So it was with me. Having become a mother, I was still trying to do everything and live in the same rhythm as before the birth of my daughter. I wanted to be an ideal wife, a caring mother, and an excellent housewife - a real homemaker, and also a responsible employee. And most importantly, as an Orthodox wife, I tried to be an example for my family, because by looking at their parents, their relationships and family structure, children form an attitude towards marriage and motherhood.
Unfortunately, like many women, I did not know how to allocate my time and resources, or set priorities correctly. As a result, I painted myself into a corner and realized that it was time to change something. “If you can’t change the situation, change your attitude towards it.”
I believed that every woman, being a wife and mother, taking care of the house and even working, could remain cheerful and full of strength, find time for spiritual growth and development, learning and joyful communication with her loved ones. A woman is the soul and heart of the family, and if the heart is not in order, then the whole “organism” suffers: relationships with the spouse deteriorate, children feel their mother’s dissatisfaction, the house becomes a place of “hard labor.” As a result, the woman strives to quickly transfer the child to kindergarten, grandmothers, nannies and quickly go to work in order to “grow and develop.”
Nowadays the concept of “time management” or, in other words, the ability to properly organize your time, is becoming increasingly popular. If earlier this concept was more often used in relation to employees of various organizations, now it is increasingly gaining popularity among women and, in particular, mothers. Naturally, even with a common basis, time management for moms is significantly different from personal and work time management. We can say that time management for women with children is an “extended” version, that is, not just planning and organizing your day, but building relationships with loved ones, correct prioritization, competent distribution of household chores, the ability to “weave” your life , the life of your family and daily worries.
Naturally, only God knows what awaits us, and we cannot control or plan our lives, but we can learn to appreciate and use the time we have for good.
Basics of time management
It is very important to realize in what order such priorities as God (faith), family, home (household), work, hobbies, etc. are located in your life. Then you should ask yourself this question: are you devoting your time to these priorities in that order? For clarity, you can make two such lists: the first listing your “true” values, and the second with those by which you actually live, and compare them. And then start living according to your true priorities, and not according to those imposed on you by society.
Naturally, we cannot forget about pressing matters. There are a lot of things to do, but the right approach to them can make your life much easier and help you find extra time.
Let's honestly admit to ourselves: a mother with a baby in her arms, and especially more than one, cannot always remember everything. Even such basic things as the need to comb your hair and brush your teeth can slip out of your head, let alone remembering to congratulate your friend on Angel’s Day.
Learn to plan: at the end or very beginning of the month, write down all important dates, holidays, events tied to specific dates of the month (events or even bill payment dates). At the beginning of the week - the main tasks for the week (based on the monthly plan). And most importantly, learn to write down things for the coming day in the evening. You should not, and cannot, blindly and precisely follow your plan. But if you have a specific to-do list, no matter how difficult the night with your baby is or how difficult the day is, you should just look at that list and move forward, rather than wasting valuable time wondering what to do first.
Try to do the main things - cooking (or “preparing” for dinner), cleaning, washing - in the morning. Firstly, in the morning you have more strength and you will do everything faster than in the evening. Secondly, the child, as a rule, is calmer in the morning and it will be easier for you to do all the things even with a non-sleeping baby in your arms. Don't stretch things out over the whole day - try to do them right away.
Make a list of “routines”, that is, those things that you repeat every day, and distribute them into three blocks: morning, afternoon and evening. The list will help you correctly distribute these tasks throughout the day, you will deal with them faster, they will not constantly “spinning” in your head, and gradually you will begin to do them automatically, saving time and effort.
Try to do all the “routines” and household chores together with your child - yes, it is much more difficult and your affairs will move much slower, but this approach has a number of advantages:
1. Slowly but surely, you will complete the housework, and leave the child's nap time for other things - we will talk about this later.
2. You will set a good example for your child and raise a helper, and not teach him that everything at home always magically gets done while he sleeps. If the child is very small, a sling or a rug with toys next to you will help.
Don't worry if you don't succeed the first time - over time you will learn to cope with everyday issues easier and faster, saving your time and effort.
Mom is the soul and heart of the family
If a mother only talks to her children about faith, kindness and humility, but at the same time she is irritated, loud and does not grow spiritually herself, they will adopt her way of life. We must grow and develop ourselves, “fill” ourselves in order to then share this with our loved ones and lead them with us. For example, during your child’s nap, don’t run to the kitchen to cook and clean! Take time for spiritual reading, sleep, study. St. Augustine wrote: “First fill yourself, then you can give to others.”
