The upbringing of adopted children is a very complex and controversial matter. Let's try to consider it more specifically. Since I worked a lot in the Children's Home, and also dealt with issues of adoption, I have something to say and show to future parents, even simply analyzing situations from the inside of the child's and future parents' perceptions.

When I came to work at the Orphanage, there was a queue for the adoption of children. The parents-to-be waited 5 years for their turn. The adoption process was long and complicated. During the years of perestroika, everything changed. They began to send children to the family quickly and a lot. Sick and healthy. Ours and foreigners. A stream of adoptive parents has formed.

Adoption is a complex and lengthy process

Parents-to-be should be aware of the difficulties that await them and be ready to overcome them. Only then will they be able to raise a healthy and full-fledged child.

People who dream of adopting a baby want to do a good deed. They sincerely wish him well, they want him to become their favorite child. But suddenly it turns out that the glorious little man turns into an embittered animal before our eyes. He wants nothing. Doesn't eat. Doesn't sleep. Is naughty. Falls to the floor and throws tantrums. Finally falls ill and gives neurotic reactions. Parents get scared. What to do? How to deal with all this?

Difficulties of social adaptation

All this can be avoided if you act correctly during the adaptation period. Parents-to-be do not need to rush to take their child home. It is better to visit him at the Orphanage for 2-3 months. Play with him, walk, hold him in your arms. Observe what he is, what he loves, what he does not like. How he behaves - separately from other children. Make personal, emotional ties with him.

Communicate with your child more. Let the child wait for you, rejoice at your arrival. And it's not about toys and gifts. Wait for your child to feel safe and secure in your presence. And only after that you can take the baby to your place. Then on weekends, holidays. After when the child will strive to go home, leave him for a longer time.

If during the first month the child becomes whiny, irritable, it would be good to go with him to visit the children of the Orphanage - this often relieves stress. Don't let that scare you. Due to the peculiarities of the nervous system of children under three years of age, their disturbed behavior can be easily restored with timely and correct education.

Babies are adopted more often

Children from the Children's Home are adopted much more often than from orphanages and boarding schools. Since the younger the child, the easier it is to adapt to new conditions, the easier it is to love him, the better he will develop. Nevertheless, it is difficult to bring up children without parents. These are difficult children. From the point of view of Yuri Burlan's System-Vector Psychology, the children of the Orphanage have lost the sense of security and safety that the mother gives the child. Foster parents need to work hard to warm up the baby, return this feeling to him and get a credit of trust from him.

Features of the children of the Orphanage and how to deal with it

Children of Baby Houses quickly get tired and excited. It is difficult for them to get used to new people, new conditions. For some, this manifests itself as negativism - the denial of everything and everyone. Others - screaming, crying, excessive obsession. Children of orphanages lack vivid impressions, they do not know many household items with which children from families are familiar from the first days of life.

It is advisable for parents to walk more with their child, travel, and not in a stroller, but on foot. Then the child will be able to see more, to touch what interested him. The kid can pick grass, a flower, pick up a pebble, touch a dog, and so on.

Also, affection, attention, love is not enough for them. Children are never alone, they cannot retire, they get tired of a large number of children, adults, noise, their own screams. Their behavior is characterized by the instability of the emotional state. It is enough to scream, cry to one child - all the children of the group begin to scream with him.

Parents' actions

Adopted children are in great need of increased attention, affection, touching. They need to be hugged, kissed, worn, and stroked as often as possible. This is especially necessary for children with a skin vector, they come to psychological comfort when they are stroked or massaged.

Watch what the child will do without your participation. Will he be looking at a book, drawing, building a building out of blocks, or running, jumping, screaming. So it will be easier for you to decide on its vectors and understand how to quickly adapt it and maximize talents.

It is undesirable from the first days to acquaint with a large number of people, relatives, other children. Gradually expand your child's social circle. Since the child needs time to adapt to new living conditions. Believe that he has his own mother, who loves, who will not leave, who is always with him. You need to try and give him the missing feeling of security and safety. Sometimes it takes months or even years.

If the child has distracted attention

Children from the Orphanage often have distracted attention. They cannot keep their attention on a certain object, toy, or task for a sufficient amount of time. This is because these children have a slower pace of learning, they need a longer repetition of the same task, lesson. Mental processes are slowly formed - memory, attention, thinking.

Parents need to draw the child's attention to the subject in a variety of ways. Consider, touch, taste, move, hide, find. It is undesirable to provide a child with many toys at once, as this does not allow him to focus his attention. The child grabs everything at once, throws it, touches it, breaks it, but does not know how to tackle one toy. In any case, adopted children most of all need the warmth and attention of adults. If you play together and accept the child with all his characteristics, gradually the attention will improve.

Flexible day schedule

With all the love, affection and attention, parents must observe both reasonable severity and the daily routine. Many children of the Orphanage are physically weakened, the daily routine is simply necessary for them.

It can be adapted to your capabilities, lifestyle. The mode can be flexible, in accordance with the individual characteristics of the child. It is especially needed by children with a skin vector. After all, children with a skin vector need restriction in order for its properties to develop correctly. You can read more about this in the article.

"Bad" habits or "hospitalism"

As a result of imitating each other, children can easily develop bad habits and stereotyped movements. This is facilitated by fatigue, unemployment, long waiting for attention, uninteresting activities. Some children have a habit of rocking, sucking their fingers, rubbing or banging their head or other parts of the body against a bed or wall; this comes from insufficient attention, the so-called "hospitalism".

Hospitalism is a lack of communication between a child and close adults. This is a medical term. From the point of view of system-vector psychology, this is a consequence of the loss of a child's sense of security and safety in infancy, his isolation. Many children of the Children's Home are constantly hungry, they love a lot of sweets. In this way, they make up for the lack of love, attention, touch. Parents should not be allowed to overuse food and sweets. Better to replace them with love, emotional connection and tenderness.

Silent music encourages falling asleep

Children need to be protected from fatigue and overwork. Observe the regime, put to bed on time. If the child has difficulty falling asleep, you can give him a soft toy in the crib (especially if he has a visual vector). You can play calm classical music - this helps to fall asleep (for children with a sound vector, this is useful in terms of developing concentration skills). Unfortunately, this is not very practiced in orphanages, but it can be easily organized in a family. The leatherworker needs to jump up to his fill, run over to sleep well. Otherwise, he will fidget for a long time, itch before falling asleep.

How to communicate with your child? Speech development

Lack of vivid impressions, slow mastery of new skills, inability to transfer new knowledge into independent activity - all this leads to a delay in development. Including speech suffers. It is primitive, monotonous, monotonous. Children use a small number of nouns and onomatopoeia. The pronunciation is unclear.

When communicating with a child, you need to name all household items, furniture, toys. To call it exactly, clearly, in one word: “This is a crib. It's a bear. This is a spoon. " In order for the child to hear the correct pronunciation from the first days. It is necessary to exclude lisping words, this delays the development of speech. At the next stage, we teach to answer the question "What is he doing?" - "the bear sits, stands, plays" and so on. Then the question "What?" - "the ball is round, red, large."

Are bans necessary?

An important role in education is played by the ability of adults to use prohibitions correctly. According to system-vector psychology, both adults and children need prohibitions. For example:

1. Do not hit children, but especially children with a skin vector, this can lead them to a bad scenario in life.
2. You can not shout at children, especially at sound people, this can lead them to mental retardation, and even to autism.
3. Do not frighten children, especially visual ones, their fears can turn into phobias.
4. You can not push the child with an anal vector, he may fall into a stupor and you will not achieve anything from him.
You can read more about it.

This cannot be done, but this can be done

The child must know and understand the word "no". Don't abuse it. But the baby must clearly learn some rules in the family, in communication with others. There should not be many prohibitions for children. Any NO is stressful for the child. But explaining to children why "it is impossible", and offering an alternative instead of a prohibited one - this will be the right approach.

For example: “You can't hit mom in the face, because mom hurts. But the ball can be hit - it will just jump happily "," You cannot throw the cup on the floor, it will break, but the ball, the cube - you can "," You cannot pull the cat by the tail, the cat is alive, it hurts, it will scratch - but the rope can pull "," You can't tear a book, but you can do a newspaper. " And it is very useful to tear, and crush, and cut, and smooth - fingers work, fine motor skills develop.

What is dear to you, and the child can break or break, it is better to remove for a while further, higher. It is good to use positive phrases when talking to your child. To say less: “don't run”, “don't touch”, “don't shout”, “don't climb”. To use more: "go run", "go touch", "speak calmly", "do you need this?"

To praise or not to praise?

It is imperative to praise children with an anal vector, praise supports in him the desire to work and bring things to the end. True, you need to praise only for the cause, and not just like that: "You did it well, painted, built." With praise, as well as with prohibitions and censures, such children become insecure. The anal-visual begins to win out approval, becomes dependent on praise and therefore cannot find himself in life.

It is better to encourage skin children with purchases, gifts, the opportunity to purchase something. They do not need praise, they need something material. True, this is already about older children. Visual children need an emotional response: "How beautiful!", "Just beauty!" and the opportunity to express your emotions and feelings yourself.

The above advice is given for all children adopted in the Orphanage. The following recommendations are given taking into account the knowledge of system-vector psychology and relate to the individual differences of children.

Who needs strict discipline

If your child has a cutaneous vector, he or she should be raised with strict discipline and constraints. Since his nature allows him to become in the future - an athlete, a military man or an entrepreneur. Physical punishment cannot be applied to this child, this can slow down his mental and physical development. But you can limit your child in time - "You will only watch cartoons for 15 minutes", in space - "Sit in your room", in motion - "Sit on a highchair while the children play."

