Perhaps we should start with the fact that although I am an impressionable person, I do not lose optimism. Rather, I relate to people whom life is not able to break, but still looking back I am involuntarily horrified by some things that happened to me. I think it’s worth saying that it was the birth of my beloved twins, a boy and a girl, that helped me reconsider some situations and change my outlook on life. When children are born, you start thinking about how to protect them, you want them to be happy. Looking back at the past, I remember what now causes me not only disgust, but also fear that this can happen to any person and leave a deep scar in my soul and a mark on my life.
When I was little, I was deprived of my virginity by the father of my age, with whom I was then friends, this happened in the afternoon near the barn. He came up from behind and hugged me and did it with his finger, then I couldn’t even go to the potty, it hurt so much. Parents did not immediately understand what had happened, since I myself did not understand and could not really explain anything, but fortunately everything was resolved later and he is still in prison.
Then, at the age of 19, an acquaintance of my brother, who, as it turned out, was 35 years old, took the opportunity and raped me. And you know, the most annoying thing is that, really, the girl can’t do anything, maybe a case from childhood influenced me, I don’t know, in any case I couldn’t help myself. I asked him not to do this to me, I said “please don’t, I don’t want this”, “don’t touch me”. I couldn’t scream, I went into hysterics, I was in shock, I cried and choked either from tears or from impotence, and yes, I was fragile all my life, at that time I weighed no more than 45 kg., I was even told that "You probably don't eat anything." And yet I did everything I could, and then I just didn’t have any strength left, except that I could only scream, but it was more of a hysteria, since I screamed that it hurt me and that he didn’t touch me, but he said “shut up already, I haven’t done anything yet, lie still”, then roughly grabbed my legs and pulled me towards me, I still remember how he carefully examined and rudely entered. Yes, I was not a virgin, but that was a finger, and this ... I will probably never forget that pain, it feels like a knife was inserted there, he covered my mouth with his hand, and I wanted one thing so that it would all end quickly, and so happened ... and you know, I still can’t understand, was it really possible to do this to a girl for such a short period? And the most disgusting thing is that after he said “I already thought that you were a virgin (that is, he deliberately did it all)” and also “you know that the best thing when you are raped is not to resist”, then he tried talk to me, as if nothing had happened, asked for forgiveness ...
Now I am married, but even now I don’t feel completely safe, since my husband repeatedly forced me to have sex, and sincerely thinking that I like it so much, but he still respects some boundaries ..
So you give birth to children and suddenly you begin to look at the world differently, and some things begin to be seen without any prism. The strangest thing is that then it wasn’t so hard for me, but now it’s very, I can’t even sleep and trust my own husband, I remember all this every day and I can’t concentrate on something else. Most of all I fear for the children, for all the children, because they are completely defenseless, and the world is not at all so kind. I don't know how to get out of this state, how to start living differently..
The next morning, Harriet woke up from an insistent knock on the door: - Get up Potter! We need to talk! Come out, crazy girl, I'll be waiting for you in two minutes. The cry of Uncle Vernon, which she had not heard for a long time, finally woke Harriet, and she stood up, stretching. There was no time to clean up, so the girl just tied her hair in a bun and headed downstairs. The front door had just closed behind Dudley and Petunia, and Vernon stood next to a small suitcase, waiting for his niece. The look of small eyes swept over her appearance, but he said nothing about it. - Potter, then so, we're leaving for the weekend to Marge. You will stay in the house alone, on the refrigerator is a to-do list. There is money on the table. Buy yourself some food, but if you don't bring the checks, I'll beat you up! And don't destroy the house! Remember, I can still get the belt! With a final "threatening" face, Mr. Dursley left. And Harriet was left looking perplexedly at the door slamming shut behind her uncle. Uncle Vernon very rarely left her alone, afraid that she would burn down the house. But right now, he didn't seem to want to risk inviting Sister Marge back to the house where Potter was. Remembering how she cheated on her aunt, she felt ashamed. No control. After all, magical emissions end in children at the age of ten or eleven. And then she was already thirteen! A heavy sigh escaped her lips as she walked into the kitchen. The to-do