This way, you will gain strength to continue your busy day, and when your child wakes up, you will greet him with a smile on his face, and not tired and exhausted. Don't neglect exercise, movement, and self-care. A healthy mother in a good mood is the pride of the family.
Where else can you find time:
1. Learn to go to bed earlier and get up earlier than your child - use this time to “prepare” yourself for a difficult but happy day with your baby! Read your morning prayers, do exercises, get yourself in order, read a book. True, if you have an infant and you get up to him several times a night, then this option is unlikely to suit you. We'll have to wait a little!
2. Fight time wasters. A TV, even if it works only for the “background” while you are doing other things, brings little benefit. Replace it with recordings of audio conversations, lectures with spiritual or educational content, audio books (fiction, education, etc.) or, for example, church hymns. Reading at night (for several hours) instead of sleeping, wandering and “hanging out” on social networks, unnecessary phone conversations, thinking about things rather than doing them according to the list, improperly organized household chores (again, planning will help you avoid this) - you Believe it or not, these things eat up not minutes, but hours every day!
Live not by problems, but by opportunities - do not allow yourself to lose heart and become despondent! In difficult times, remember what you are grateful to God for. You have a baby? Thank God, because many cannot have children. Do you have a roof over your head and what to eat? Many are deprived of this too. Much depends on our attitude to the situation.
And also, be sure to find time to communicate with loved ones. Having organized and completed most of the tasks in the morning, in the evening you will be able to devote quality time to your family: chat, take a walk, read spiritual literature together. We often throw all our energy into cleaning, cooking, “wasters” of time, forgetting in the evening to even just smile at our husband and ask how his day went. Learn to live according to your priorities.
If every woman learns to live today and now, to be happy at home as a wife and mother, she will no longer strive to “run away” to work, because she will be able to fully realize herself at home, in contrast to the stereotypes that exist today, but according to Christian ideas about the family and his role in it. With God's help you will succeed!
Oksana ROMANOVA
When I bought this book (with the same cover as in the photo) in a church shop, I was quietly happy. But of course! It’s always interesting and useful to learn something you don’t know yet or to deepen your existing knowledge. I was expecting a beautiful, unobtrusive spiritual narrative. And the title suggested it:
"Orthodox mom. A manual for the family, with instructions from a priest and advice from a pediatrician."
And I was just waiting for my daughter!
True, as a physician and an Orthodox Christian, I was somewhat perplexed by the announcement on the last page of the cover.
Traditional Russian medicine has never contradicted the teachings of the Orthodox Church. And first of all, this unity lies in love for the sick, in the indispensable adherence to the rule: “Do no harm.”<...>Moms and dads who don’t consider themselves believers can find advice in it.”
Traditional Russian? There is no such thing, but oh well, let it be, since the author wants it that way. “Do no harm” was actually coined by the pagan Hippocrates, what does Orthodoxy have to do with it? But then I just shrugged my shoulders and, joyful, went home to read and educate myself.
From the very first lines of the book I was amazed. And then disgust. Why? Because all medical concepts turned out to be inside out. Such nonsense, supported, moreover, by the words of priests, is very difficult and unpleasant to read. Besides this, the book is also full of stupid statements. I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh when I read these lines:
“the feat of marriage is a feat of martyrdom in the name of the child that the Lord gives,” “every single contraceptive is harmful,” “the mother will agree to die herself or even with the child, but not become his killer
(have an abortion for medical reasons)."
These are just flowers. My eyes almost fell out of their sockets as I continued reading this “spiritual and educational” book. I’m not even talking about the jaw - it just “fell” on the ground, and until the end of reading it “lyed” there... It turns out that
"according to natural laws"
A pregnant woman must immediately end her marital relationship with her husband immediately after conception. And do not start them until the end of the breastfeeding period, otherwise
“voluptuousness will poison the mother’s nature and penetrate into the milk”, “married life is extremely harmful for the baby”,
and in general the milk will disappear, as it turns out...
The book is not only full of such terrible maxims - it is teeming with them! I repeat, I read the book intermittently, it was very difficult for me to perceive the text (although it was written in fairly good literary language), and at times I was ready to bang my head against the wall in connection with the inverted concepts. My medical mind could not come to terms with the statements of “traditional Russian medicine,” and my church-going Orthodox soul could not come to terms with the terrible paraspiritual “rules.”
Maybe the only thing. What is more or less useful for the soul in this book are quotes from the diary of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. True, these quotes are tied to very controversial points in the author’s thoughts. And for some reason he does not remember that the martyr queen wrote “about Happiness in the Family” as a deeply unhappy woman. Yes, yes, it’s unlikely that a wife can be happy when her husband has a favorite (with whom the queen “became friends”); or a mother whose several children have died - can she be completely happy?
