7 harmful attitudes of a good mother: says psychologist Anna Babich

Parents are often faced with unsolicited “well-meaning” advice and harmful attitudes that lead to burnout. In this article I have collected the most common of them. And yes, they do NOT need to be followed.

1. It shouldn't be hard for me

Mothers often experience parental burnout, which is characterized by extreme fatigue and exhaustion, against its background, anger or even hatred towards oneself can sometimes arise and to kid.

People often attribute parental burnout to external factors: “she just husband doesn't help", "Yes, she just has a difficult child." These are actually secondary reasons. The primary one is a person’s own attitude towards the task he is dealing with and the strategy he uses when faced with difficulties.

Society fuels the myththat motherhood is happiness, the meaning of life, endless endorphins and energy.

So when a woman feels that can not manage, she may begin to think: “Something is wrong with me. It shouldn’t be this hard for me.” This is where burnout begins - at the moment when a person does not allow himself to experience difficult feelings. You can call this self-gaslighting, devaluing your own feelings.

What to remember

Being a parent is difficult, and it is completely normal for you to have difficulties.

What to do

1. Notice that it's hard for you.
2. Feel sorry for yourself.
3. Find a way to unload yourself or ask for help.
4. Finally, lower your demands on yourself. If you have a huge daily to-do list and feel like you have to get everything done, it's unlikely that you will be able to avoid burnout.

2. I shouldn't be wrong

This setting often goes hand in hand with the previous one. Mothers do have a lot of responsibility. But we are living people and sometimes we can give the wrong dosage of medicine, lose our temper and raise our voices, forget and not do something important.

At this moment, the inner critic may turn on: “What kind of mother like this? It’s worse if a real person connects to him, who will make “Ay-ay-ay” with his finger in response to any parental mistake.

But the lack of room for error increases the degree of internal tension even more and adds fuel to the fire of parental burnout.

I love the words of the character from House: “Being a parent is hard work. It’s impossible not to screw up.” Yes, it is a lot of physical and emotional work.

Everything I say does not mean that you should treat children conniving - “let them grow like roadside grass.” It is important to have a healthy balance of responsibility and flexibility. A child will not be happy with a burnt-out mother; the child needs a healthy, emotionally stable mother.

What to remember

It's okay to make mistakes. And this is inevitable.

What to do

Take off the crown of deity and recognize yourself as a human being. People always make mistakes. And if this happens, the main thing is to realize your mistake in time, accept the consequences and seek help if necessary.

3. You should not have negative feelings towards your child.

Sometimes this attitude may sound like this: “A child should always be happy,” “You can’t be angry with children.”

This harmful belief, which makes you live halfway. It's as if a person has a face where one side is always smiling and the other is always angry, and because of this he decides to turn it off. Like, you can experience good emotions, but not bad ones.

This attitude can provoke depression or aggravate it if it already exists. After all, what is depression? This is the shutting off of all senses. If you forbid yourself to experience anger or sadness, or other difficult experiences, then joy, happiness, satisfaction, interest - all positive emotions - are also turned off.

Along with this attitude, thoughts may include whether I love the child at all if, for example, I am angry with him. But this is a false cause-and-effect relationship. This is the same as saying: if there is one feeling, then there is no second one. But in our psyche they are all live in one box, nearby: anger, joy, love, envy, fear, and so on. One feeling does not cancel the other. The same, for example, in relation to our husband: we can be angry with him, but at the same time continue to love.

A mother who allows herself to experience all her feelings towards her child is a healthy mother.

You need to look at the world realistically: even the most beloved child cannot always cause joy. Sometimes a mother may want to lie down with her legs up and cracking sunflower seeds while listening to the TV series. If the child demands attention at this moment, she will have to ignore her need for rest and go do what he wants. Of course she will be angry. And in this case it is normal to be angry. But here it is also very important to draw a clear line between feelings and behavior. You can be angry, but let go - it is forbidden.

What to remember

It is impossible not to experience negative feelings. The main thing is to express them environmentally.

What to do

1. Notice your anger, sadness or other unpleasant experiences.
2. Give yourself the right to have them exist.
3. Expressing them in an environmentally friendly way is safe for yourself and others. This can be done different ways. For example, by saying directly: “Now I’m angry with you” or “You can’t hit your mom. You are angry, and mom is angry too.” In this way we make an important contribution to the psychological competence of children because we show a plastic mother who puts a smile on her evil eyes, but a living person who knows how to experience and reside the whole range of emotions.

4. If I forbid something to a child, I will cause him injury.

Now, with the rise of psychology, parents may feel undue pressure, faced with constant reminders that the child's psyche is very fragile. This can create in them a fear of making mistakes - as if they might harm the child. injury for life. Because of this, some begin to dance around children: “I won’t tell you no, so that, God forbid, I don’t harm you. I will satisfy all your whims."

But this approach does not heal, but cripples, because the child’s boundaries are erased. He loses his understanding of what is possible and what is not. And the need for healthy boundaries is as great as the need for love. In addition, a lack of boundaries leads to increased anxiety.

