Is it easy being a dad? I. Gamayunov

The pedagogical experience of mothers is summarized and distributed in many stories, essays, radio and television programs. What about dad experience? It is so small that it is promoted that it does not seem to exist.
The book tells a true story about one novice father, his successes and miscalculations in family pedagogy.

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Instead of a preface
About education, as well as about love, a lot of books have been written. Apparently, because there is a direct connection between the one and the other. After all, the crown of love is the birth of a new person.
True, as one of my acquaintances, who has a restless son, once noted, this crown becomes thorns from time to time. And for both parents.
However, when it comes to education, for some reason, dad is given a second or even third role. Mom is the main one.

At first glance, it is fair - she communicates with the child more often. In addition, she, working, burdened with worries about loved ones, about breakfasts and dinners, about cleanliness in the apartment and, finally, about her own hairstyle, can be called an ascetic without a shadow of irony. Especially in the field of domestic work.

Moms at the current pace of life really have a hard time. But is it possible, after this, to assert, as many do, that it is easy for dads?

Dads are often criticized in thought-provoking articles about parenting for spending their leisure time on dominoes, fishing, fixing their own car, and not on family communication. They are depicted in the newspaper sections "Smile" fenced off from the home world by this very newspaper. But let's think about whether these "smiles" hide "tears invisible to the world"?

Maybe, hiding behind a newspaper sheet, dad silently sums up the results of another defeat in the field of parental pedagogy and is desperately looking for a way out of a critical situation?! And, not finding him, he runs away from family reality to "dominoes", to go fishing, under a broken car ...
Let's try to take an unbiased look at the current situation: the pedagogical experience of mothers is generalized and disseminated in heartfelt stories, essays, radio and television programs, even in songs. What about dad experience? It is so little promoted that it is as if it does not exist.

As you know, dads cannot adopt their mother's experience - they have their own specifics in communicating with children. In addition, the overwhelming majority of women in teaching teams, among educators (from kindergarten to a working hostel) have already outlined a trend in pedagogical work, called feminization ... Can it be allowed in the family too ?!

... For several years in a row, I was in the company of one young dad who did everything to prevent such a roll.

A somewhat pedantic and at the same time enthusiastic person, he entered all significant events in the first years of a child's life in a diary.

From these notes, one can trace how dad, getting into unforeseen situations, discovers: it is not enough just to know the basic provisions of the science of education, to quote Makarenko and Sukhomlinsky. You also need to learn how to build your relationship with a small, rapidly changing person.

What was so clearly and simply drawn in the imagination before the birth of a child, with his appearance began to turn in an unexpected direction: the impulsive impulses of a growing person were replaced by apathy, and obedience, so sweet to the parent's heart, was replaced by bouts of stubbornness.

Difficult questions arose at every step: what makes a child act contrary to adults? Can a conflict-free childhood be considered normal? How, by forming an unyielding character, to teach compassion? Does “self-love dope” interfere or promote the full development of creative abilities? Do we know how to love in children not only our own reflection, but also a kind of unique personality?!

Dad was looking for answers. Wrong. Made unexpected discoveries.

The path to parenting pedagogy was very difficult.

I persuaded my friend to share my experience, which is by no means always successful, but in each case useful in its own way, with other dads (and at the same time with moms). I prepared his notes for publication, supplementing them with some of my observations.

True, this experience is not for use, no. For comparison. For reflection. To find your own version. After all, no two families are the same. And all young dads and moms, raising a little person, each time in their own way experience this most difficult and, as it turns out later, the happiest time.

Time for spiritual and moral renewal...

Record 1st
"FAMILY IS ALL-POWERFUL!"

About parenting hopes

and first surprises

Silence in the waiting room. Through the open window you can hear how on the street, behind the double panes of high windows, drops of melting on the roof break on the asphalt snow.

Finally, with a deafening thud, the plywood doors of the transmission window swing open. The girl in the white coat says my last name. I'm coming. I meet a penetrating gaze.