list for the weekend was quickly skimmed through. In short, you need to scrub the house and cut the bushes, nothing unusual, just like in the old days. Yesterday's chicken and potatoes were found in the refrigerator, heating them in a frying pan, Harriet sat down for a late dinner and thought. Something strange has been happening to her for the last month. At first, she wrote to friends about it, but they, like Dumbledore, thought it had something to do with the Dark Lord. But what if it isn't? What if all these pains, thoughts, desires - it's all related to the potions that came out of her? Harriet rose abruptly from her chair, dragged a roll of parchment and a pen into the kitchen, and sat down to write a letter to the headmaster. Just didn't send it. She will always have time to send, now she decided to do something else, her intuition told her that it would be better. One blue notebook had to be stolen from Petunia's drawer, but there are many more like it, it is unlikely that she will notice the loss. The blue pen in Potter's hand literally fluttered over the sheets. The first year at Hogwarts and everything connected with it. Quirrell, Snape, Dumbledore, the Erinage Mirror, the Invisibility Cloak, Voldemort, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Director's words that she would have to live with relatives. Second year. The Chamber of Secrets, the basilisk, the petrified disciples who were disenchanted at the end of the year, although mandrakes could be bought at the pharmacy. Tom's diary, which she pierced with a fang. Saving Ginny. Third year. Sirius. Marauders' Map. Dementors. Buckbeak. Pettigrew the rat and Lupine the werewolf in a school full of kids. And the fourth year is the Triwizard Tournament. Harriet wrote about this in more detail, the memories were still fresh. The ritual of the Dark Lord's resurrection was written on a separate piece of paper. And on another sheet, Harriet wrote down those memories that were ... not hers. It feels like they were fakes, maybe they were. It was very insulting and scary that someone deprived her of her memory, and more than once, and then created fake memories. Harriet didn't know if that was possible, but it felt like it was. But the worst thing was that almost all the fake memories were connected with the director. He erased her memory. Why is the director hiding something from her? Doesn't trust? Of course, this is his right, who is she for him? Maybe she saw something she shouldn't, and he erased her memory? Wait, why does she trust him? Who is he to her, to Harriet Potter? Only the principal of the school. She only spoke to him at the end of the school year. I immediately thought of Mr. Bailey, headmaster of the Muggle school. He, too, was kind to Harriet, and even drove her home once when it was raining heavily outside and she didn't have an umbrella. But she did not consider him the best person, and even more so did not allow him to manage her life. Still, Mr. Bailey did more for her than Dumbledore. Admittedly, as a child, she behaved much more sensibly. Perhaps because she was alone? And then there were friends and adults who decide for her. But why did she let them? Eleven years she was on her own and kept everything under control, and then she just lost her mind. I remember that potions can subdue and bewitch the mind? Was it with her? It looks like it is. In addition, the director of Hogwarts is also a politician. As Uncle Vernon used to say, politicians are people who say one thing, but in reality everything is not what they say. Does that mean she shouldn't trust him? She would have time to think about it anyway, Potter decided, and continued to take notes. When all the years at school were written down, Harriet began to write down on a separate sheet of questions for which she did not have answers. There have been a lot of them. When the girl looked up from the notes, she found that it was already evening outside. But she only made herself tea and continued to make records. Why didn't Molly Weasley, knowing how Harriet lives, give her advice? Why didn't you offer to buy clothes? She hugged and said that Harriet was like a daughter to her, but did nothing good, except that she took her home for a week. And why did her parents hide in the cottage when they had a menorah protected by ancient magic? Why did she herself, once in the world of magic, not seek to know him, like Hermione? Why did you become friends with Ron? She didn’t like him right away, neither manners nor upbringing. She wanted to stand up for him in front of Malfoy, and after that Ron already began to consider them friends. There were many such questions, one of the answers that fit some of them was simple: it looks like she was given potions of "scattered attention" or "clouded mind", a potion of "hate" and possibly "attachment" to some people. It was to potions that she leaned the most, because now that they left her, reasonable thoughts appeared in her head, and the fog that constantly haunted Harriet was gone. She continued writing