At the end of the book there are recipes for Lenten dishes - probably. This is the only thing this opus can boast of.
In general, the book left me with a terribly disgusting impression. How this rubbish got into the church shops - I have not the slightest idea. This is the kind of book that needs to be mercilessly thrown into the fire. To the fire!!! That's what I did with her. I think that in spiritual (and secular) terms the book is simply harmful! This is by no means a soulful read. I don't recommend it to anyone for anything.
– Does the problem of fathers and children sound different today than before?
– I think these are problems that are natural for all people. The severity and context may change depending on the time, the specific family, but the essence still remains the same.
Separation and misunderstanding between people began a long time ago, from the time of the Fall. People began to lose touch with each other. The story of the Babylonian Pandemonium is a prime example of this. They suddenly begin to speak different languages, and this is a very characteristic expression, which since then has probably been preserved in a figurative meaning. We, speakers of the same language, can speak “different languages” even within the family.
Disunity and misunderstanding, unfortunately, are a characteristic sign of damage to human nature, what can you do? The Church contrasts this with another unity - in Christ and the feast of Holy Pentecost itself, which shows the opposite perspective: suddenly people who speak different languages begin to understand each other perfectly. Because the Holy Spirit brings everyone together. And we have no other way to unity than only in Christ, only through Christ, through the Gospel, through our own development of hearing, through the development of our heart, painful and unpleasant, because as soon as a person begins to open up in our world, he immediately receives under the breath.
– You have said more than once that people replace life with its imitation, including in the family. How to understand where is the real thing and where is the fake.
– Usually this is understood when everything starts to collapse. When people who tend to live in ideas about something or someone, create ideas for themselves, are deprived of these ideas. That’s when the fall of the house happens great, and from that moment someone becomes able to see the light.
We are faced with situations where a family lives, and instead of love there are ideas about love. When people perceive life for themselves according to certain pre-formed patterns. These patterns can be formed in the previous family in which they grew up and they repeat the image of the parental family in relation to their own.
It happens that this is a pious desire to live according to the rules. For example, the image of an “Orthodox family”, which is read from very pious literature.
But the most pious literature and the best examples can be false helpers here. Let's say, books by Nikolai Evgrafovich Pestov. He himself is a wonderful teacher, created a wonderful family, raised children. But his advice, his experience and experiences may be perceived by someone as a general scheme, needed for everyone and transferred onto his own family thoughtlessly, like a stencil. Or, for example, people read how St. Sergius of Radonezh was raised by his pious parents and again - they attached a stencil. A certain artificial idea begins of what a real Christian family should be like. At the same time, parents may not see the children themselves, their own, with their characteristics. Who are they, their children? What conditions do they live in? How old are they? What are their interests?
Children begin to be trained according to a given pattern. At the same time, parents have pious and very correct desires to make their children real Christians. Although latently, most likely, there is also a desire to show others what our wonderful Orthodox family is like and how we must live up to this image of an Orthodox family. Because the parents themselves never lived up to this, and so they are trying to create these ideas artificially.
Children are left without real attention, without real love, without understanding, without hearing, without seeing by their parents, and all the time they begin to try - to fit in, fit in, fit in. Because children want to please their parents, they want to receive praise from them, they want their parents to notice them, love them, pat them on the head, praise them, and give them gifts. But it turns out that in this situation everything has to be earned and the means of earning money is piety. This works for a certain period, but then it inevitably breaks down, leading to conflict, to terrible misunderstanding.
Often there is alienation of parents towards their children, parental dislike, because suddenly the children stopped conforming, destroyed the parental dream, destroyed this ideal made-up world, which, according to the parents, was supposed to bring the children to the level of holiness, and, in the end, a little maybe until canonization? But the children, even in their teens, destroyed all these dreams.
And then it is very often difficult, even impossible, to break this alienation that has appeared.
Children suddenly begin to behave extremely ungodly, moreover, they move away from the Church, begin to fall into sins, to live completely incorrectly, ugly: the spring is unclenched in the other direction, and their parents hate them for it. They become alienated, close themselves off, and believe that their children are lost to them. They may say to themselves internally: “I don’t need such a child.” And at this moment they cease to be parents, at this moment the child is left completely alone. He must cope with the attack of temptation, for which he is completely unprepared, on his own, without parental help. And he falls under this attack, cannot cope, becomes a toy in the elements of this world and there is no one to help him...
– Even if the grown-up child later returns to the Church, will he still be internally cut off from his parents?
– It often happens that no understanding or connection arises between children and parents later.