Smart, obedient, indecisive

Such parenting methods cannot be applied to a child with an anal vector. This child appreciates quality, therefore it is slow, even indecisive, lives in its own rhythm. He should not be rushed, urged on, his efforts should not be devalued. He just needs to be given more time for everything and praise for a job well done.

Your child has golden hands, he loves to learn, but you need to teach him to finish his work to the end. In the future, he can be a master of his craft, a teacher.

Sensitive, emotional, gentle

Children with a visual vector are very emotional, sensitive, loving. But they have many fears, which often turn into tantrums. They are afraid of everything: darkness, confined spaces, loneliness, Baba Yaga. These fears must be carefully translated into acceptance, compassion, love. For this, you can use classical literature, drawing, fairy tales with a good ending.
Such children are strongly attached to toys, animals, close people. If they lose these emotional connections, then they suffer greatly - up to a severe decrease in vision.

Autistic or future genius

This child seems strange. He is uncommunicative, loves solitude, withdrawn. Constantly thinking about something, looking absent. Such a child does not tolerate noise, screams. He needs to create a background of silence at home. He hears you better if you talk to him in almost a whisper. Screaming can lead to a halt in his mental development, apathy, depression and even autism.

These children can be very gifted. You need to send them to a music or mathematical school. The chess club is also suitable for such children. In the future, they may be interested in physics, mathematics, space and other sciences.

Understanding the child and acting in his interests is the main task of education

Adopting a child is a complex issue and requires serious, including psychological, preparation. Understanding the innate desires of the child, which depend on the set of his vectors, helps to create such closeness and trust between the parents and the baby.
And for this understanding to happen, we strongly recommend that you visit the free online lectures on systemic vector psychology by Yuri Burlan. Register now.

The article was written using materials

Is it possible to talk about the main psychological characteristics of adoption (adoption into a family from an orphanage) briefly and succinctly. Experts say yes you can. Let's tell!

From zero to a year

A child in a blood family comes from scratch, so the relationship between an adoptive parent and a baby is natural.

Attachment is immediately developed in them. Parents "carry on" the child, they have time to grow up to moms and dads, to learn to love. If the expectant mother, before adopting the child, lived for herself, devoted her life to a career, then she must be ready for cardinal changes.

A baby needs a year, or preferably two, to nurse on their own, not relying on nannies. As a rule, mothers with babies burn out quickly, because they must fully devote themselves to them.

It is very important to decide who will help with the baby. A child under one year old is a "pig in a poke". At this age, it is impossible to diagnose a number of diseases, to predict how the child will develop and look in the future. Taking a baby, we seem to give birth. What I gave birth to or adopted, this is what I love.

From one to three

In children at this age, the appearance is already "determined". Parents can talk to their child, find out what hurts: a tooth, an eye, a stomach. It can be seen that the child can walk and talk.

Children at this age are removed many of the diagnoses that were made at birth. The child can already be sent to kindergarten, but one must be prepared for the fact that he will lag behind his peers. There is no need to be afraid of this, children at this age quickly catch up with their peers.

But a toddler from an orphanage will not have a three-year crisis by the age of 3: “I myself,” because he is not yet attached to his parents.

Before adoption, it is imperative to find out the history of the child, and, based on it, approach the issues of upbringing. If the baby was begging on the street - this is one thing, but if he was raised by his mother - another. A child who at this age had an attachment to his mother will more easily believe and make contact with another significant adult.

Three to six

This is a "magical" age when a child is literally bursting with love. He believes in fairy tales, but for the first time he learns what death is. At this time, the baby cannot begin to prepare for school. It is necessary to "nourish" him with maximum love, because in the future he will spend a lot of energy on studying. This is the time of the game, traveling together, magical stories. Parents should devote as much time as possible to the child, because this is a very important period for him.

For the first time, a baby develops an idea of ​​justice, good and evil. It is this that will move him in the future, when he thinks not with his head, but with his heart. At first, you need to treat a child like a baby, that is, say - you are, and this is happiness. Then he must pass the age "from one to three", when the rules of behavior and safety are learned.

But he cannot be instilled with academic knowledge, any study should be in the format of a game. At this age, it is already clear that the child is slightly behind in development. He is unlikely to immediately be an excellent student, but the gap can be caught up. The main thing is to understand that the baby still has a lot to learn, such as how to express love.

Six to 12

At this age, the main thing is not to break the child. Foster parents take on the education of a student who has not gone through the previous stages of growing up. They didn’t cuddle him, he didn’t walk up, he didn’t get enough love, but he had to go to school.

There is no need to demand extraordinary success from the child. The main thing you need to be prepared for is dialogue with the school. It is important that the parents always stay on the side of the child and realize that there is not much to demand in the first grade. A kid from an orphanage is unlikely to ever be an excellent student at school, but he will go to circles, play football, hug and kiss his mother, happily spend time together and happily help with the housework.

Children always want to be successful, so they compensate for their failures at home. At this age, it is impossible to predict the future character of the child. You cannot put stamps if, for example, he stole money. It is also important not to miss out on health: the child must rest, sleep and eat well, and you can take up the mind in the 10th grade. It is very important to listen to your son or daughter, so many mistakes can be avoided.

13 to 15

In adolescence, children reconsider values: it is time for them to separate from the adults with whom they have grown together, so they look for flaws in them. If the child does not find a lack of mom or dad, then he simply will not be able to "unstick" from them, because how can one get away from such good ones?

Before taking a teenager, you need to find out how the child got into the orphanage. It is important to talk to workers and volunteers because management may hide the fact that children take drugs and go home where they see their parents drinking alcohol. Parents-to-be need to understand what they may face.

Children of this age in orphanages are given good grades in the classroom so that they do not lose motivation. The child will tell potential parents the things they want to hear from him. If dad says he loves to read, the teenager will repeat. But this is not so, because reading is a pleasure, but in orphanages it is received differently.

At first, children behave well in a foster home, but then they start checking the "boundaries". If moms and dads took a teenager, then they should not "tighten the screws" immediately. Punishment will only worsen the situation, since this is humiliation, and in the past life the orphans had too much of this.

The host family becomes professional. You have to restrain yourself, watch your actions, words, improve your skills. It is important to know the phone numbers of teachers and children's rooms of the police, to control where the child went and with whom he is friends. Build a warm, respectful relationship. A teenager must have his own room so that he can feel “in the house”.

If the relationship is established and there are no overlaps, then you need to move on to the next stage - to see in which areas the child develops best and invite him to enroll in the section. Over time, orphanage habits will begin to disappear, smoothed out, the child will become like adoptive parents.

Children from the orphanage need to be instilled with the understanding that they are not unfortunate orphans who need to be pitied, and the state will not help them forever, and material benefits appear due to work. Foster parents should also be prepared for the child to compare them with blood relatives, it would be good, on the one hand, not to over praise blood relatives, and on the other hand, not to offend the teenager with bad words about his family.

15 to 17

Relationship with older children is a kind of matrimony. The child thinks that he has already formed, in fact, he has not yet realized who he is and what to do next.

Parents who decide to take a boy or a girl should definitely try the guest mode first. It is advisable to choose the period of summer vacation for this. All adolescents at this time are children who sleep for a long time, eat well, have fun and walk.

Most likely you will have to find a good technical school. A teenager needs his own room, to which he can always return, and moms and dads must give him confidence that he is no longer alone, and he has a family. It is necessary to develop independence in young men and women, to teach how to ask for help, because our children do not know how to do this. We, as outside observers, can prompt, stop the offense, but we cannot force it.

Love and patience. And do not forget to take care of yourself and your loved ones.

Child education associated with many difficulties. Parents have to go through many tests in order to grow from a small, weak, dependent on other people an adult, self-sufficient and strong personality. Although it is hard work, many women cannot imagine themselves without a child, it is extremely important for them to find the happiness of motherhood. But, unfortunately, it is not always possible to give birth to a child, in this and other cases, many married couples decide on adoption... What difficulties do parents have to face when they take foster child?

Children from orphanages, boarding schools were brought up in a completely different way from home children. They are not independent, practically cannot do anything without outside help, are not accustomed to living in a house and doing household chores, and cannot navigate the city. Parents who have adopted a foster child in their family need to understand that he was brought up in a different environment and is used to living according to the rules of an orphanage, so it will take him a lot of time to adapt. Some people believe that adopting a ready-made child is much easier than giving birth, not sleeping at night, changing diapers, and going through all the difficult stages of development. But this is a misconception. A child who ends up in an orphanage often has a difficult fate and has gone through a lot over the years. Aggressive behavior is often the result of the losses and misfortunes that he had to face.

Rules for raising a foster child

Psychologists point out that bad behavior in the first months in a new home is a positive sign. At the very beginning, the child is squeezed,. At this time, he does not behave the way he used to in an ordinary circle. He controls his behavior in order to win over his parents and other family members, but sooner or later the baby loses control and reveals himself as a real person. In the event that a child behaves naturally from the very beginning, he subconsciously realizes and accepts the acquired connection with his parents. Awareness and acceptance is the first step to successfully raising a foster child.

Parents' mistakes in raising adopted children

Parents often expect dramatic changes in adopted child behavior without giving him time to adapt. For example, they expect gratitude for their care, and a child who has just found himself in a new home is not yet mentally ready to express his feelings, to gratitude. Parents take the inability to express feelings, fear to open up and be rejected, fear to trust for ingratitude. The ability to give thanks will come with time. You need to be patient and strenuously move towards your goal through proper upbringing and love.

The reason for bad behavior is the confusion felt by the toddler in the new home. Previously, he had a certain role, he clearly knew what he was responsible for, now the child does not understand what place is allotted to him in the new house, does not know how to behave. It is necessary to constantly show the child his importance and the role he plays in the new family. You can always turn to social workers and psychologists for help.