questions the next day. Many questions arose in her head, but there were no answers. Then, deciding to reread them and analyze them, Potter realized that her life in the world of magic was a big deception. The rose-colored glasses fell off, and now Harriet saw all, or almost all, of her mistakes and wrong decisions. I saw my stupidity and empty-headedness, which Snape had noticed in his freshman year, and it was frustrating. But more than that, she was horrified. After this year, she wanted to become stronger in order to defeat Voldemort, but now she began to fear not only him. Dumbledore, Snape who most likely helped him, "friends" and enemies among the students, it felt like she was defenseless against them all. The Weasleys, who were quite close to her, now caused alienation, and Hermione ... Harriet wistfully realized that due to the fact that her friend was always "smarter", she herself completely stopped studying and reading, although she used to love this business. Strongest of all, in addition to the main villain of her life, the second one, Dumbledore, appeared. He may not have been a villain in the traditional sense, but he manipulated her and bewitched her mind. This is much worse than open rage, a real snake. Harriet understood that Headmaster Dumbledore was using her and the others in some kind of game of his own. And they are just pieces on a chessboard. Feeling like a puppet was terribly unpleasant, but now she had a whole summer to change a little and cut the strings. It was dangerous to sit idly by, and I didn't want to. The thirst for action woke up in the girl and the first thing was to get to know the world of magic better. The chest with things this year was not locked in the closet, but lay in Harriet's room. After sorting it out, she threw out a whole bag of garbage: old candies, broken feathers, already small sweaters from Mrs. Weasley and much more. After going through the textbooks for four years, Potter came to disappointing conclusions. She knew almost nothing about potions, magical plants were also unknown to her, she somehow still swam in spells, she knew defensive and attacking spells at a level, from the history of magic she only knew that there were several wars. But she did not suspect about their causes or consequences, she simply did not know. The divination book was thrown into the far corner, and the monster book was the only one that Harriet knew well, thanks to Hagrid, who loved and knew how to talk about monsters in a way that you couldn't help remembering. Harriet decided to have dinner not in the kitchen, but in the living room in front of the TV. And when she had already moved on to dessert, there was a program on TV about the royal family. Then something clicked in Harriet's head, and she quickly wrote down the flashing thoughts. Many students at Hogwarts were from some sort of lineage, some were heirs and heirs, and some were not called that, even though they were purebloods. The same Draco Malfoy is the heir, but Ron Weasley is not. But everyone calls him a traitor of blood ... To find out what these titles mean, she decided in the bank. There she saw a sign with something written about consultations of various kinds. And if this does not help her, then she can always withdraw money and buy the necessary books, the main thing is that they are sold, and then she will sort them out somehow.
It's time to become an adult.
Ecology of consumption. Children: The world in which our children grow up is not a very pretty world. Natural disasters and terrorist attacks occur in it, people suffer and starve in it. How to tell kids...
The world in which our children grow up is not a very pretty world. Natural disasters and terrorist attacks occur in it, people suffer and starve in it. How to tell children about his imperfection? How to prepare them for life? After all, in this world, children are bullied by other children and adults. What to do? To grow in a greenhouse or not to hide the lead abominations of life? Rush to the defense or temper? Where is the golden mean?
No pink and black glasses
First of all, we must remember that each age has its own characteristics. Toddlers sometimes are not able to realize what is happening at all. And in fact: how to tell a preschooler what a concentration camp is? How to explain what is repression or political terror? For example, the Nastya and Nikita publishing house, which publishes books for children aged 5-10, was going to publish a book about the life of St. Luke (Voyno-Yasenetsky), but it turned out that it was simply impossible to explain to a small child what the Cheka, concentration camps, and so on Further. Children's consciousness simply does not contain such things. And trying to explain that the world is cruel and unfair, you can provide a child with a serious neurosis: if adults cannot keep the world safe and comfortable, what should a child do in it? For the time being, the child must understand that he is safe. That there is someone to protect him - and that it is the responsibility of adults.
