the current historical state, readiness for productive activity, but also strengthen the ability of growing people to improve themselves. In the search being carried out today, the main thing is to determine the conditions that ensure the exit of society, its growing members to a historically different level of development.

Orientation towards the development of a Person capable of actively acting in the 21st century objectively requires the introduction of new structural and content components in the education process, changes in the system of relations within the educational space.

The solution of the whole complex of extremely complex, but paramount tasks involves Firstly, revealing, revealing the features and boundaries of the environment in which Childhood actually functions today.

Secondly, development and implementation of a program for a complete analysis of the state of Childhood itself, along the entire vertical of its development (at different periods, stages), in order to determine the nature and extent of changes, identifying and tracing emerging trends.

Third, determining the characteristics of modern children's society, in the search for new forms of organization of preschool and school Childhood in their horizontal and vertical connections.

Fourth, development of new principles for organizing the educational process, with a combination of collective and individual forms of its structuring.

Fifth, search for technologies and mechanisms, ways to build the educational process, including the use of children of different ages.

At sixth, building a strategy for the training of teachers, educators and other specialists - kindergarteners.

Seventh, along with extensive research on the possibilities and mechanisms of using the Internet, the deployment of special work to identify its action, impact on the mental development of children.

Eighth, proceeding from the objective educational role of the book as a powerful tool that carries the most important information load, conducting a deep psychological, psychophysiological, didactic analysis aimed at finding new schemes, methods for building a book. Especially educational books, taking into account global changes in the perception and thinking of the modern child.

Ninth, conducting comparative studies of the features of obtaining visual (Internet, TV) and book information, determining the possibilities of their interaction.

tenth, considering the specifics of the modern information base in all the complexity of its organization.

The solution of the above-named and dozens of others, not named for lack of time, tasks involves the joint efforts of not only state, scientific, but also public structures.

Some terms used in the text:

Adoption - artificial inclusion of an individual in any group.
Astenization - impotence, weak muscles, neuropsychic weakness.
Androgyny - bisexual, the presence in an individual of one sex of the sexual characteristics of the other sex (bisexuality).
Gracilization - elegance.
Deseleration - slowdown, unevenness.
Marketization - Strengthening the focus on consumption.
Marginalization - mismatch in the system of relations.
Militarization- subordination to military purposes.
Somatic bodily, associated with the body.
secular trend (secular) - high rates of acceleration; differences between population groups in terms of physique.
Juvenileization (from youthful) - immature.
Sput- a jerk, a sharp increase.

Times change, people change, but memories of happy childhood moments remain. And let the memory be selective and biased, but it keeps the main thing - so it does not allow us to forget about those important components of childhood that made us who we are, but which our own children are sometimes deprived of.

Respect

Was: We respected the elders. That's how we were taught. Everyone taught - parents, grandparents, kindergarten teachers, teachers, neighbors and even strangers. It was so natural that no one even thought about what exactly the representatives of the older generation deserved respect for. We gave way to the elders in public transport. We calmly reacted to the remarks of extraneous adults, and the furious cries of teachers brought to white heat were perceived with true humility. Only in adolescence did we learn that, it turns out, one can say bad things about teachers, but it was anything but an indifferently perceived norm.

It became: Of course, we tell children about the need to respect the elders, by which we mean ourselves and our beloved relatives from among the closest. At the same time, we believe that it is unreasonable to insist on respect for all adults in a row, and it is important to teach children to figure out who is worthy of respect and who is not. We discuss with them our mothers-in-law, elderly neighbors, parents of classmates and - with special rapture - teachers. Our children know from an early age that teachers owe them everything and have almost no right to anything. They can’t even put a bad mark without good reason, otherwise they will have to deal with a formidable but fair mother. Of course, our children are not perfect, but if someone dares to make a remark to them, and even in our presence, it will not seem enough to him.

Liberty

Was: We became self-reliant early on. From the point of view of our parents, we grew up naturally: by the age of one we refused diapers, by two - from the stroller, by three - from walking with my mother by the hand. At the age of five, we could well be left alone at home for a while, and at the age of seven, most of us were honored with the right to own the keys to the apartment. At the age of ten, we were already planning our leisure time ourselves: we could, for example, organize a bike ride with friends for a couple of tens of kilometers or hunt pike with a homemade harpoon. Yes, these were often risky undertakings, but we knew the taste of freedom, had creative thinking, and only vaguely guessed what boredom was.