From the first days you should not demand from the adopted child that he called his parents “mom” and “dad”. Parents need to understand that the child needs time to utter these words. This does not mean at all that he does not need any of the new family, that he is ungrateful. It is necessary to be patient and, showing maximum restraint, attentiveness, support the child, let him know that he has the same rights as other family members in the new home. All difficulties are temporary, and soon the child will learn to express his feelings, to give love and affection to his relatives.

There are many, many of yesterday's kids, now grown up, or even completely adults, independent, with their families, their children, and do not know that they were raised from abandonment, from oblivion, from betrayal - with the heart and holy power of motherhood who did not give birth to them women.

Albert Likhanov. Dramatic pedagogy.

Most of the children live in families. Among the many family models, families with adopted or adopted children occupy a special place. In turn, such families can only consist of adopted children and their adoptive parents, or the adopted children end up in a family where there are already children of their own. Therefore, the psychological problems faced by foster families largely depend on what the structure (numerical and personal composition) of such a family is.

The whole civilized world of children left without parental care suits in families. Abandoned children stay in so-called children's institutions just as long as it takes to find a new family for them. And at the same time, it is not so important whether the child is adopted or taken under guardianship - it is important that he will live at home, in the family. There are orphanages only in Russia.

At the same time, it should be noted that the problem of placing children in orphanages as such appeared in Russia only in the 20th century. Up to this period, if a child became an orphan, as a rule, relatives took him in for upbringing. Thus, the child continued to live in the family. The upbringing of an orphan has always been considered a godly deed. In state institutions, children from impoverished noble families or children of the military were usually brought up. Orphanages for orphans appeared in Russia after 1917, in which children left without adult care were placed. Impartial statistics show that today there are about 800 thousand children left without parental care in Russia. But these are only those of them who are registered with the state, and naturally no one can count the homeless. It is believed that there are about 600 thousand “street children” in the country, but along with this, other figures are named: two million and four million. This means that even according to the most conservative estimates, there are almost one and a half million abandoned children in Russia. Every year in the country, more than 100 thousand children are identified who, due to various circumstances, have been left without parental care. 

Although the system of social support and guardianship was considered for a long time quite acceptable for raising a child, experts have long noted a very important pattern: graduates of orphanages are practically unable to create full-fledged families, their children, as a rule, also end up in orphanages. Unfortunately, among the people who have violated the law, most often there are children from orphanages. Therefore, against this background, the identification of children deprived of parental care into families is especially welcome. Unfortunately, only 5% of children are adopted from the number of those left without parental support. This is due to numerous difficulties of a very different order that inevitably arise in the path of those who have expressed a desire to give the child a family, which he has lost against his will. The secret of adoption still remains one of the serious problems. Russian adoptive parents are afraid all their lives that their secret will be revealed, and therefore they often change their place of residence in order to maintain peace of mind and ensure the social and psychological well-being of the adopted child. At the same time, recently there has been a tendency to adopt children in the presence of their own children in the family, so there is no need to keep this secret. However, this does not mean that foster parents will not face a number of problems in building relationships with a step-child, as well as in establishing contacts between their own children and foster children. Therefore, let us dwell on these issues in more detail.

As a rule, children who do not receive appropriate upbringing in the parental family are placed in a foster family. They may be malnourished and neglected, lack medical treatment and supervision, and experience various forms of physical, mental or sexual abuse. Foster “pets” can also be children whose parents were not involved in upbringing due to a lack of pedagogical skills or because of a long illness. Thus, the foster family becomes a kind of "ambulance", the main goal of which is to timely support and protect the child in a crisis situation.

At first glance, it may seem that the upbringing of adopted children is no different from the upbringing of relatives. Indeed, the tasks of upbringing for both relatives and foster children are the same, especially if the foster children are small. However, there are also special points that need to be known and taken into account by foster parents; they will need to be able to help their adopted children enter the family. And it is very difficult to create conditions for adaptation so that children feel like full members of the new community.

The psychological problems of a family that have adopted a child can be conditionally divided into two groups. First group These problems are associated with the peculiarities of experiences, behavior and expectations of adoptive parents. The second- concerns the difficulties of entering a new family and adapting an adopted child in it. These problems are closely related, however, their content has its own specific features that should be taken into account by both foster parents and representatives of special guardianship and guardianship services that deal with issues of adoption.

Psychological problems of adoptive parents.

Since the days of Ancient Rome, adoption has been an important social institution. However, the attitude towards him is still ambiguous: some believe that it is better for a child to live in a family, others, on the contrary, talk about the advantages of public education in special institutions. This should not be surprising, because a strange child in a family is always something unusual. Moreover, this is unusual for people who decide to take on the upbringing of a child about whom they practically do not know anything. It is not easy for adoptive parents to get rid of some uncertainty and a certain tension when, after a long hesitation, they finally make such a responsible decision and realize that they have actually become educators, and now another human fate depends only on them. Many are still accompanied by "educational tremors" for a long time: will they be able to cope with their obligations and safely lead the child through the reefs of life, to fully satisfy his mental needs, helping him to become an independent and unique person.

A child who has lost his own parents needs a family environment filled with love, mutual trust and respect for full development. Spouses who cannot have children of their own have many parental needs that go unmet and many parental feelings that go unexpressed. Therefore, during adoption, there is a meeting of the unmet needs of one and the other side, which allows them to quickly reach mutual understanding. However, in life everything does not always go as smoothly as dreamed: the newly created parent-child union, although noble, is very fragile, therefore it needs attention, help and psychological support so much. It contains certain dangers that foster parents should be aware of in order to warn them in a timely manner.

It is believed that the greatest danger for the family community - disclosure of the secret of adoption... And adoptive parents, succumbing to this delusion, take various precautions: they stop meeting with friends, move to another area or even a city in order to protect the child from the possible emotional shock associated with the disclosure of this family secret. But experience shows that all these precautions are not effective enough, and the surest guarantee is the truth that the child must learn from his adoptive parents. It is truth that is the most important condition for a good educational atmosphere. And if a child from the first days of being in a foster family grows up with the knowledge that he is a “non-native”, but he is loved in the same way as other children, then the family union is not in serious danger.

The second danger of adoptive parents is associated with hereditary qualities of the child. Many of them are afraid of "bad heredity" and all their lives have been closely monitoring the behavior of an adopted child, looking for the manifestation of those "vices" that their biological parents have awarded them. Of course, it is impossible to change the natural type of the nervous system and turn the child's weak abilities into talent even with the most heroic efforts and tireless educational diligence of adoptive parents. But this is almost all that parenting cannot. Everything else related to the personality of the child can be successfully influenced. Many bad habits that the child acquired in the previous environment, the special demeanor with which he tried to balance the emotional limitations of his life, the lack of practical knowledge and skills of friendly interaction with other people - purposeful, consistent and loving upbringing can perfectly cope with all this. The most important thing that is required of foster parents is patience and a willingness to provide the necessary assistance in a timely manner to a new family member in his entry into the life to which he is not accustomed.

You can often come across the opinion that the most difficult problems in the situation of forming a new family union are associated with the behavior of children. However, practice shows that the weakest link in such a union is the parents themselves. Sometimes they are overly inflated from the long wait for their predictions, which for some reason are in no hurry to come true, so they try to rush and "spur" the child. Often, taking responsibility for another person, they are full of uncertainty and have no idea what joys and concerns the “alien” child will bring them. Often they unleash their unfulfilled parental feelings on the child, forgetting that he may not be prepared for them and therefore has to defend himself from the emotional flow that rushes over him. People who have just become parents have a tendency to make increased demands on their child, which it simply cannot yet cope with. And although they say out loud that they will be quite happy if their son (or daughter) studies mediocre, deep down they set higher goals for the child, which, in their opinion, he must definitely achieve. Others, on the other hand, believe only in heredity and fearfully expect what the child has adopted from his biological parents: behavioral deviations, diseases and many other things that are unattractive and undesirable for the family and the full development of the child himself. For this reason, they often secretly observe the behavior of the child, taking a wait-and-see attitude. Manners and hobbies that are unacceptable in the child's behavior, in the opinion of adoptive parents, are inclined to be attributed to bad heredity, without thinking that this may be nothing more than a reaction to unusual living conditions for him in a new family. In addition, the child can constantly be haunted by thoughts and memories of his biological parents, whom he continues to love in his soul, despite the fact that life with them was not as prosperous as it is now. He is confused and does not know how to behave: on the one hand, he still continues to love his own parents, and on the other, he has not yet managed to fall in love with the adoptive parents. For this reason, his behavior may be inconsistent and inconsistent, he is afraid of his attachment to adoptive parents to "offend" his former. Sometimes aggressive behavioral reactions in relationships with adoptive parents are nothing more than psychological protection against those internal contradictions that they experience while loving step-parents and natural parents at the same time. Of course, such behavior of a child is very painfully perceived by his new parents, who do not know how to behave in such a situation, whether it is worth punishing him for certain offenses.

Sometimes adoptive parents afraid to punish the child because of the fear that he might feel in them strangers to himself. Sometimes, on the contrary, they fall into despair because they do not know how else to punish him, because all punishments are useless - nothing affects him. If you clearly understand that the basis of the educational impact of punishment is a temporary break in the emotional connection between a child and an adult, then it is easier to understand that there is no need to be afraid of this. It is important that the punishment is followed by forgiveness, reconciliation, the return of past relationships, and then, instead of alienation, the emotional connection only deepens. But if the emotional relationship in the foster family is not yet in tune, then no amount of punishment will have the desired impact. Many children who find themselves in foster families have simply not yet learned (are not accustomed) to love someone, to emotionally attach to someone, to feel good in a family environment. And what is usually considered a punishment, they perceive rather indifferently, just like natural phenomena - snow, thunderstorm, heat, etc. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to build an emotional connection in the family, and this takes time, patience and condescension on the part of foster parents.