“Of course, it is far from always that adults should run to protect the child from any threats,” says child psychologist Evgenia Payson. - If a child can do what he can, adults should not step in and do it for him. If, for example, a child is teased by a classmate, adults should not run to deal with him, without giving the child the opportunity to protect himself at the level available to him. If there is a problem with a classmate, parents can discuss with the child how to protect himself, understand what hurts him, show possible ways of responding to what upsets him - help him cope on his own. But if the forces are not equal, if the whole class or several people are against him, if he has a conflict with the teacher, where the child cannot protect himself at his level, then it makes sense for parents to intervene. The most important thing for parents is to have a good idea of the imaginary line: where the child can cope on his own, and where he cannot. Lowering and lowering this line, we make the child helpless; it's like wiping a teenager's nose and chasing him to put on a beanie when he goes on a date."
Each age has its own real threats, and we need to work with them. When a child is just starting to take independent steps in the world, he may encounter aggressive adults who are not his own. Our task is to teach him when he can cope on his own, and when he needs to run to the class teacher, contact the nearest adult, call mom and dad.
Terrible news
It is hardly possible to completely protect a child from terrible news about terrorist attacks, for example. But when national tragedies occur, children are next to adults and hear them discussing something. And what is happening is important and needs to be discussed with the children.
“It is very important to give the child real mechanisms to protect themselves,” says Evgenia Payson. - We warn them: you can not play on the windowsill, even if there is a mosquito net on the window. And the children know: if you don’t do this, you won’t fall out of the window. If you cross the road on a green light, you are less likely to get hit by a car. You can protect yourself.
Exactly the same here: children need to know how to protect themselves so that they don't feel like a pawn with which they can do whatever they want. There are safety rules here: for example, bypass the crowd so that you are not trampled. Children should be shown that society is also trying to protect itself: there are frames at the entrance to a shopping center or an airport, luggage can be scanned, there is a metal detector - this allows you to detect people with weapons. Mom and dad don't mind being searched - because it's a general security measure.
It is important for a child to feel that he is not a rabbit in front of a boa constrictor, which is very easy to eat, that something also depends on him.
Bloody and emotional details are not needed. Unfortunately, sometimes adults try so hard to “reach out” to children, to impress them, that they can achieve something completely different from what they wanted. There are cases when younger schoolchildren were afraid to go to school after the school line of memory of the events in Beslan: what if terrorists come to our school and kill me? Emotionality is needed in another way - to do something in memory of the dead, especially if there was someone close among the dead (for example, plant a tree or create a video) ... It is important to talk about how people help other people. How they bring food, water, things to the victims of the flood, how they dismantle the rubble after the earthquake and build new houses, how people are not left alone in trouble. It is not worth fixing on the terrible and bloody.
“There is no need to frighten children beyond measure,” says Evgenia Payson. - When we explain the rules of behavior on the road to them, we never say “the car will throw you up, roll you into a cake, your ribs will be broken, and your lungs will be pierced with fragments of them.” We don't describe the dire consequences - we focus on how to protect ourselves. If a child comes to his parents and says that he is afraid of war, terrorist attacks and the like, you should not ridicule him. You shouldn't even say "I'm afraid too, let's be afraid together." The more irrational the fear, the harder it is to deal with.
If the child can not cope on his own, it would be good to turn to a psychologist. It is important not to drive fear inside so that the child does not hesitate to talk about it and does not imagine incredible consequences: fantasy is richer than reality. And here's something else: TV news and analytical programs should not run in the background. If you want your child to be up to date with current news, sit next to him and explain what is happening. Otherwise, later the parents say: “We don’t know where he got it from, we didn’t talk about it at home.” Today, TV is not a window to the world, but a well into the abyss, and information must be filtered already at the entrance..
Terrible events of the past
History is inhuman. It included human sacrifices and massacres. There were world wars and genocide. How to tell children about it? After all, we ourselves remember from childhood how they tortured the Young Guard and tortured Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya; stories about the torments that the heroes endured for the sake of their homeland were an important part of our upbringing. But is it really necessary to tell children this? The child's psyche is protected from horror - from the questions "could I, like the Young Guard, withstand when needles are driven under the nails." Someone is saved by protective cynicism, and someone, God forbid, will become interested and want to repeat.
And you can't be silent.
When something is silent, the unknown is worse than the terrible truth. Speculation and fantasies can be worse than reality. Even worse is lying: children always feel when they are being deceived.
But how do you tell children about the tragic events so that they can perceive it?