That’s why I really like the idea of ​​my colleague Lyudmila Vladimirovna Petranovskaya: don’t treat a child like a crystal vase, children are surprisingly flexible and strong.

If you have a secure attachment relationship with him, this is an inoculation against trauma. In this case, the child feels love, feels safe, and he is confident that in any situation you will stand up for him. A reserve of mental strength with a formed reliable attachments very big.

What to remember

Through necessary prohibitions, boundaries are established that help the child navigate and maneuver in the world. What will definitely protect you from injury is a relationship with a built secure attachment.

What to do

Don’t be afraid to cause injury, but at the same time work on building the foundation of a secure attachment. It is formed when the parent is available in most cases, responds to the child’s needs and does not ignore them, gives warm emotional response, behaves predictably and safely. How to build a relationship with a secure attachment type is very well described in the book “Secret Support” by Lyudmila Vladimirovna Petranovskaya.

5. I have to do everything to make the child happy all the time.

One of my clients once told me, “I can’t stand it when my son cries.” I immediately had a question for her: “What happens to you at the moment when he cries?” After all, children often cry, and this is normal. They can't handle the stress frustration, and it comes out through their tears.

If a mother has an attitude that the child should be constantly happy, then at the moment when he is sad or crying, she may have the thought: “That means I’m a bad mother.”

I had a similar situation. When Temik, my son, was 5 years old, I could not stand him boredom. It seemed to me that if he was bored, it meant that I could not organize his life so that it would be interesting and filled with events and meaning. I worked with this setup because I realized that I would spend a lot of energy in the wrong places (or on the wrong things) if I was constantly trying to entertain my child.

Some parents, faced with this, sometimes begin to dance around the child, trying to please him and anticipate his desires - just so that he does not feel sad and bored.

But our task is not to be animators for our children, but to give them the opportunity to recognize and experience different feelings: boredom, anger, sadness. And help you learn to cope with them.

What to remember

It is important to help the child experience any emotions, including negative ones.

What to do

It is necessary to introduce children to all feelings, teach them to live their emotions, because in the real world it is impossible to constantly experience only happiness. When a child gets angry sobs, is bored, you should sit next to him and accompany him in this process: “You are my good / you are my good, I see that you are sad / bored. Let's get bored / let's be sad."

6. If I have a child, then all my time is his time

This attitude is not even about putting the child first, it is about putting him in the only significant place in life. In this case, everything is pushed aside: the husband, and friends, and the woman’s own desires. All her time is devoted to the child.

Often, even if it is possible to hire a nanny, a woman does not do this because: “What do you mean, “your own life”? What do you mean "massage"? In the sense of “meeting with friends”? I have a child! I have to be next to him all the time. I want to be the perfect mother."

But this position also leads to burnout.

After all, before the birth of a child, a woman had a lot spheres of life, many parts of the personality that were in some kind of balance. Accordingly, if she tries to restore this balance after 3-4 years, she may feel confused: “I’m so behind. I lost myself. I disappeared into the child."

What to remember

All the time of your only life belongs to you, and only you have the right to dispose of it as you see fit.

What to do

Of course, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give strength to your child. In the first years of his life, he really needs his mother, and it is normal that he will be your priority. The same priority that you give to yourself.

Therefore, it is important to ask yourself questions periodically. Both everyday ones - what I want to eat, how I want to relax, and existential ones - who I am, what I really want, what can make me satisfied and happy.

If a woman gets high from the fact that deals only with the child, if she feels that this is her own choice, that it nourishes her, that’s great. When dissatisfaction appears, you will need to pay attention to it and consider it as a signal: “Yeah, I haven’t had enough. What else do I want? Next is the question of how to organize it for yourself.

For example, I was on maternity leave with Temik for 7 months, and with Arisha for 3 months. To get to work, I hired nanny. Not because I needed to earn money, and not because I wanted to get away from my children. I liked combining different areas of life: spending time with the kids, dancing, working, and communicating with friends.

7. Even if I don’t like doing something with my child, I still have to

We have all heard: “A good mother is one who plays with dough together with her child to develop his fine motor skills” or “A good mother is one who walks with her child for an hour every day.” If a woman tries to follow “rules” that she doesn’t like, she steps on the throat of what is most important, necessary and interesting to her, which again leads to burnout.

For example, I don’t like to sculpt, or paint with my fingers (then the whole bathtub is covered in paint), or go for walks with my child. playground. Therefore, the nanny does all this with Arisha. And it’s wonderful: the nanny likes it, Arisha likes it, I’m happy.

I like to spend time with Arisha in a different way: reading books to her, freaking out with her, going shopping. Arisha is also great at folding clothes, and she loves it. Therefore, in the evenings, she and I sort out the clean things and put them in the closet. It is very comfortable.

What to remember

You don’t have to do something you don’t like, even if everyone presents it as necessary and educational for children.

What to do

Choose what you like to do and include your child in this activity. This will not be the situation: the child is sculpting, and the mother is sitting on the phone and waiting for this damn half hour to end.

And sometimes you just need to let your child follow you. Children are different. Sometimes it is difficult for them to occupy themselves with something (especially under 7 years old), and these are the rules of the game: just let them follow and do what you do.