On adoption can't watch as a sacrifice brought to the child by new parents. On the contrary, the child himself gives a lot to his adoptive parents.

Worst of all, if adults, by adopting a baby, thereby try to solve some of their problems. For example, they propose to preserve the disintegrating marital union or see in the child a kind of "insurance" for old age. It also happens that, having an only child, spouses try to find a peer or companion for him, that is, when the adopted child serves as a means for solving some personal or family problems of adults, and is not a goal focused on himself and achieved for the sake of him. Perhaps the most acceptable is the situation when a child is taken into a foster family in order to make her life more fulfilling, if the adoptive parents see in him their continuation in the future and believe that their union is equally useful to both parties.

Psychological difficulties of adaptation of adopted children in the family.

Children end up in someone else's family for various reasons. They may have different life experiences, and they each have their own individual needs. However, each of them is experiencing the psychological trauma caused by parting with their own family. When children are brought up in a foster family, they are separated from people they know and trust, and are placed in a completely different, alien environment. Getting used to a new environment and new living conditions is associated with a number of difficulties, which a child is practically unable to cope with without the help of adults.

How a child cope with separation is influenced by the emotional bond that occurs in early childhood. Between the ages of six months and two years, the child develops an attachment to the person who encourages him as much as possible and is most responsive to all needs. This is usually the mother, since it is she who most often feeds, dresses and cares for the child. However, it is not only the satisfaction of the child's physical needs that contributes to the formation of certain attachments in him. An emotional attitude towards him is very important, which is expressed through a smile, bodily and visual contact, conversations, i.e. full communication with him. If by the age of two, attachments are not formed in a child, the likelihood of their successful formation at an older age decreases (a striking example of this is children who are in special institutions from birth, where there is no constant individual contact with the adult caring for them).

If a child has never experienced any attachments, he, as a rule, does not react in any way to parting with his parents. Conversely, if he has developed a natural affection for his family members or the people who replace them, he is likely to react violently to the fact that he is taken out of the family. A child may experience real grief for some time, and everyone experiences it in their own way. It is very important that foster parents are able to anticipate the child's reaction to separation from family and be empathetic.

Foster parents can help children cope with their sad feelings by accepting them for who they are and helping them express their feelings in words. Often this can be due to an ambivalent attitude towards their parents. On the one hand, they continue to love them, and on the other, they feel disappointment and resentment towards them, because it is their fault that they have to live in someone else's family. The feeling of confusion that children experience because of feelings of love and longing for their family and hatred of their parents for their imaginary or real actions is very painful. When they are under prolonged emotional stress, they may react aggressively to foster parenting attempts to bond with them. Therefore, adoptive parents need to foresee the appearance of such reactions on the part of adopted children and try to help them get rid of their negative experiences as soon as possible and adapt to the new family.

It is very important for foster parents to understand that children experience no less difficulties than adults when they find themselves in new living conditions. At the same time, due to age characteristics, they quickly adapt to changed circumstances and often either do not realize or simply do not think about the complexities of a new life.

The process of adaptation of a child in a foster family goes through a number of periods, at each of which there are social, psychological, emotional and pedagogical barriers.

The first adaptation period is introductory. Its duration is short, about two weeks. Most clearly during this period are manifested social and emotional barriers. Particular attention should be paid to the first meeting of potential parents with a child. Preliminary preparation for the meeting of both sides is important here. Even young children are worried about this event. On the eve they are excited, cannot sleep for a long time, become fussy, restless. Older children feel a sense of fear before meeting with prospective adoptive parents and may turn to the adults around them (caregivers, medical workers) with a request not to give them anywhere, to leave them in an orphanage (hospital), although the day before they expressed their readiness to live in a family, to leave with new parents to any country. Older preschoolers and schoolchildren develop a fear of unfamiliar speech and learning a new language.

At the moment of meeting, emotionally responsive children willingly go to meet future parents, some rush to them shouting “Mom!”, Hug, kiss. Others, on the contrary, become overly constrained, cling to the accompanying adult, do not let go of his hand, and the adult in this situation has to tell them how to approach and what to say to future parents. Such children with great difficulty part with their familiar environment, cry, refuse to get acquainted. Such behavior often confuses foster parents: it seems to them that the child did not like them, they begin to worry that he will not love them.

It is easiest to establish contact with such a child through unusual toys, objects, gifts, but at the same time, adoptive parents need to take into account the age, gender, interests, level of development of the child. Often, in order to establish contact with a child, adults have to “sacrifice principles,” as if to follow the child's lead, to indulge his desires, since it is difficult to achieve the location of a little person with prohibitions and restrictions during this period. For example, many children from an orphanage are afraid to sleep alone, to be left in a room without adults. Therefore, at first you have to either take the child to your bedroom, or be with him until he falls asleep. Disciplining educational restrictions, punishments will have to be applied later, when such a child gets used to new conditions, accepts adults as his family. To accustom the child to the regime, the new order in these conditions, it is necessary to tactfully, but persistently, constantly reminding that he has forgotten. This is natural for any person, even an adult, who has fallen into new conditions. Therefore, at first, the child should not be overloaded with various rules and instructions, but one should not retreat from their requirements either.

Many new people appear around the child, whom he is not able to remember. He sometimes forgets where dad and mom are, does not immediately say what their names are, confuses names, family relations, asks: "What is your name?", "Who is this?" This is not evidence of poor memory, but is explained by the abundance of impressions that the child is not able to assimilate in a short time in the new environment. And at the same time, quite often, sometimes completely unexpectedly and, it would seem, at the most inopportune time, children remember their former parents, episodes and facts from their previous life. They begin to share their impressions spontaneously, but if you specifically ask about their previous life, they find themselves responding or speaking reluctantly. Therefore, one should not focus on this and allow the child to throw out his feelings and experiences associated with the previous life. The conflict that a child experiences, not knowing with whom he should identify himself, can be so strong that he is unable to identify himself either with the previous family or with the current one. In this regard, it will be very useful for the child to help in analyzing his own feelings underlying such a conflict.

Emotional difficulties the child is that finding a family is accompanied by an experience of joy and anxiety at the same time. This leaves many children in a feverish state of agitation. They become fussy, restless, grab onto a lot and cannot concentrate on one thing for a long time. During this period, curiosity and cognitive interests awakened in the child by circumstances become a gratifying phenomenon. Questions about everything that surrounds him literally spill out from him like a fountain. The task of an adult is not to dismiss these questions and, at an accessible level, patiently explain everything that interests and worries him. Gradually, as the cognitive need associated with the new environment is satisfied, these questions will run out, since a lot will become clear to the child and he will be able to figure out something on his own.

There are children who, in the first week, withdraw into themselves, experience fear, become gloomy, hardly make contact, talk to almost no one, do not part with old things and toys, are afraid of losing them, often cry, become apathetic, depressed, or adults' attempts to establish interaction are responded with aggression. In international adoption, at this stage, a language barrier arises, which greatly complicates contacts between the child and adults. The first delights of new things, toys give way to misunderstanding, and, being alone, children and parents begin to feel weary about the impossibility of communication, resorting to gestures, expressive movements. When meeting people who speak their native language, children move away from their parents, ask them not to leave them or take them to themselves. Therefore, adoptive parents should take into account the possibility of such difficulties of mutual adaptation and prepare in advance to find the necessary means to eliminate them as quickly as possible.

The second period of adaptation is adaptive. It lasts from two to four months. Having mastered the new conditions, the child begins to look for a line of behavior that would satisfy the adoptive parents. At first, he almost unquestioningly obeys the rules, but, gradually getting used to it, he tries to behave as before, looking closely at what others like and dislike. A very painful breaking of the prevailing stereotype of behavior is taking place. Therefore, adults should not be surprised by the fact that a previously cheerful and active child suddenly becomes capricious, often cries for a long time, begins to fight with his parents or acquired brother and sister, and the gloomy and withdrawn begins to show interest in his surroundings, especially when no one is following him. observes, acts on the sly. Some children show regression in behavior, they lose the positive skills they had: they cease to follow the rules of hygiene, stop talking or start stuttering, and they may return to health problems that had occurred before. This is an objective indicator of the significance for the child of the previous relationships, which make themselves felt at the level of psychosomatics.

Foster parents should be aware that a child may have a profound lack of skills and habits necessary for family life. Children cease to like brushing their teeth, making the bed, putting things in order in toys and things, if they were not accustomed to this earlier, since the novelty of impressions has disappeared. During this period, the personality of the parents, their ability to contact, the ability to establish trusting relationships with the child begins to play an important role. If adults have managed to win over the child, then he refuses that does not receive their support. If the adults have chosen the wrong educational tactics, the child slowly begins to do everything "to spite" them. Sometimes he is looking for an opportunity to return to the old way of life: he begins to ask for the children, recalls the educators. Older children sometimes run away from a new family.

In the second period of adaptation in the foster family, psychological barriers: incompatibility of temperaments, character traits, habits, memory problems, undeveloped imagination, narrow outlook and knowledge about the environment, lag in the intellectual sphere.

Children who were brought up in orphanages develop their own ideal of a family, everyone has an expectation of mom and dad. This ideal is associated with the feeling of a holiday, walks, joint games. Adults, busy with everyday problems, sometimes do not find time for the child, leave him alone with themselves, considering him large and completely independent, capable of finding something to do for themselves. Sometimes, on the contrary, they overprotect the child, controlling his every step. All this complicates the process of a child's entry into a new social environment for him and the emergence of emotional attachment to foster parents.

During this period, the pedagogical barriers:

parents' lack of knowledge about the peculiarities of age;

inability to establish contact, trusting relationship with the child;

an attempt to rely on one's life experience, on the fact that “we were brought up this way”;

there is a difference in views on education, the influence of authoritarian pedagogy;

striving for an abstract ideal;

overestimated or, conversely, underestimated requirements for the child.