It became: Leaving a five-year-old child alone at home today will almost never occur to anyone, and if it does, then along with the thought of possible problems with the law. Until the age of twelve, most of us walk our children to school, while taking on not only heavy satchels, but also the burden of doing homework. We try to keep everything under control, and therefore our children rarely walk on their own. If it’s a bike ride, then with the whole family and with full equipment, if fishing, then on a specially equipped pond. Our children often complain that they are bored, but we are not upset, we know: this means that their smartphones need to be recharged.

Living Experience

Was: We got to know life “by touch”. We filled our own bumps, but gained real experience - social, emotional, creative, and simply worldly. Sometimes, in order to establish ourselves in the social environment, we had to use our fists, and the black eye of our rival was perceived by adults calmly - as a symbol of life experience. We ourselves were injured, bodily and mental, but more often than not - no matter how trite it sounds - they made us stronger.

It became: Having our own experience behind us, “the son of difficult mistakes”, we know better than anyone what is important and necessary for our children. We have heard a lot about childhood psychological trauma, and therefore we try to protect our children from unpleasant emotions, minor mistakes and major failures. We are always there, we will always prompt, direct, we will stand with our chest for our little bloods. Yes, by the way, if our child gets a bruise from a classmate, we will not leave it like that - a showdown with the involvement of parents and the school administration is guaranteed to him! Of course, we guess that our children will still have to fill the bumps. But let it be later, someday later ... Without us.

Confidence

Shot from the serial TV movie "Guest from the Future"

Was: Trust was a fundamental concept in the relationship of people, and not only relatives. First of all, the state trusted parents as people who love their children and wish them only the best. It never occurred to anyone to suspect them of irresponsibility if, for example, a ten-year-old child himself came to the clinic for help. And the doctors of the emergency room were not surprised if several boys in snowy coats dragged a comrade with a broken leg on themselves - it’s clear that mom and dad are at work. Parents, in turn, trusted doctors and teachers, and, of course, us too. We were afraid of not justifying the trust given to us. And we also understood that friendship is built on trust. And although we, of course, were warned against talking with strangers, the knowledge of the existence of bad people did not disturb the harmony in our children's souls - there were still more good ones anyway!

Today we live in other realities, and we are forced to admit that trust is leaving the world of human relations. Only here we ourselves for some reason do not really resist this. We teach children to think badly about people when we unashamedly interpret in their presence the motives of someone's actions in accordance with the level of richness of our fantasy. Often in our conversations the thought slips that gullibility is identical to stupidity. We believe that suspicion and skepticism will help our children "survive", "break through", succeed, but we do not always realize that we sow anxiety in them and reap cynicism and indifference as a defensive reaction.

Unselfishness

Was:"A bag of apples" V.G. Suteeva, "The Story of an Unknown Hero" by S.Ya. Marshak, The Little Prince by A. Exupery, books about pioneer heroes and many other works about selflessness, generosity and heroism shaped our inner world, organically fitting into the value system laid down in us by family and school. From early childhood, we knew that doing good “for no reason” is not easy, but we need to try. A little later, we realized that for us the ability to act selflessly and self-respect are inextricably linked. We wanted to become teachers, doctors or astronauts simply because we sincerely wanted to benefit people. We believed in good.

It became: At every step we repeat that money rules the world. From the first years of life, we set children up for competition and are very worried that “healthy egoism” will not develop in them. We do everything so that our children know the value of money: we financially encourage doing homework, good grades, and sometimes good behavior. As for disinterestedness, for some reason it seems to us that this is the lot of the weak, and in general - an unviable quality.

Once, more than two thousand years ago, the ancient Roman historian and philosopher Gaius Sallust Crispus said: “Covetousness takes away the most cherished feelings - love for the fatherland, family love, love for virtue and purity.” Has the world really changed so much that words that have been relevant for centuries have lost their power forever? Was the sage wrong? We will find out after a couple of decades, we just have to wait.