I'm not even talking about those cases when parents will never become parents to their child, when they do not perceive their child as a child. “I have a problem with my daughter”, “I have a problem with my son” - what kind of expressions are these! It’s not my child who has problems, but me with him, “I” comes first here.
The relationship develops in such a way that the child is perceived as a problem for the parents, which must somehow be leveled out. Make the child’s presence in the parents’ lives convenient and comfortable. Often these children are separated from their parents very far and for a long time. Moreover, if funds allow, they can do everything financially for their children - hire a nanny, enroll them in a good school, and so on. But parents will have their own lives, and children will have their own. What kind of parents are these? Why should you love them? To honor is necessary, but to love is impossible. Because where there was no love, there will be no love.
We are given the commandment “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12). But it doesn't talk about love. Because, unfortunately, not every parent can be loved by children. And not every parent truly loves. If a parent is not ready to give his life for his child, then something is wrong in this family.
– Often grown children are tormented by the contradiction that they cannot truly love their parents.
– Because, on the one hand, it is initially so natural for a person to love his parents. But when parents don’t give enough love, don’t connect themselves with their child with true love, the child’s thirst for love still remains. The potential of love is not exhausted and therefore a person finds himself in a strange state when he cannot connect his own life with the life of the one whom he wants to love and is obliged to love. But there is no meeting, no one to love, no parent. Although physically he seems to be nearby...
“But we need to love our enemies, and people can’t even love their own parents.”
“We have no orders to love our enemies.” We have a commandment. The commandment is a very high state to which a person must be able to approach and learn to love his enemies. Not every Christian succeeds. From which it does not follow that since it fails, then it will be good and right not to love. We just have to understand that the commandment to love our enemies is a superhuman commandment. It puts man on a par with God. This is a very high calling, you can strive for this, you need to know about it, you need to go towards it.
No child can say, “I don’t have to love my parents.” Must. But if there are no parents, then who to love? Yes, there are some people who are called parents (thank God, not everyone has this situation), but how to love them? How are the parents? Or as enemies? Or how in general as some kind of stranger?
I recently happened to give communion to a teenage girl who died of cancer a day later. The girl is from an orphanage, her blood parents abandoned her, and then her adoptive mother took her in. According to the girl’s recollections, her father died, although it later turned out that it was not her father who died, but some person with whom her mother lived at that time.
Some time after the girl came to her adoptive mother, it turned out that she had fast-growing cancer.
Mom managed to find out that the blood father of her adopted daughter had been found, he was alive, he was just in prison. And then this woman came to him, thinking that it would be important for the girl to know: her blood father was alive.
And he thought that now they would demand alimony from him and said: “Prove that she is my daughter.” There were also her blood brothers and sisters who also did not want to meet this girl.
After I gave Holy Communion to Polya, I talked for a long time with her mother, she told me all this and was very worried that she had not told her adopted daughter anything about the existence of relatives, after all, “native blood.” I said that she did the right thing, there was no need to tell the girl anything, because these people are not father, brother or sister. In this situation, inventing a relationship means once again hitting the unfortunate child. The relationship between parents and children cannot be imagined; they either exist or they don’t.
Yes, this situation may be special, although, unfortunately, it is not uncommon. And here the question of honoring parents can arise, but only as a strong, strong feat for a person who, realizing that there is some uncle or aunt who once threw him in the trash, will be able to pray for them as parents.
One of my parishioners approached me - a young woman whose children are schoolchildren. She grew up without a father: her mother said that he was a pilot and died. Suddenly it turned out that he had not died at all, he just didn’t want to know anything about his daughter for almost forty years, and then suddenly he showed up (and he has another family, other children) and wants to communicate. "But I do not want! What should I do, how should I treat him?” she said. I answered: “If this person is in trouble, in need, in some difficult circumstances, then you will have to help him. But if everything is fine with him, he lives surrounded by grandchildren, some of his other children, I don’t see the point in any communication. There was not a note of repentance on the part of this man. It’s just like, “Hey, baby. I'm your dad. Don't you want to be friends with me? Do you have borthers and sisters. Let's play the story that we are all friends, family. Let’s imagine such a prosperous, cloudless world.” No, you can’t, that’s a lie.”
– But if parents, without internal closeness, nevertheless raised a child, invested something in him when he was sick - treated him, clothed him, and so on, he should be responsible for this?
- Yes, I am obliged to something. I have to read it. It’s crazy when a person doesn’t help his parents who raised him. But it is impossible to love if you have not been loved. If you were raised but not loved. If you were dressed, but not loved. If you were treated with medications, but were not loved at that moment.