“Who are you waiting for?” he asks, smiling.

I wonder how many times she does this little experiment?!

- Son...

Well, of course, the answer is most often just that, otherwise her face would not have become bored almost instantly.

“You have a daughter,” she said.

And she often used the usual tongue twister: height ... weight ... well-being ...

I come to my senses on the street. So distinctly did he imagine his son rolling a clockwork car on the floor. And then there is the daughter. That is, in the future - dresses, frills, dolls, whims, gentlemen, parental fears, the Wedding Palace, a new passport and grandson (rolling car) with someone else's name, unknown to me yet.

No, of course I'm glad. A sense of festivity gradually fills me. Some fifteen steps to the phone booth, and I am fully aware of what happened: I am a father! It's funny from the outside, but I'm filled with pride. How important this change is, it turns out, for human self-affirmation!..

I dial a number. Maksim Petrovich immediately picks up the phone.

I congratulate him on his granddaughter and I hear his voice go out. Vera Ivanovna replaces him ... She rejoices noisily, shouting: "And grandfather was waiting for his grandson! .."

Laconic and reasonable, he once let slip that he had bought a sketchbook for his grandson - he decided to addict him to his hobby. Vera Ivanovna prepared for the expected event in her own way: she bought a "dowry", looked at it and constantly repeated to her daughter: "Don't sit, you walk!" In the evenings in the kitchen, she indulged in memories - how she went to dig potatoes, although she was pregnant. Baba Glasha, a neighbor-settler, echoed her in a piercing voice:

- The years were after the war, life was hard, not like today, everyone around pampers children.

“They won’t spoil you,” Vera Ivanovna nodded mockingly in our direction with Valya. - They are going to educate according to books ...

This is our discussion horse. Vera Ivanovna believes that twenty years of work at the school (leads the lower grades) give her the right to treat with distrust the recent frequent conversations and publications about education. In her opinion, they bring only unnecessary nervousness into the work of teachers.

“Lessons for a child are work,” he says. she is not entertainment.

“We need to make this work exciting,” we urged her, “otherwise coercion will deprive the child of the ability to think and act independently.

“They must have fear,” Baba Glasha interjects into the conversation. - And if children do not have fear of teachers and parents, then they behave badly ...

Maxim Petrovich usually does not participate in debates. Once he said:

- It is necessary in all cases to be human, then the child will grow up as a man.

In other words, we were looking forward to it...

Now, writing down all this, which has already become our past, I hear his light breathing. The bed is next to the desk. To prevent light from falling there, Valya covered the table lamp with a diaper. She herself sleeps, but I know: a little stirring in the crib is enough, she will immediately rise.

The creature whose breath I can hear turned out to have crooked legs with flexible, almost monkey-like feet. I saw how these feet, bumping in a chaotic movement on the toys hanging above the crib, suddenly clenched, as if trying to grab them.

He also has a disproportionately large head, an ugly toothless mouth and a piercing voice. When it was first unfolded and short arms and legs freed from diapers flashed in the air, instead of the expected kindred feelings, I felt only pity. And - fear for him: no matter how he rolled, fell.

Today Valya called me: "Look." He came and sat next to me. The creature lying in the crib, wrapped in diapers, silently, concentratedly looked at us with an attentive, even, it seemed, stern look. The eye of an observer.

- ... Feels uneasy, - admitted Valya. It's like he's studying us...

Once he harassed everyone with a piercing cry for about ten minutes, the cause of which we four could not establish. Vera Ivanovna offered either a pacifier, or a rattle, or took it in her arms.

Through half a minute - again cry. Maxim Petrovich approached.

He leaned over and mumbled something soothing. His muffled voice sounded low and even. And the man was silent.

Maybe he was worried about something?! A sharp sound (a television was turned on in the adjacent room), a spot of color (the colorful dress of Vera Ivanovna who came up) or an unexpected sensation (there