If you ask any passer-by on the street if our society has changed compared to the Soviet past, he will surely say: “Yes, we have changed, we have become different.” If we continue to ask what we have become, we will get different, sometimes contradictory answers.

Have our children changed? Parents notice that children also grow differently from how they grew up themselves. Childhood has changed.

What is our society today? What values ​​guide generations of fathers and children in their lives? There are no public discussions on this topic. We can't even figure out what we were before. S.G. Kara-Murza believes that one of the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union is the lack of reflection of the society that we built together. Is this chronic lack of self-understanding becoming the main reason for the instability of our state, which periodically falls apart, which leads to severe trials and suffering for at least one generation?

Let's start with an analysis of modern childhood. After all, if we do not know our children, how can we predict our future and the future of the country?

We asked Olga Ivanovna MAKHOVSKYA, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, employee of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, author of books on psychology, to talk about modern childhood and the problems of the child.

Children's problems

“Modern childhood, to put it very briefly, has become more lonely, more neurotic and computerized,” says Olga Ivanovna. – These are the three topics that a practical psychologist has to deal with all the time.

In a modern family, as a rule, there is only one child. Previously, in the era of calm Soviet collectivism, a large number of people took part in his upbringing - parents, teachers, neighbors, relatives, friends, so the child wanted to be left alone and could not do it. A modern child, as a rule, sits at home alone, in a safe place, and meets other children only in the presence of adults, and then for a short time. He simply does not have enough time to communicate with his peers and exchange information with them. Parents are busy all the time, they have no time to talk with their children, who as a result are left face to face with reality. As a result, children have many new, unprecedented fears. For example, the fear of poverty, which did not exist in Soviet times. This is a very strong fear, about which little is said. Because of it, modern children are very greedy, because they also want to protect themselves from this disaster in their own way. Although the topic of material well-being is actively discussed by parents in the presence of children, adults do not think about the impression their conversations make on children. And children become infected from them with envy of other people's wealth, and fear of ruin and poverty.

Another fear is the fear of terrorist attacks. Most children watch TV together with adults and in fact turn out to be secondary victims of natural and man-made disasters. And on television they constantly show criminal chronicles, where someone is constantly being chased, beaten and killed, and news feeds that are full of criminal and mourning events. Therefore, the child lives in a sense of fear - generally speaking, the fear of death.

From the age of five or six, children become sensitive to this topic, and their fear of death is much more pronounced than in adults: after all, children still do not have the means to explain it, to resist it, and they can only count on a miracle. This aggravates their neurotic state, which manifests itself in increased anxiety, self-doubt, excitability. The child gives bright, unmotivated reactions: he either cannot sit still, is afraid to be alone, or, conversely, becomes lethargic, inert and indifferent. Such a child does not cause much concern to his parents, but immediately becomes a problem for the school when he comes to the first grade.

Therefore, talking with children about topics that concern them - death, poverty, inequality, the possibility of divorce of parents - should be started as early as possible. This is what my book is dedicated to, which is called: “How to calmly talk with a child about life, so that later he will let you live in peace.”

Our society has developed a practice of hiding the truth from the child, hushing up the most important human problems. We have no experience of such conversations, and, moreover, in Russia there is an attitude that all the best in people's lives happens in childhood. So we don’t want to disturb the child, we create a heavenly childhood for him, saying: “Grow up, then you’ll take a sip.” Although, in my opinion, childhood is not at all a major prelude to a minor symphony: a person’s life should unfold more and more interesting every year, and childhood is a prototype of life, in which there are adventures, minor troubles, and, of course, triumph . Therefore, in my book, I tried to figure out how best to talk with children on various important topics that we usually avoid talking about, adds O.I. Makhovskaya.

- Another problem of modern childhood is that it has become computerized. Psychologists are very often approached by parents with the question of what to do if the child sits at the computer all the time. Of course, if the computer is the only interlocutor of the child, this is bad. Unfortunately, parents most often turn to specialists for help when the problem is already in a state of neglect. Therefore, I would like to warn parents that a child should not have a computer before school. The question must be asked very hard. The American Pediatric Association, for example, recommends that children under the age of two not watch television. And our parents, in order to be able to calmly go about their business, put the kids in front of the screen, where they fall asleep in a state of chicken hypnosis. Sometimes children are fed in front of the TV, so a conditioned reflex is formed: the screen is food. This raises another problem associated with constantly sitting in front of screens: obesity.