The successful overcoming of the difficulties of this period is evidenced by the change not only in behavior, but in the child's appearance: the expression on his face changes, it becomes more meaningful, lively, “blossoms”. In international adoptions, it was repeatedly noted that the child begins to grow hair, all allergic phenomena disappear, the symptoms of previous diseases disappear. He begins to perceive his foster family as his own, tries to "fit" into the rules that existed in it even before his appearance.

The third stage is addiction. Children remember the past less and less often. The child feels good in the family, he almost does not remember his previous life, having appreciated the advantages of being in the family, there is an attachment to his parents, and reciprocal feelings arise.

If the parents could not find an approach to the child, all the previous personality defects (aggressiveness, isolation, disinhibition) or unhealthy habits (theft, smoking, the desire to wander) begin to manifest themselves vividly in him, i.e. every child is looking for his own path of psychological protection from everything that does not suit him in the foster family.

Difficulties in adapting to adoptive parents can make themselves felt in adolescence, when a child wakes up interest in his “I”, the history of his appearance. Adopted children want to know who their real parents are, where they are, there is a desire to look at them. This creates emotional barriers in parent-child relationships. They arise even when the relationship between the child and the adoptive parents is excellent. The behavior of children changes: they withdraw into themselves, hide, start writing letters, go in search, ask everyone who is somehow related to their adoption. Alienation may arise between adults and children, sincerity and trust in relations may disappear for a while.

Experts say that the older the child's age, the more dangerous adoption is for his mental development. It is assumed that a large role in this is played by the child's desire to find his true (biological) parents. In about 45% of adopted children, mental disorders, according to a number of authors, are associated with constant thoughts of the child about his real parents. Therefore, foster families should be aware of the specific skills that they will have to learn first. Foster parents need the skills to establish and maintain relationships with adoption agencies. In addition, they must be able to interact with legal authorities during the adoption of a child.

What determines the duration of the adaptation period? Are the barriers that arise in its process always so complex and is their occurrence obligatory? It is quite natural that these questions cannot but worry foster parents. Therefore, they should learn a few immutable truths that will help cope with the difficulties of the adaptation period in the family.

At first, it all depends on the individual characteristics of the child and the individual characteristics of the parents. Secondly, much is determined by the quality of the selection of candidates for adoptive parents for a particular child. Thirdly, the preparedness of both the child himself for changes in life and of the parents for the peculiarities of children is of great importance. Fourth, the degree of psychological and pedagogical education of adults about relationships with children is important, their ability to competently use this knowledge in their educational practice.

Features of upbringing in a foster family.

When adopting a child, adoptive parents will need the ability to create a supportive family environment for them. This means that they should not only help the child adapt to new conditions for him and feel like a full member of the adoptive family. At the same time, new parents should help the child to understand his family of origin and not to interrupt contacts with it, since quite often it is very important for children to know that they still have their own parents, who are, as it were, an integral part of their ideas about themselves. yourself.

Foster parents may also need skills to interact with older children if, prior to adoption, they lived in one or another childcare institution that replaced their family. Therefore, they could have individual emotional problems, which foster parents will be able to cope with only if they have special knowledge and skills of upbringing. The adoptive parents and the adopted child may be of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Appropriate parenting skills can help an adopted child or foster child cope with feelings of separation and isolation from their old world.

Sometimes foster children may not know how to communicate with foster parents due to poor relationships in the family of origin. They expect to be severely punished for minor offenses or that adults will not care what they do as long as they are not interfered with. Some children may be hostile towards adoptive parents because either they feel like everyone conspired to take them out of their home, or because they cannot deal with the anger, fear, and painful feelings they have for their own. to their own parents. Or children may be hostile to themselves and do things that harm themselves in the first place. They may try to hide or deny these feelings by moving away from adoptive parents or showing complete indifference to them.

The feeling of confusion that children experience, on the one hand, because of the feeling of love and longing for their family and, on the other hand, hatred for their parents and themselves for their imaginary and real actions, is very painful. Emotionally stressed, these children may act aggressively towards adoptive parents. All this should be known to those who have decided to take a serious step in adopting a child who has separated from his own family.

In addition, the child may have mental, mental and emotional abnormalities, which will also require specific knowledge and skills from adoptive parents.

Very often children, especially up to ten years old, absolutely do not understand why they are taken from their own family and placed in a stranger's upbringing. Therefore, later they begin to fantasize or come up with various reasons, which in itself is destructive. Often, the emotional state of children is characterized by a whole range of negative experiences: love for parents is mixed with a feeling of disappointment, because it was their asocial lifestyle that led to separation; feeling of guilt for what is happening; low self-esteem; expectation of punishment or indifference from the adoptive parents, aggression, etc. This "train" of negative experiences is drawn to the foster family for the child, even if the child has been in the center for a long time and has undergone a course of rehabilitation and preparation for life in a new surroundings. It is also obvious that the influence of these experiences on the atmosphere of the foster family is inevitable, requiring a revision of the existing relations between its members, mutual concessions, specific knowledge and skills. With a high degree of probability, we can conclude that parents who are able to understand the essence of the new relationship they are entering, who have taken the lead in this process, will be able to better predict and analyze the parenting process, which will ultimately lead to a creative and successful family life.

Most of the responsibility for the process of social formation of the child, as well as his personal and psychological development, lies with the adoptive parents.

Both foster children and foster parents, as well as their own children, also need time to adapt to the habits and characteristics of the child taken into foster care. At the same time, native children, no less than adopted children, need to protect their interests and rights. In the development of the relationship between the adopted child and their own children, it is very important that the latter have the right to vote in the decision to adopt another child into the family. Native children can provide invaluable help in caring for him if, firstly, they understand the importance of the task they are performing and, secondly, they are confident that they have strong positions in the family. Very often, native children are much better than parents, can help a newcomer get used to the daily routine of the family, express their feelings, get to know neighbors, etc. the former family left much to be desired.

A difficult situation is developing in a foster family, in which parents constantly compare their children with those in foster care. At the moment of comparison, the “bad” child is forced to be bad and unconsciously acts badly. Parents become alarmed, begin to educate, prohibit, threaten - hence again a bad act because of fear that it will be abandoned.

Therefore, it is necessary to dwell separately on the nature of the parent-child relationship in those families that, for various reasons, after a certain time, abandon the adopted child and return him to the orphanage. The features characteristic of this group of families are manifested primarily in the study of the motives of family education and parenting positions.

Can be distinguished two large groups of upbringing motives... Motives, the emergence of which is largely associated with the life experience of parents, with the memories of their own childhood experience, with their personal characteristics. And the motives of upbringing, arising to a greater extent as a result of marital relations.

education as the realization of the need for achievement;

education as the realization of overvalued ideals or certain qualities;

education as the realization of a need in the sense of life.

education as the realization of the need for emotional contact;

education as the implementation of a certain system.

This division of motives for upbringing in a foster family is, of course, conditional. In the real life of the family, all these motivational tendencies emanating from one or both parents and from their marital relationship are intertwined in the daily interaction with the child, in the being of each family. However, the above distinction is useful, since it allows, when constructing the correction of motivational structures, to make the center of psychological influence in one family the personality of the parents, and in another to direct the influence to a greater extent on marital relations.

Consider the situation of parents of adopted children, for whom upbringing has become the main activity, the motive of which is in the realization of the need for the meaning of life. As you know, the satisfaction of this need is associated with substantiating the meaning of one's being for oneself, with a clear, practically acceptable and worthy of approval of the person himself, the direction of his actions. For parents who have taken their children into upbringing, the meaning of life is filled with taking care of the child. Parents do not always realize this, believing that the purpose of their life is completely different. They feel happy and joyful only in direct communication with the child and in matters related to caring for him. Such parents are characterized by an attempt to create and maintain an unnecessarily close personal distance with the adopted child. Growing up and the associated age-related and natural separation of a child from adoptive parents, an increase in the subjective significance of other people for him is perceived unconsciously as a threat to his own needs. Such parents are characterized by the position of “living instead of a child,” so they strive to merge their lives with the lives of their children.

Another, but no less alarming, picture is observed among the parents of adopted children, the main motive of whose upbringing arose largely as a result of marital relations. Usually, even before marriage, women and men had certain, fairly pronounced emotional expectations (attitudes). So, women, due to their personal characteristics, felt the need to love and take care of a man. Men, by virtue of the same characteristics, felt mainly the need for care and love for themselves on the part of a woman. It might seem that such compatible expectations will lead to a happy, mutually satisfying marriage. In any case, at the beginning of their life together, acceptably warm and friendly relations prevailed between the spouses. But the one-sidedness of the expectations of husband and wife in relation to each other became more and more obvious and gradually led to an exacerbation of emotional relations in the family.

An attempt by one of the spouses to change the nature of their expectations in relation to the other, for example, to make them reversed or mutual (harmonious) met with opposition. The family begins to "fever". Consent is violated, mutual accusations, reproaches, suspicions, conflict situations arise. Problems in intimate relationships between spouses are becoming more and more acute. There is a "struggle for power", ending with the refusal of one of the spouses from claims to domination and the victory of the other, establishing a rigid type of his influence. The structure of relations in the family becomes fixed, rigid and formalized, or there is a redistribution of family roles. In some cases, there may be a real threat of family breakdown.

In such a situation, the problems and difficulties arising in the upbringing of adopted children, in the main social directions, are the same as those arising in the upbringing of natural children. Some people who want to take on a child's upbringing judge him by his external data, not taking into account his previous experiences. Foster children, taken from dysfunctional families, are usually weak, suffering from malnutrition, uncleanliness of parents, from chronic rhinitis, etc. They have serious eyes that are not childish, they are tested, closed. Among them there are apathetic, dull children, some of them, on the contrary, are very restless, intrusively imposing contact with adults. However, in the family, sooner or later, these features of neglected children disappear, the children change so much that it is difficult to recognize them.

