OPEN LETTER TO PARENTS
Dear friends! June 1st is approaching - Children's Protection Day. There will be gifts, free distribution of ice cream, competitions, concerts, etc. And this is all for the children.
For us, in my opinion, this title remains - "protection of children".
Indeed, protection from whom? And who should protect?
The more my colleagues and I encounter children's fates and their problems in our work, the more we are convinced that we, the parents, must be the first to protect. And only then the state, the police, the school...
According to our analysis, 70% of the sadness, negativity, harm, and ultimately evil to children and teenagers is brought precisely by the parents. Let's read what an unknown author writes on this subject:
На глаза наплывает слеза
И срывается.
Не война ведь сейчас! Не война!
Не сражаются!
Почему ж отдала меня мать
В руки нянечки?
Что с тобой? Как тебя отыскать?
Где ты, мамочка?
Evil will not beget good. And for good to prevail, one must know the opponents properly. See in the face who they are, the criminals who commit crimes against childhood.
If today we fight only with the cause of evil, we will ourselves create evil in relation to these children. And tomorrow they will already give birth to children themselves without having realised their parental duty to them. After all, the person who was not loved in childhood most often does not know how to love for their entire life.
And the main conclusion - children must be protected. And as sad as it is, from us, the adults. I would like to suggest You, parents, to try to PROTECT THE CHILD FROM...
VIOLENCE IN THE FAMILY. The primordial "if he hits, it means he loves" at the subconscious level sets a distorted perception of the norm of relations between wife and husband. So women tolerate beatings, while at the same time they themselves raise a hand against their own children, accustoming them to the fact that a violent solution to problems is the norm.
It is the general permissiveness all around that leads to permissiveness in the family. 85% of children stated that corporal punishment was applied to them.
A mother gives a 2-3-year-old child a slap, replacing more difficult explanatory, educational work with a position of strength. The aggression of parents, the release of their own problems - is evidence of powerlessness.
Even a simple punishment for a child should not go beyond the bounds of parental duties. It is impossible, for example, to deprive them of dinner or force them to stand in a corner instead of preparing lessons. Moreover, the child must clearly know what they are punished for.
It is important that the child has someone to share their secrets and problems with. Not only a mother can listen and advise, but also an older sister, grandmother, or friend. Just God forbid that the offended person goes looking for advice on the street.
THE PERNICIOUS INFLUENCE OF MOM AND DAD'S DIVORCE. Because a child who has experienced a divorce of parents finds it much more difficult to arrange their personal life and create a viable family in the future; in incomplete and unstructured families, the risk of children and teenagers being drawn to alcohol, smoking, drugs, and early sexual relations grows. This is a consequence of the collapse of marriages. Perhaps the world is just constructed in such a way that nothing happens without a trace. Alongside the desire to finally live like humans, there arises a seemingly similar, but essentially opposite, passion - to live for oneself.
The number of children living in incomplete families, as a rule, without a father or with a stepfather, is steadily growing. And in such a way that it can be regarded as a violation of the natural environment for the development and upbringing of the younger generation.
In my opinion, it is necessary to complicate the divorce procedure itself. One cannot decide the future fate of a child with a single "stroke of a judge's pen". In such a situation, judges need to delve deeper into situations, consider whose fault the marriage fell apart due to, and treat the issue of custody of the child more seriously. Perhaps then the cases of manipulation of children for the sake of achieving some material benefit would become fewer.
But how can one restore the respect for the institution of family and marriage lost in our society, if not by force?
DISEASES. How long has it been since you underwent a complete annual medical check-up as a whole family? We do not treat ourselves, but we "feed" children with tablets. And the point is not in the doctors at all, but in how we immediately grasp at any recommendation without thinking about what is easier - to treat one organ or the organism as a whole?
To the extent that the power of faith, good, and conscience in parents is great, to that extent their children will be healthy.
Second - the soul. A doctor, if he is a doctor, must first see with what soul the patient came, and only then, what is wrong with their body.
It is not the doctor who takes on the treatment, but the person themselves who must be treated. And a person recovers to the extent that they have decided to be cured themselves.
After all, the very faith in the fact that everything will turn out well is much more powerful than it seems. One just needs to have enough strength and patience in the elders for faith, then the younger ones will also be healthy.
BEER ALCOHOLISM. Beer plays the role of a drug for beginners, stoking the craving for stronger drinks, because most chronic alcoholics started with beer but could no longer stop, and beer alcoholism forms much faster than vodka-based alcoholism.
It is necessary to convince both oneself and the teenager that a small share of alcohol does not yet speak of its safety. Even the strongest alcoholic drink is not alcohol, but only its solution.