We want to be modern and we believe that we can become so with the help of new technologies - computers, gadgets, television. Of course, you need to learn how to manage modern technologies, but the child is not able to independently assess what place they should occupy in his life, and the task of adults is to explain this to him.

The second trick I recommend to avoid problems with computers is to play together. The first two or three years in a child's life should be spent with him, playing with him. The problem of “children and the computer” is mainly associated with a very low culture of interaction between people in general and with children in particular. Unlike a computer, real communication requires considerable effort.

The ease in interacting with gadgets gradually leads to the fact that it becomes difficult for the child to make an effort on himself. We can already see where this is leading. The reality of our time is bachelors who, at forty or fifty, spend most of their time at the computer, refusing to meet a high economic standard in their personal lives. They are content with the fact that they earn little money remotely and sit around the computer at home, where their mothers prepare cutlets for them every day. Such men do not feel the need to make regular efforts on themselves - even washing and shaving is sometimes a burden for them. This type only seems anecdotal: unfortunately, it has already become widespread throughout the world.

It turns out that if we cartoonize this situation, then among the collapses of the computerized world, Mowgli are growing - wild people who find it very difficult, uncomfortable to enter real life. They have a lot of fears, no self-confidence. And where do they get their confidence from? After all, it is the result of self-achieved success. You can fantasize how cool you are, how wonderful you play and win in computer games - but this does not mean anything in real life, these are conditional dividends.

Moreover, not a single study in the world that has studied the impact of screen technologies on children has shown that the computer has a positive effect on human thinking. Yes, the computer enhances the operational characteristics of memory and attention. But thinking requires subjectivity, which is born from reflection on one's own experience. And the computer threatens reflection, distracts a person's attention from himself. For the development of reflection in the life of a child, games, not a computer, should appear already at preschool age. The age from 3 to 6 years is the most human age in people's lives, in my opinion, because at this time they play role-playing games. The computer has supplanted the games, and this is a huge loss for modern childhood.

O.I. Makhovskaya explains that the importance of role-playing games is so great because they form very important functions for a person: empathy and imagination.

Empathy is born from the experience of interacting with peers. It involves the ability to sympathize, to get used to the role of another person. “In a computer game, a child can hit, kill someone, and receive no emotional effect in response: the computer does not scream or writhe in pain,” says the psychologist. “In the same way, by interacting with a computer, the child will not get the experience of how to respond when his desires are ignored. Ways of interacting with other people are born in a role-playing game, and as the child grows up, the game becomes more complicated, plots appear in it, the number of roles increases, and in each of them the child can try his hand.

The game develops the imagination. Children come up with something that is not there - neither in a computer, nor in someone else's head. And one more important point: the imagination is enhanced in conditions of scarcity. The lack of toys stimulates the child's imagination. And what do we see in the modern nursery? She is littered with many toys that the child does not value. An abundance of things - paints, books, bicycles, slides, cars - but dolls, without which role-playing games are impossible, you will not always find there.

A computer picture also does not develop the imagination: rather, it paralyzes, blocks it. Creates a focus of overexcitation, which is directed to a very specific topic. Parents should also be warned about this.

It must be borne in mind that everything that happens to a child in adolescence is an echo of his preschool problems.

Problems of modern parents

“It’s such a paradox – I’m saying both jokingly and seriously – that psychopath parents raised neurotic children,” continues O.I. Makhovskaya. – The generation of adults born in the Soviet era received so much attention and love in their childhood that they were energetically charged for the rest of their lives. They were raised by egocentrics who think something like this: “I feel good, so it’s good for everyone.” Therefore, they choose themselves as a barometer, and not another person (a child, for example). And very often mothers use children as their psychotherapists. When they lack energy, out of habit they try to make up for it from their environment, and their children, neurotic insecure, are most often nearby.