It is clear that we are not talking about beautiful new clothes, which are usually prepared in sufficient quantities to meet the child. It is about its general appearance, about its relation to the environment. After a few months of living in a good new family, a child looks like a confident, healthy, cheerful and joyful person.

Some doctors and psychologists are of the opinion that it is better not to tell new parents a lot about the fate and blood parents of the child, so as not to frighten them and not make them live in anxiety, in anticipation of some undesirable manifestations in the child. Some adoptive parents themselves refuse to receive information about the child, suggesting that without it they will become more attached to him. However, based on practical experience, it can be argued that it is better for adoptive parents to learn all the basic information about the child.

First of all, it is necessary to learn about the possibilities and prospects of the child, about his skills, needs and difficulties in education. This information should not bother new parents or cause them worrying concerns. On the contrary, these data should give them confidence that nothing will surprise them, and they will not recognize something that parents usually know about their own child. Parents' awareness should facilitate the quick choice of their correct position in relation to the child, the choice of the correct method of upbringing, which will help them form a real, optimistic view of the child and the process of his upbringing.

So, the adopted child came to a new family. This significant and joyful event is at the same time a serious test. If there are other children in the family, then the parents usually do not expect complications, they are calm, as they rely on their established parenting experience. Nevertheless, they can also be unpleasantly surprised and disoriented by, for example, the fact that the child does not have hygiene skills or does not fall asleep well, wakes up the whole family at night, that is, requires a lot of patience, attention and care from the parents. Unfortunately, some parents react inadequately to this first critical moment, comparing adopted children with relatives against the adopted ones. Sighing and talking like that in front of children is very dangerous for the whole future life together.

If the parents do not have children, then the situation is somewhat different. Usually, adoptive parents who have never had their own children, before taking on a foster child, study many articles and brochures, but they look at everything only "theoretically", with a certain anxiety about the practice. The first adopted child poses much more tasks to the parents than the first natural child, since the adopted child surprises with his habits, demands, because he has not lived in this family since the day of his birth. The foster parents have a difficult task: to comprehend the individuality of the child. The smaller the child, the sooner he gets used to the new family. However, the attitude towards the family of the adopted child is at first wary, primarily because of his anxiety about losing the family. Such a feeling arises even in children of that age at which they cannot yet fully comprehend this feeling and say about it in words.

The process of getting an adopted child into a family depends on the personality of the parents who adopted him, on the general family atmosphere, as well as on the child himself, primarily on his age, character and previous experience. Young children, up to about two years old, quickly forget about their former surroundings. In adults, a warm attitude develops faster towards a small child.

Children from two to five years old remember more, something remains in their memory for the rest of their lives. The child relatively quickly forgets the environment of the orphanage, social rehabilitation center (orphanage). If he became attached there to some kind of teacher, then later he can remember her for a long time. Gradually, the new teacher, that is, his mother, in her daily contact with the child becomes the closest person to him. A child's memories of his family depend on the age when he was taken from that family.

In most cases, children retain bad memories of their parents who have left them, so at first in the adoptive family they are mistrustful of adults. Some children take a defensive position, some show a tendency to deception, to a rude form of behavior, that is, to what they saw around them in their own family. However, there are children who, with sadness and tears, remember their own, even abandoned parents, most often their mother. For adoptive parents, this condition is alarming: will this child get used to them?

Such fears are unfounded. If a child in his memories shows a positive attitude towards his own mother, then it will be absolutely wrong to correct his views or statements in connection with this displeasure. On the contrary, one should be glad that the child's feelings were not dull, because his mother at least partially satisfied his basic physical and psychological needs.

You can ignore the child's memories of his family. On possible his questions, it is better, without remembering his own mother, to say that he now has a new mother who will always take care of him. This explanation, and most importantly, a friendly, affectionate approach, can calm the child. After a while, his memories will fade, and he will cordially become attached to the new family.

Children over the age of five remember a lot from their past. Schoolchildren have a particularly rich social experience, as they had their own teachers and classmates. If from the day of his birth the child has been under the care of certain children's institutions, then the foster family for him is at least the fifth in a row. This undoubtedly disrupted the formation of his personality. If a child under five years old lived in his family, then the situations he experienced left a certain mark that must be taken into account when eliminating various undesirable habits and skills from him. From the very beginning, it is necessary to approach the upbringing of such children with great tolerance, consistency, constancy in relationships, and understanding. In no case should you resort to cruelty. You cannot squeeze such a child into the framework of your ideas, insist on demands that exceed his capabilities.

School performance usually improves after moving to a family, as children want to bring pleasure to their parents. One can observe in adopted children who like to live in a new family, the ability to suppress their memories of their own family, of the orphanage. They don't like to talk about the past.

The question usually arises before adoptive parents: to tell or not to tell the child about his origin. This does not apply to those children who came to the family at the age when they remember all the people who surrounded them in early childhood. For a very young child, adoptive parents are often tempted to keep silent about their past. The views of specialists and the experience of adoptive parents clearly indicate that there is no need to hide from the child.

Awareness and understanding of an informed child can subsequently protect him from any tactless remark or hint of others, preserve his confidence in his family.

It is also necessary to answer openly and truthfully to children who want to know about their place of birth. A child may not return to this topic for a long time, and then suddenly he has a desire to find out details about his past. This is not a symptom of a weakening relationship with foster parents. Even less such curiosity acts as a desire to return to their original family. This is nothing more than the child's natural desire to tie together all the facts known to him, to realize the continuity of his formation as a person.

The manifestation of the emerging social consciousness appears quite naturally, as a rule, after eleven years. When adults talk to a child about his past, in no case should one speak disparagingly about his previous family. The child may feel offended. However, he must clearly know why he could not remain among the former environment, that his upbringing by another family was his salvation. A school-age child is able to understand his life situation. If the child does not comprehend it, you can get into a difficult situation. This is especially true of pedagogically ignorant parents. A child can confusely, with discontent react to manifestations of pity for him, tenderness and with difficulty endure the demands of foster parents. Perhaps even, due to the demands made on him, which are usual for a normal family, he may yearn for his past, regardless of the suffering he has experienced. In that family, he was free from responsibilities, not responsible for his actions.

In a conversation with a child about his past, it is necessary to show art: tell him the whole truth and not offend him, help him understand everything and correctly comprehend. The child must internally agree with reality, only then he will not return to this. It is advisable, when the child arrives in the foster family, to start creating his "traditions" that will help strengthen his attachment to the new family (for example, an album with photographs). The creation of family traditions is facilitated by the celebration of the child's birthdays, since before he hardly knew about such joyful experiences.

In this regard, it is necessary to pay attention to mutual appeals. In most cases, children call their adoptive parents the same as their blood parents: mom, dad, or as is customary in the family. Young children are taught conversion. They repeat it after older children, feeling an inner need for this. Older children who have already turned to their parents in this way do not need to be forced, they will gradually do it themselves over time. On rare occasions, the child refers to the adoptive mother and father as “aunt” and “uncle”. This is possible, for example, in children of about ten years old who loved and remember their natural parents well. It is quite understandable that the stepmother, no matter how well she treats the children, they will not be able to call the mother for a long time.

If there are small children in a family that wants to take an adopted child, then they must be prepared even before the arrival of an adopted son or daughter. Without preparation, young children can be jealous of a new family member. Much depends on the mother, on her ability to calm the children down. If their own children have already reached adolescence, then they should be informed about the parents' desire to take another child into the upbringing.

They usually look forward to the arrival of a new family member. It is completely inappropriate to talk about the shortcomings of an adopted son or daughter in the presence of your children, sighingly assessing his imperfection.

In relationships with foster children, the same problems can arise as in relationships with relatives of children of a particular age. The development of some children is relatively calm, others - so rapid that difficulties and problems constantly arise. In children taken into foster care, after overcoming the difficulties of mutual adaptation, as a rule, there comes a joyful period of rapid development and the formation of emotional ties. It is advisable to raise a child under the age of three by a mother, since after all the experiences he needs to calm down and get along with his family. It is possible that his time in the nursery will complicate or disrupt the important process of forming the relationship between mother and child. When the child fully adapts in the family, then he can attend kindergarten. For many educators, this period causes another critical moment: the child comes into contact with the children's collective. For children who have not attended kindergarten, this critical moment occurs at the beginning of school, when the child affects the wider social environment. In the best interests of children, parents need to work closely with kindergarten educators and teachers. It is advisable to acquaint them with the fate and previous development of the adopted child, ask them to pay him a little more attention, adhering to an individual approach. If a child is observed by a psychologist, then the teachers, first of all the class teacher, must be informed about this, because the psychologist will also need the teacher's information. In cooperation with the school doctor, they will take care of the child's further development.

In preschool years, children usually have fewer serious problems. Sometimes, due to a lag in the development of speech, children encounter language difficulties in a children's team, since they cannot understand each other. Attention should be paid to this and, if possible, corrected.

Before entering school, children undergo a medical examination. If the doctor and psychologist who are observing the child, after the examination, advise to send him to school only after a year, then, of course, this advice should not be resisted. It should be borne in mind that admission to school is sometimes postponed for various reasons and for children of their own, who had incomparably better conditions for development. Such a decision will help to even out the lag in the general development of the child, and will create conditions for the formation of self-confidence. The child will then be better, without stress, to assimilate school material. Do not underestimate the possibility of completely correcting a child's pronunciation and diction before entering school. Foster parents should visit a speech therapist with their child before school.