Beer alcoholism has become a problem not of separate individuals and families, but of a whole society.
A positive image of beer is being created, of it being something that unites friends and makes us who we are, as an element of a beautiful and carefree life, a symbol of progress and mobility. Besides, they are driven by the desire to seem older, not to be a white crow among peers, and if a novice has the courage to declare the absence of a pleasant taste in the "symbol", then either mockery awaits them, or persuasion that the true value of the drink will soon be understood. That is, the choice is small: either to be like the crowd, or, while preserving one's own "I", condemn oneself to mockery and sideways glances from peers. The latter option is chosen by only a few.
Beer is a guide to a more "serious" addiction. The pleasure from what is drunk passes quickly, but the problems remain for a lifetime.
Even in our team of specialists, there is a lively debate: should we force them not to drink or accustom them to a culture of drinking?
But making it so that a teenager drinks less and later in age - this is our duty No. 1, yours and mine, parents. And the second task - the liquidation of poor leisure. Others will not do this for you. It is for you to think, to do, and to make decisions.
"FENCES" THAT FENCE CHILDREN OFF FROM US. "Invisible" children live in children's homes, boarding schools, and shelters. They exist, but our society does not see them. Does not notice them. Does not remember them.
We have separated these children into a special category of citizens - and have forgotten about them.
Every child living in a children's home or boarding school dreams that there would be at least one friend in the world, an older friend who will give advice, feel sorry, send even the most modest gift for a birthday.
Children will learn not only to take, but also to give, to bring joy to a loved one.
Orphans living in boarding schools have nowhere to learn the ordinary human life that "home" children live. Graduates of children's homes and boarding schools, going out into the big world, do not know how to build relationships in the family, how to raise children...
For this, boarding schools must be open and more accessible for those wishing already today to help children reveal themselves and realise themselves in life.
One family truly cannot save and raise all the lonely and unhappy children. And today (thank God!) there are already queues for babies from a baby home, from a children's home. Fortunately, more and more adults are appearing who dream of accepting a little new member into the family, of adopting, of raising as their own. But, if we are to be honest, this is still not a response to the suffering of the abandoned. In the long queue, full of waiting and hope, there are mainly childless couples who have realised that a family without a child is deficient, incomplete. Women want to try the happiness of motherhood. Men want to feel like fathers. These impulses are generally understandable. But still, at their base - is concern for oneself. And therefore, children are selected for these people, based on their wishes.
Behind every one of the children taken into their warm house, stand the results of someone else's criminal carelessness, cruelty, as well as a broken fate and human tragedy. Everyone who has already appeared in the world once, experiences the day of their birth a second time in a new family. No, not by days, but by months, by years, was the difficult path to the realisation of oneself as a person measured - desirable, close to other people - mom, dad, grandmother, brothers, and sisters.
In the course of every meeting in my office, hot excitement is felt, a lack of indifference to the fate of people who have found in themselves the courage and strength to transform into actions that anxiety which many feel upon learning about the misfortune of small, but already lonely, people.
Reasoning about how unhappy and lonely children are, we were unanimous and friendly. And it seemed to us: just shout about it - and everyone will rush to help them. Everyone together. And then...
After all, this is how it turned out. We thought about the concrete - how to help disadvantaged children, and the discussion of this question touched upon the most different sides of our life, demanded the clarification of moral criteria, appealed to social experience.
Summing up, it can be said that the problem of the majority of children is that parents devote too little attention to them - and it is needed by a child at any age!
Having to deal with children's souls, one must measure a hundred times before "cutting without anaesthesia".
I do not tolerate inaction, to which I urge You in the name of the children. In general, people in life spend a lot of time on non-essential things. One needs to clearly set the goal to which one is going. It is important when there are like-minded people nearby, people who understand and who already help by this (in this, I personally got very lucky). I do not believe that one can have a hundred true friends. However, I am convinced that good relations with people cannot be valued by any currency.
Therefore, on the eve of Children's Protection Day, with great pleasure I want to congratulate, first of all, those who stand in the protection of childhood every day - employees of services for children's affairs and centres of social services for family, children, and youth, guardians and trustees, social teachers of educational institutions, members of guardianship councils of local bodies of power and self-government, my colleagues and like-minded people at the "Teenager" Charitable Foundation.
And to You, dear parents, I advise you to spend at least this day with your own children, to go to festive events (thankfully there will be many of them), and to organise a home family holiday. And don't forget to buy a gift for the child!
Your Volodymyr Honcharov,
Director of the Leninskyi District in Luhansk
Centre for Social Services for Family, Children, and Youth,
Chairman of the Board of the "Teenager" Charitable Foundation
8-067-643-70-24