Reality is changing so fast that psychologists and pediatricians sometimes can't keep up. For example, now there are many appeals to psychologists with complaints that children under the age of four do not speak. It seems to me that one of the reasons for such late speaking and the wave of autism is the emotional deprivation of children. The child has a mother, but psychologically she is absent. It is career-oriented, not motherhood-oriented, so that even bearing a child occurs in a state of psychological rejection. No wonder autistic children often appear in families where parents have a high educational level. Readiness to become a mother is constantly delayed: a woman convinces herself that she is not ready for motherhood. Such psychological immaturity is the result of excessive "training" in childhood. It turns out that immature, neurotic children of perestroika, who do not want to grow up or take responsibility, give birth to children who will survive only if they become psychopaths. The behavior pattern is reproduced after one generation. At one time, Ivan Turgenev wrote an article that became a classic in psychological circles, which was called "Hamlet and Don Quixote." According to his observations, in Russia, generations of Hamlets, that is, strong personalities with high ideals, for which they are ready to pay with their lives, are replaced by weak neurotics - donquixotes, who have a developed imagination, but fantasies are far from reality. This is a good observation. Both personality types are not viable, because adaptation to the world is not an attempt to “survive at any cost”, like a psychopath, or “survive at least somehow”, like a neurotic: it is an attempt to live, getting feedback all the time.

The trouble is that our child grows without feedback. No one pays attention to its vivid manifestations; the parent expects the child to respond to him; The computer doesn't give feedback either. So it is impossible to adapt: ​​the child is forced to remain in his imaginary world. There is no engagement with reality."

School should inspire learning, not train

“We have a very weak reflection,” says the psychologist. - This is due to the fact that we still pay great attention to the development of intelligence. The task is indeed important, but in our country it is being solved with a pinch.

When we launched a satellite into space, it made a tremendous impression on the whole world: after a bloody war, one generation later, the Russians began to explore space! In addition, for the Americans, the launch of the Soviet satellite was a blow to the myth of a successful America.

Life magazine correctly assessed that the secret of the achievements of the USSR was in the Soviet school, and in 1958 sent a delegation of journalists to Moscow. They decided to compare the average sixteen-year-old Moscow teenager with his American peer. Journalists followed the schoolchildren on their heels and watched the complexity of the task they solved, what they did during the day. As a result, they came to the terrible conclusion that Soviet children were two years ahead of American children in terms of intellectual development.

The Russian, Orthodox, and even the Soviet mentality is characterized by setting the bar to a very high level in everything and striving to conquer it. Our standards are so high that they are sometimes incompatible with human capabilities. This also applies to the field of education. When in the 1950s we decided to raise a generation of highly intelligent and educated people, we began to collect gifted children all over the country in boarding schools, where they were taught by the best teachers, scientists, university professors. Soviet schoolchildren did not become equal in mathematical Olympiads! Academician A.N. Kolmogorov.

However, the bet on the winners of international Olympiads did not justify itself. Despite the fact that excellent results were achieved, none of these guys became an outstanding mathematician. Moreover, a significant part of them from the second year of the university went nowhere and never received higher education again. They are emotionally burned out.

The same story happens with geeks.

Their problem is that they live on extrinsic motivation. While fans gather around them and admire: “Well, you're cool,” they solve complex mathematical problems, play the violin virtuoso or draw brilliantly. And then they grow up, and the contrast between their age and abilities disappears. They are “blown away”, do not know what to do with them, because they have not formed an idea of ​​themselves - this is also a problem of lack of reflection.

Modern parents are fighting for prodigy. They think that the earlier the child starts, the more chances he will have in the competition. But it's a trap. We have to constantly remind parents that life is a marathon, and it is very important that the child does not fall out of the race at the very beginning.

It is necessary to teach the child in elementary school in such a way that he does not lose cognitive interest. There is a phenomenon of fourth-graders about whom they say: “He is capable, but lazy.” More often than not, this bright student is not lazy at all: he just lost the motivation to study.

Today, there is enough research on the so-called “second-year syndrome”, when a successfully admitted, generally well-off, promising child leaves the university. There are many such children. Mostly they are boys. As soon as the parents stop taking care of them, having decided that they have fulfilled their obligations to the children, the children begin to think: why do they need this education?