Some children, before entering school, show very definite signs in their state of health and development, which indicate the need for them to study in a special school. However, sometimes they are first tried to be taught in a regular school and only then transferred to a special school. When a child taken into a family develops a similar situation, some parents, warned of such a possibility even before the child is handed over to them, panic from disappointment. It is natural. All parents try to make their child achieve as much as possible. However, what is more and what is better?

When a child is overwhelmed in a regular school without taking into account his physical and mental capabilities, then, despite all the efforts, he will have low academic performance, he will be forced to stay for the second year, and therefore he will not feel the joy of learning, since he developed a negative attitude towards school and education in general. In a special school, the same child, perhaps, without much stress, will become a good student, stand out in manual labor, in physical exercises, or show his artistic abilities. The inclusion in the labor process of a student who graduated from a fully special school is much easier than that of a student who dropped out of school in the 6-7 grade of a regular school.

After a child enrolls in a school (regardless of which one), new concerns arise in the family. In some families, they are more attentive to the performance of children, in others - to behavior, since some children have problems with learning, others with behavior. Achievement must be judged in terms of the child's ability. It would be good for foster parents to talk about this with a psychologist, to consult with the teacher in order to know what the child is capable of. In assessing the behavior of an adopted child, one should not be too pedantic. It is known that native children from time to time present some kind of "surprises". It is important to form in the child a sense of responsibility, an honest attitude to work, to people, to bring up such moral qualities as truthfulness, devotion, responsibility, which we strive to develop in children in our society.

It is necessary in the everyday life of a foster family to set an educational goal in the form of specific tasks for the child. Sometimes an angry parent, discussing with the adopted child any of his offenses, in a fit of indignation, makes a big mistake: he reproaches the child, reminding him that he cannot allow himself something, since the order in this house is not the same as in his the house that he now lives in a decent family, etc. A child may become so bitter with a parent who rebelled against his past that he would commit a serious offense. In any case, the parents are saved by calmness and prudence, the thoughtfulness of the thoughts expressed, the desire to help the child correct his mistakes.

Observing a child and ascertaining his characteristics without taking into account the previous living conditions, without dynamics, the quality of achievements and shortcomings in his development can lead to a serious mistake. Such imprisonment can permanently deprive the child of the opportunity to enter a new family.

The conclusion of a psychologist should help people choose an environment for an orphaned child that would optimally help his development.

Applicants who wish to take on the upbringing of a child also undergo psychological examination. However, many people are surprised and even feel offended that they must undergo psychological testing. If a spouse or a single person really wants to have a child in their family and are reasonable people, then they easily understand the importance and necessity of psychological examination. If applicants abandon their idea of ​​raising a child only because they do not want to undergo a psychological examination, then it is quite obvious that their need to have a child is not strong enough, and possibly sincere. In such a case, it will be much better if these people abandon their intention.

The tasks of psychological examination include diagnostics of the motives of the decision to take the child into the family, the relationship between the spouses, clarification of the consistency in their views, the balance of their marriage, the harmony of the family environment, etc. Clarity in such matters is an important prerequisite for the successful development of a child.

There are several stages in the formation of a foster family: first stage - the solution of issues relating directly to the forming foster family. It is important to find not ideal people, but those who are kind to children. It is important for foster parents to realize that they have time and emotional space for their foster child.

At the first stage of the formation of foster families, it is necessary to talk with the children of the future foster parents, to find out their attitude towards the appearance of new family members in the family. It is important that such problems in the family be resolved: how do the parents intend to leave the child while they leave for work, what he will do alone at home.

It is also important to discuss such issues as alcohol consumption in the family, as this can be a factor in the failure of foster parents to fulfill the most important family functions. Foster parents must learn or be able to understand the child's problems and find ways to solve these problems (one must understand what is behind the child's problem behavior). We must live with a positive attitude towards the adopted child, cooperation with him.

The next important stage in the formation of a foster family is the stage related to the definition (highlighting and understanding) of the foster child's problems and ways to solve them. It should be borne in mind that many children come to a foster family from "difficult" families and therefore carry their characteristics and their problems. Therefore, adoptive parents should tune in to the fact that they will most likely have to first solve the long-standing problems of their adopted children, and only then proceed to the implementation of their educational tasks, which they have defined for themselves even before the adoption of the child. Without this, the process of establishing a favorable psychological climate in the family and trusting relationships between new parents and foster children will not be fruitful.

Foster parents can be married couples with and without children (age is not limited, although it is desirable that they be able-bodied people), single-parent families, single people (women, men under 55), persons in unregistered marriage. Depending on which family in its original form adopted the child, in addition to those discussed above in the parent-child relationship, problems characteristic of these types of family organization may arise.  Therefore, foster parents should bear in mind that they will have to face a double burden of psychological difficulties in family relationships. In this regard, a problem arises, which is relevant mainly for foster families - the problem of special education for foster parents.

In such training, two interrelated stages can be distinguished: before adoption and after they make a decision about adoption and implement this decision. Each of these stages is fundamentally different in the content of training for adoptive parents.

Training of foster parents before they adopt a child for upbringing gives them time to reevaluate the consequences of taking on the responsibility of raising other people's children. Usually, the corresponding program focuses on the interaction of foster parents and official institutions, the problems caused by the child's feeling of separation from the family of origin and related emotional experiences, as well as communication with the child's parents (if there is such an opportunity). This training helps foster parents decide for themselves whether they can handle the difficult burden they voluntarily place on themselves.

Teaching foster parents after adopting someone else's child for upbringing focuses primarily on child development, family discipline and behavior management, interaction skills and deviant behavior issues. Such a different orientation of these two types of education for adoptive parents is explained by the fact that everyday life with someone else's child leaves a big imprint on the whole family life. Foster parents need to understand well the need for training and use, first of all, the information on which they can directly rely in their daily practice. Among the problems to which special attention should be paid are the following:

teaching parents to interact with children with emotional, physical or mental disabilities;

mastering the skills of relationships with children with learning difficulties by parents;

assimilation of information and mastery of special skills about interacting with adolescents (especially those with previous convictions);

acquiring the necessary skills to establish contact with young children;

mastering the experience of interaction and providing the necessary psychological support to street children who have experienced abuse by adults.

When organizing training for adoptive parents, one should bear in mind the fact that they may have different levels of education, different social and material status. Some of them are certified specialists who have a permanent place of work, others have only secondary education and work that does not require high qualifications. Currently, most of the foster parents (at least one of them), in addition to raising other people's children, is engaged in some other type of activity. However, they should not forget that raising children should be viewed as a kind of professional activity that requires special training. Therefore, when teaching foster parents (as well as parents of relatives), they should be guided by the fact that such training cannot be superficial and short-term and immediately give practical results. They will have to learn the parenting profession all their lives, because the child grows, changes, and therefore the forms of interaction with him and the types of pedagogical influences must change. In addition, a foster parent, when adopting someone else's child, must understand that he will simply need to share his experience with other stakeholders, including social workers. Foster parents, planning their activities in accordance with the needs of the child, should be able to work with counselors, doctors, educators and other professionals to learn how to solve the problems they will have to face in raising foster children, and to eliminate those difficulties that naturally arise. in any family.

Methods of raising children in a foster family.

ADVICE FOR FOSTER PARENTS

The magazine "Foster family" № 2 from 2009

PATIENCE, PATIENCE AND PATIENCE AGAIN!

The integration process requires a lot of effort and patience from the family and the child. It can be compared to marriage: people unite - each with their own history, habits, incomprehensible and sometimes unpredictable reactions, ways of expressing feelings, which all the time compare the partner's behavior with their usual stereotypes. In the same way - from the perspective of previous experience - the foster parents and the foster child evaluate each other's actions.

In addition, in relations with an adopted child, parents tend to be more alert than with their blood. This is often due to the widespread notion that all orphanages have “bad heredity”, so even the usual behavior for children of his age is interpreted as an inevitable manifestation of “genetics”. Undoubtedly, such an attitude undermines the parents' faith in the positive result of their educational efforts.

In a child, primary attachment begins to form in contact with the mother at the prenatal stage of development and in the first hours after birth. But the child is also able to form a secondary attachment - to love his foster family, to consider it his own, and this can happen at any age. The author of attachment theory, English psychologist John Bowlby, was the first to prove that attachment in a child is often formed through aggression. In a new family, trying to gain the exclusive attention of adults, the child usually goes the usual way and as a result provokes the parents to punish. If the parents do not have special training, then with a harsh reaction they only reinforce the violations in the child's behavior, which can lead to the most sad consequences, up to and including abandonment of the child.

How to deal with bad behavior in children:

· It is worthwhile to study the child's history in detail. What family and how he was brought up, how he behaved before, can help to understand his behavior now.

· Pay attention to how favorable the atmosphere in your home is for the successful rehabilitation of the child. Does he feel safe and secure? Also very important is predictability, confidence in what will happen next. If the child acquires this, he can figure out the reasons for his behavior on his own.

We tend to think that the child's bad behavior is directed against us, and for no reason. We take it as a personal insult, get angry in return, and become part of an emotional struggle in which everyone suffers. In fact, a child may exhibit bad behavior simply because it was the only one that found the right response in his previous life. When he behaved well, was obedient, he was not noticed, and he learned to build his own chain of action-reaction. It is quite possible that the child repeats the same chain now.

He launches a known mechanism and wants to check what follows in this situation. It is worth taking the child's antics calmly, observing and assessing their reasons.

Analyze what caused the child's bad behavior, perhaps the reasons are the same that annoy us all, or the child just wants to check your reaction. Watch and you will find the "key" to this puzzle. Perhaps he is in the events of this day, perhaps a week ago, but the situation is always resolvable.