History is perfectly perceived through family legends, through documents and photographs: real great-grandfather's letters from the front and great-grandmother's stories, albeit in my mother's retelling, speak about the war more than a movie with special effects and a parade on Red Square.
Children's books help to talk about the tragic pages of the past, which allow you to look at events through the eyes of the children who survived them - for example, Olga Gromova's "Sugar Child", Yulia Yakovleva's "Children of the Crow", Eduard Kochergin's "Christened with the Crosses".
In such conversations and when reading such books, again, it is not the horrors, not the cruel details that are important, but the examples of people who remain people in the most inhuman conditions: we really see how people live by culture and pass it on to their children; how to respect a foreign culture; how they can maintain their dignity and help other people.
You should not force a child to watch heavy films - for some, they may not have an educational, but a traumatic effect. You should not give answers before the child has questions - and as a thinking child grows up, they will certainly appear, and it is important not to miss the moment - and you need to know what to offer the child to see together, read together, discuss which museum to go to .
It is not worth putting pressure on emotions: the facts are already emotionally charged, they speak for themselves. Pathetics, pathos and uplifting of hands are superfluous here. But it is important to give the child an emotional outlet from the lived and thought-out experience. There are heavy ones - and not just for children! - films, for example, "Ordinary Fascism" by Romm or "Come and See" by Klimov. And if you decide to watch them with your children, then you need to speak. They must be allowed to process this difficult experience, these traumatic impressions - to process it into an important understanding of how a person can remain a person, how not to lose himself, not to dehumanize. And here literature and art - mediated human experience - can help a lot.
In a word, the most important thing when discussing difficult historical events is :
- honesty, quiet and sincere conversation without pathos, pathos, pressure on emotions;
- the ability to look at historical events through the prism of private human life, children's fate, family history;
- finally, an exit to the constructive - to a discussion of that in a person that can resist evil. published
When you are sixteen, you want to love, to be loved.
You can even just love, love and give yourself,
give your warmth.
But at thirty, you want to do more than just love and be loved.
You need loyalty, for betrayal is betrayal
And she is not able to revive the old feelings.
You don't need confessions under the window.
You realize that it's better to know the truth. And this truth
can only give life.
Life is real, not artificial, which you
glasses have been created for many years.
Pink glasses.
Ida thought so too when she unexpectedly received a letter from Jules, in which he honestly confessed to her that he had fallen in love with another. Yes, and did he love at all?
Sometimes we confuse love with falling in love, a feeling very similar to love and at the same time not love, so fickle. After reading the letter, Ida thought that she shouldn't waste time on men anymore. She had a job that brought her a stable income and she felt that she was already tired of unstable love or falling in love. How better it was possible to designate such feelings and relationships, thanks to which her relationships developed.
He was brought out of his state of detachment by a phone call. Her friend Paul, whom Ida had already known for more than ten years, called. Communicating with Paul, Ida suddenly realized that she did not need to end relationships with all men. It happens that sometimes it is men who can cheer you up and from this you can even become even more beautiful and beautiful.
How are you sweet? Have you forgotten that today is your birthday? I want to wish you happiness, but you have it.
And what is my happiness, dear? – Ida, intrigued, asked in surprise.
Well, how? Happiness is not only about being loved or being loved. Happiness is that you just live. You can afford to fall in love and love, and then (pause) stop loving.
Ida laughed. She liked this wish. She couldn't deny that it was indeed happiness. Happiness is being free from obligations. You don't have to fall in love if you want to. You are a free person even if there is a husband nearby. Because today he is with you, and tomorrow (her gaze fell on the table where the letter lay) ... .. and tomorrow he is already with the other, and you are alone. And you don't have to suffer if you're free. And I am a free woman and this is happiness.
Listen, you are a genius! Ida exclaimed after some thought.
In what? Paul asked in surprise.
Thank you,” Ida said affirmatively.
Ida could not come to her senses now from a pleasant feeling. Maybe it was happiness? Her thoughts were somewhere far away.
Ida, what's wrong with you? Am I out of time? Paul asked anxiously a minute later.
No, really, you're just in time. I just forgot that today is my birthday.
On the one hand, Ida was happy to receive such congratulations; on the other hand, she wanted to cry, cry because it was on her birthday that her husband, now ex, had given her such a gift!