Such defeats in the life marathon are caused both by the wrong position of parents and the wrong setting of the education system, when the school does not inspire learning, but trains,” O.I. Makhovskaya.

Society problem

“A.N. Kolmogorov derived an empirical law of the relationship between personality and intellect: the more the child's intellect develops, the more the personality is suppressed. Therefore, it is very important to maintain a balance in the development of a person, not to forget about the formation of his personality, says the psychologist.

What is the difference between intelligence and personal reflection? Intelligence is what we understand about the arrangement of the world around us. And what we understand about ourselves - about human relations, about our future, about society, love and friendship - is a reflection. Yes, it is incalculable, it is infinite. However, reflection can be taught even to a child with very low intelligence. There are children who study poorly, but think very well, and this gives them a head start in life. After all, a successful person in Russia is a threesome student with good reflection. He is not eager, like an excellent student, to conquer the highest bar, he does not strive to make great efforts to achieve success in his studies - after all, even if God has endowed a person with talent, he must work to succeed. A C student cheats all the years, and he has a lot of time to adapt, observe the behavior of other people, learn how to manipulate them, deceive them. Lying, by the way, as psychologists today believe, is not always an immoral act. A lie is also an attempt at a non-rigid interpretation of our world. In a capitalist economy, the ability to lie becomes a useful quality of the individual.

O.I. Makhovskaya believes that parents should abandon the early specialization of their children, try to get their children to try their hand in a wide variety of areas, without striving to achieve outstanding success everywhere. It is important to develop general abilities. Because life is changing, our contemporaries have to change their profession, for this they are forced to study again and again throughout their lives. In the 21st century, it is not narrow professionalism that becomes important, but a good general education.

“We are not sufficiently aware of what the Russian family has become,” the psychologist notes. – Despite the fact that in our country they speak with hostility about the United States, American models of success and personal happiness have perfectly taken root on Russian soil. At the same time, at one time we had a choice which family model to prefer: European or American. They differ. Traditional European culture is child-centric, the family in it makes sense only when a child is at its epicenter. The European family is built on male authority, a man has power and is responsible for his own decisions. The American model is different: it assumes parity and contestability. Such a partnership forces parents to consider each time who has invested in the family how much, how much time they have spent.

A Russian woman is a voluntarist, she is used to being responsible for everything herself. And since today it is competitively oriented, it has intuitively chosen a partner model that is very convenient for itself.

And what do we have, because before we had no experience of partnerships? A woman talks about parity, but in reality she usurps family freedom. She becomes the main one, increases in this model, and the man turns into a henpecked. The logic is something like this: well, if you earned a lot, you would be the head of the family, but since I earn more, then I have power ... We see that dads began to come to the psychologist more often. With the same request for emotional intimacy, with the problems of raising children, like mothers. Dads are more likely to stay at home with their children. There was a kind of inversion when the parents switched roles in the family. Now we see how dads during a divorce fight for children, and they manage to keep them with them. We see the same picture today in America. This is a consequence of the idea of ​​parity, since the question arises, why, in fact, if the parents are equal, then the children should stay with their mother? True, a strong maternal norm still persists in Russia, but women are already losing their positions. In the Catholic European version, a woman is protected by both the state and her husband, because the husband must take care of both the children and her. And due to the fact that they recognize the indisputable fact that a woman is physically weaker than a man and is not socially protected (they would rather take a young man to work than a young woman), then she has preferences in the family. Instead of following this harmonious path, we chose the rather disharmonious path of parity. At the same time, we deny the real state of affairs in public space. It turns out that due to weak reflection, we do not comprehend our life, but somehow designate it, ”the psychologist complains.

Happiness is joy shared in two

Interviewed by Olga ZHIGARKOVA

"Psychological Newspaper: We and the World" (No. 9 [ 229 ]20 15 )

Statuses, photos and pictures dedicated to Soviet childhood evoke nostalgia and bitter "But now ..." in current parents. And then it goes on in recitative: social networks, smartphones, they don’t read, they don’t like nature, the lost generation, here we are at their age ... It’s easy to blame everything on the corrupting influence of progress. In our childhood, this role was played with brilliance by “bad company”, remember? “My Petenka is gold, kind and obedient. It is his friends who influence him so much, the losers-loafers, ”the mothers of local hooligans lamented. This means that Petenka has nothing to do with it, and responsibility can be removed from oneself. Well, what are you going to do here?

no need for an ideal

With gadgets, it’s often the same: in our time they didn’t exist, everyone completely went to libraries, played rubber bands and collected scrap metal. But now ... And that's it - the situation is declared hopeless, and my mother leaves, mind you, not to the library or for scrap metal, but to the social network - to like pictures with Soviet schoolchildren playing hopscotch.