Remember, it is not always possible to see the cause of bad behavior outwardly. For example, a child may be agitated when he hears a song on the radio that triggers a memory. In such cases, you can find out the true reason only by asking the child himself, after everything has calmed down.

Discuss his behavior with the child, state what you see the reasons for, try to find a solution together. (“I noticed that as soon as I tell you that it's time to go to bed, you become not yourself. Let's agree on what we will do about it.”) So you show your desire to help, force yourself

th child to think about the causes and consequences

their behavior. And by talking directly, you can solve the problem.

TIPS FROM EXPERIENCED FOSTER PARENTS

Demonstrate in your behavior exemplar... Children will always follow him.

Try devote time to each child... Seniors need personal one-on-one communication no less than younger ones. Therefore, it is important to find time for all children. Think about whether you have enough energy and time for everyone, and make the right choice. After all, it is not the number of children you can raise that matters, but the quality of upbringing.

You need to talk to your child and set rules for him according to his age and level of development.

· React not to the bad behavior, but to the child's feelings about it. For example, if a child is crying, it means that he needs to satisfy his needs / emotions. After he calms down, you can talk to him about how bad it was to throw a tantrum in the store in front of everyone.

· Try to sort out your feelings. If you are upset about a problem at work, do not transfer these problems to the relationship with the child... After all, perhaps his bad behavior right now is just a reflection of your tension?

· Praise your child more often.- for the fact, for example, that he performs some kind of pa6ory very well. Praise builds self-confidence and shows your child that you care.

· Give your child the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. If it does not threaten his life, let him do what is intended, and then be ready to answer for the consequences.

· Be realistic: don'tset too high expectations, do not expect more from your child than he can give you. But give him a chance to change.

METHODS OF UPBRINGING CHILDREN IN A FOSTER FAMILY

Almost all children living in residential institutions, be it a child's home, orphanage or boarding school, have deviations in physical, emotional or mental development, which necessarily affects their behavior. These children are characterized by the lack of affection and attention necessary for the child, on which, according to psychologists, trust in the world around them is based. Therefore, in addition to loving children, parent-educators need to have kindness and patience in order to accept children as they are. It is the lack of these qualities in parent-educators with romantic attitudes or the desire to assert themselves through playing the role of saviors of unhappy children that can cause conflicts, stressful situations, depression and nervous breakdowns. As already mentioned, patience and pedagogical optimism are indispensable for people who connect their fate with adopted children. At one time, he put forward an optimistic hypothesis that focuses on believing in the best in a person, even with the risk of making a mistake. This hypothesis is found in one form or another in various pedagogical and psychological theories, starting with folk pedagogy. Psychologists talk about the halo or reflection effect, when a person often behaves in accordance with our expectations. M. Gorky expressed this idea very figuratively, saying that if a person is called a pig for a long time, he will finally grunt. And the opposite manifestation of this effect was wittily formulated by the sarcastic Frenchman F. La Rochefoucauld, saying that as soon as a fool praises us, he no longer seems so stupid to us.

In our real, everyday life, we have to constantly face the phenomenon when you expect only good from some people and they, as a rule, meet expectations; you are afraid of others, and they pay with the appropriate attitude.

Relying on this theory in the upbringing of their children and stocking up with patience, the parent-educator will eventually see the fruits of his labor, however, it may take more or less a long time, depending on the degree of pedagogical neglect of the child.

And no matter how important the personal qualities of a parent-educator are, he still needs certain pedagogical knowledge, because he chooses working with children as a profession, therefore, he must have professional skills.

When starting work, foster parents should clearly understand how the methods of upbringing they use can affect the children, what kind of reaction they cause and what results they will lead. Leaving aside the discussion going on in pedagogical theory regarding the classification of methods of education and terminology, you can use the previous names to note the features of the use of encouragement, punishment, exercise (training), a positive example and methods of forming consciousness (the former name is methods of persuasion). Each of these methods of education has its own psychophysiological basis, without which it is impossible to predict with sufficient probability the possible consequences of exposure to a child. Ignoring this psychophysiological basis often leads to sad mistakes in upbringing, which is doubly undesirable when it comes to adoptive children.

Persuasion techniques

In official pedagogy, until recently, the most recommended were the so-called methods of persuasion, when the educator influenced with the word. But when a lot is said about how to behave, then very often children prefer not to hear it. Moreover, according to psychologists, there are three forms of the child's behavioral reaction, rejecting instructions. If a child looks over the head of an adult, then he is busy with his thoughts, fantasies; if he looks down, he not only does not perceive what has been said, but argues fiercely, rejects, finds his own arguments; if he looks straight into the eyes and even nods, seemingly agreeing, then he is simply deceiving, representing a prototype of the future sneak. Although it is in the latter case that it is easier to reach the consciousness of children.

A reasonable question arises: so, do not talk to the child at all? Speak, but accurately imagine the extent of the impact. The simplest scheme is as follows: in preschool and primary school age - story, assuming a vivid and emotional form of presentation; in adolescence - conversation, i.e. question-answer form; in early adolescence - dispute, discussion... Therefore, it is possible and necessary to talk to the child while he listens to us with his mouth open and his eyes burning; with a teenager - while he asks; with a boy or a girl - while they argue. This is the only way to avoid a common mistake that many educators make when they try to explain what has long been known and the words turn into peas bouncing off the wall.

L AN INDIVIDUAL EXAMPLE

Earlier than many other parenting methods, example begins to influence children. It is well known how often children copy their loved ones: for example, calm, well-balanced parents even babies cry less. No wonder Seneca used to say: "It is difficult to lead to good by moralizing, easy - by example." The influence of an example is based on the child's natural inclination to imitate.

Imitation develops from playful imitation to imitation in life. And therefore, in the well-known game of “mothers and daughters”, children not only copy the real environment of their home, but also practice to a certain extent in creating a model of their own future family life. Therefore, having watched the games of children, you can see yourself in a crooked mirror, try to fix something, and also try to inadvertently throw material for further games: read something, tell or even join the game. Encouraging imitation, it is imperative to instill in the child self-confidence.

PROMOTIONS AND PUNISHMENTS

There is a group of methods that, admittedly, come into the greatest contact with the individual. These are methods of reward and punishment. The mechanism of their action is as follows: the encouragement evokes positive emotions, thereby the actions and deeds followed by it are fixed in the behavior of the encouraged. And punishment entails negative emotions that inhibit the drinking.

It must be remembered that a person is encouraged not for qualities of character, but for actions and deeds, that is, the thought is constantly held that the child is somehow good, but today he did good and deserves praise. And if today they praised for some act, then tomorrow they will not praise it for it, but take it for granted. Now, to be rewarded, the child must accomplish more than he has already done. This stimulates his moral development.

In general, one must be very careful with punishments, because it is known that grief is experienced more sharply and is remembered longer than joy. Children perceive injustice very painfully, so they cannot be punished on suspicion. No matter how sure you are that it was this child who was guilty, and not another, not a neighbor's, not a cat or a dog, in the end, but "not caught - not a thief." Believing too much in your discernment, you can make a fatal mistake by punishing an innocent person. And it is also desirable to punish the child at least at first, without drawing everyone's attention to this, in private, "in secret." In addition, when dealing with adopted children, special attention should be paid to the motivation of the misconduct. Sometimes behind the child's action there is a desire to attract attention to oneself in any way, to check whether he is really loved and to what extent this love extends.

ABOUT PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT

The question of physical punishment requires a special discussion. True, no matter how we advocate for their complete disappearance, no matter how we warn our parents, we must face the truth and admit that the belt quite often serves as the most convincing argument in some families. But by such actions, adults can only prove that they are stronger than children, and this is common knowledge. Therefore, using physical punishment, parents thereby sign their powerlessness, show their weakness and complete lack of the ability to truly influence the child. And if we consider that a 14-15-year-old teenager is already quite capable of standing up for himself and giving back, therefore, by this age, parents may be completely defeated. To prevent such an outcome, one should clearly understand the mechanism of interaction between physical punishment and the child's psyche.

FAMILY EDUCATION ERRORS

In pedagogical theory and practice, mistakes are known caused by violations of the requirements for the use of educational methods. In addition to them, there are also common mistakes in family education, due to the style of relationships between parents and children. One of the most common are the so-called "parental scissors" or the discrepancy in the requirements of adults. When the mother permits what the father prohibits, the grandmother permits everything, and the grandfather nothing, then the child has a complete loss.

orientation. As a result, a setting is created: when all

it is impossible, then everything is possible. And the child must know exactly what is not allowed and why, or where it is possible and where it is not.

For example, after the complaints of a kindergarten teacher, one mother, who believed that it was quite natural for a 6-year-old boy to climb trees and fences, spank in puddles, explained to the kid why these exciting activities in kindergarten were prohibited. They say that not all boys and girls know how to climb trees and can fall, so it is better to choose another place, not all shoes are adapted to water, you can get your feet wet and get sick. All this was said in a serious tone, respectful, and the little man agreed with my mother's arguments.

Parents also have such an erroneous view of upbringing, such as focusing on the correction of shortcomings, instead of forming the desired qualities and skills. Of course, for foster parents, getting rid of bad habits is a very urgent problem, but at the same time we must not forget about laying some foundations on an empty place.

The way to avoid mistakes is contained in the well-known formula: educate your child (and this is what he becomes for adoptive parents), as a stranger, and a stranger as your own. The mechanism of incarnation is as follows: you should imagine in the place of the guilty neighbor's child, who does not cause outright hostility, and re-evaluate the committed misconduct. In many cases, parents are more loyal to the mistakes of their children, for which they are not morally responsible. This way you can avoid many conflicts, which, by the way, are perceived by children much more painfully and are remembered longer.

Based on materials from the collection

"Problems of social orphanhood" /
Undered. L. I.Smagina. Minsk, 1999.