But for starters, it would be nice to remember your own childhood. So, to be honest, without lubok and idealization. Yes, there were rubber bands and Cossack robbers. But there were also cards, secret cigarettes and obscene jokes that were poisoned by "adult" sixth and seventh graders. And they, in all honesty, didn't really read books. Yes, we watched good cartoons about Carlson and Uncle Fyodor. And "Santa Barbara" and "Just Maria" when they first appeared - isn't it? Yes, we valued friends not for smartphones - they did not exist. But didn’t we, a little later, gather at a classmate to play incredibly cool Dendy and Sega, sitting for hours in virtual battles?

There have always been those who built birdhouses and translated grandmothers, and those who littered the porches and beat the light bulbs. As now, many children go in for sports and dance, write reviews and essays, learn languages ​​and help the elders. And the problems are not in the modern world, but within the family, the child, the school team. And if you start with them, the effect will be much better.

Preventive measures

But no one has canceled the problem of computer addiction. Yes, many schoolchildren and teenagers literally live in virtual reality. Often - to the detriment of the usual reality. What can be done to prevent this?

1. No problems with communication and self-realization

Psychologists say that parents often confuse the cause-and-effect relationship in a combination of “not interested in the real world” and “sitting at the computer for days”. The gadget is not an evil magician and sorcerer, capable of turning a smart, active, sociable and cheerful child into a pale Kashchei, languishing over a smartphone. Addiction and unhealthy addiction begin with problems in the real, non-computer world. There are no interests, it is impossible to find a common language with peers, a feeling of loneliness overcomes - and the child resorts to the simplest and most accessible means to occupy himself. And you need to start not with a safe where laptops are stored, but with a conversation and solving internal problems.

With kids who cling to their mother’s phone and demand a toy, it’s often the same: the child is not taught to play, explore the world, draw, and so as not to interfere, a busy mother gives “for five minutes” such an interesting thing with a magic screen. And then, a month or two later, he laments: “What to do? How to wean? The answer is not just not to accustom, but to show an alternative. Really interesting, and not “do something!”.

2. No forbidden fruit

There are, there are such children - not much, but still. For reasons of principle, they do not buy “this vulgar Barbie” or “this terrible blouse with rhinestones”, and then they are strictly protected from gadgets. Phone - to call! Take daddy's old one and don't be indignant. They are not indignant and even agree: yes, of course, but Masha was presented with an iPhone, and she is so proud of it, it would be something. Children in general often say what we want to hear. And at recess, they follow Masha-Sasha-Pasha with their tail, in the hope that they will be allowed to play.

When an adult fundamentally refuses overconsumption and fashionable things, this is his choice. When he imposes on a child, this is again his, an adult, choice. And the creation of another childhood dream, forbidden and sweet. Remember that most often, having gained independence, it is the home girls who break down, who had to be at home “exactly at nine”.

3. Consistency

Look at what parents are doing and saying: "Read 20 pages, then I'll put it on the computer." “If you study well, you will get a tablet for the end of the year.” What is given the status of a boring obligation here, and what is the status of an award?

And where does this majority of dads and moms come from? Because of the monitor screen or buried in the tablet. We talk about how beautiful the world around is, how good it is to visit and walk, but we ourselves go only to someone's pages. But the fact that a child is taught not by words, but by a parental example is a common truth.

Help your child find a balance between usefulness and entertainment, between virtual and real - by your own example. After all, new technologies provide a lot of useful and interesting opportunities: search for books and films, look at paintings from any of the world's galleries, create your own photos. To paraphrase a well-known aphorism, the one about money, gadgets is a bad master, but a good servant. Not the best goal, but in many cases an excellent remedy.

Marina Belenkaya