Imagine, here you are a sick child, you have a mother, you are sick, and she gives you medicine, but what you need from your mother at this moment is not medicine, but for her to sit with you and pat you on the head. As a result, she did not give the most important medicine.
Yes, of course, parents can count on children who were raised this way to respond to them with medicine, food or some kind of financial means. But there is nowhere to get the love that they now lack so much, if it did not exist before. The love between parents and children is special. You won’t get it “later.”
You can cultivate love for the people you meet on the street, thereby struggling with your shortcomings. Forcing yourself to new feats, forgiving insults, and so on. To love people who are not close to you or complete strangers.
But love between children and parents comes from too far away, from the womb, from early childhood. The consequences of early childhood deprivation and lack of love are the sources of all future conflicts in life, the collapse of destinies, misunderstanding of oneself, mental illness...
Let’s say the mother left the child at the age of three for some time, for six months with grandmothers or a nanny, and took care of herself - that’s all, this is a trauma for the child, and maybe he will never recover from it.
Or a terrible situation took place when, before the eyes of a small child, a family broke up and parents divorced. This trauma cannot but manifest itself later in the fate of this person. Many things missed by parents kill a child’s soul and leave an unhealed mark for life…. We need to talk about this, understand that the lack of love is the most important, terrifying problem of humanity. After her everything goes to hell.
– Still, how to overcome these childhood wounds?
– An adult must be able to understand what is happening to him, where and where his problems are coming from, and how to deal with it. It's not an easy matter. For this there is the science of psychology, and I think that in many cases the help of a good specialist is needed. I’m not talking about the Church: participation in church life is a matter of course...
Current page: 1 (book has 24 pages total) [available reading passage: 16 pages]
Vladimir Zobern
Orthodox mother. Allowance for raising and caring for a child
© Eksmo Publishing House LLC, 2015
* * *
Preface
For more than 1000 years, the Orthodox faith determined the consciousness of the Russian people. Having accomplished a breakdown of the people's soul, the years of atheism could not erase these centuries. Orthodoxy, being the most important part of Russian self-awareness, has been preserved in historical memory, in the gene pool of the Russian people. Therefore, despite the fact that the book is primarily focused on raising children in the traditions of Orthodoxy, mothers and fathers who do not consider themselves believers will be able to find advice in it on how to preserve the spiritual and physical health of a child. In the West, such literature is intended for people with a different worldview, with a different history, with a different religion.
Traditional Russian medicine has never contradicted the teachings of the Orthodox Church. The unity of priest and doctor in healing the patient has always been emphasized both in the Church and in pre-revolutionary medicine. And above all, this unity lies in love for the sick, in the indispensable adherence to the rule “Do no harm.”
In the Gospel, the body is called the temple of the soul (see: 1 Corinthians, chapter 3, verse 16; chapter 6, verse 19). But the soul not only puts on a body, it finds expression for earthly life in it.
The spirit is that part of the soul through which it communicates with God. "Spirit,- says Saint Theophan the Recluse, - how the power that came from God knows God, seeks God and finds peace in Him Alone.”
Diseases are also divided into physical, mental and spiritual.
Bodily illnesses occur when a person’s physical “composition” is damaged.
Mental - when there is a violation of his mental activity (“psycho” from Greek- soul); The field of medicine known as psychiatry studies these diseases.
Spiritual illness is primarily a sin; its extreme form is possession by unclean spirits. Almost always a person becomes spiritually ill when he resorts to the help of psychics and occultists. Only a priest can help a person who is spiritually ill.
The first part of the book talks about the spiritual development of a child based on patristic literature. Much attention is paid to raising a child in the spirit of Orthodoxy through Baptism, Communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, confession, prayer, and fasting.
The second part of the book shows the period of physical development of a child from birth to adolescence, talks about the main growing pains, their symptoms and pre-medical care.
We hope that the book will be useful to those living in those places in Russia where, for various reasons, it is not possible to quickly call a doctor - in rural areas, hard-to-reach areas.
The third part contains a prayer book to help the sick, and the fourth part contains instructions on fasting for children and parents.
Part one
Spiritual development of a child
Chapter 1
Sacrament of marriage (wedding)
Marriage between a man and a woman was established by the Lord Himself, who created them: “And the Lord God said: It is not good for the man to be alone; Let us make him a helper suitable for him<…>Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and they will become one flesh"(Book of Genesis, chapter 2, verses 18, 24).
“Marriage is a Divine Sacrament. He was part of God's plan when He created man,– wrote the holy queen-martyr Alexandra Feodorovna, who gave all women an example of Christian fulfillment of the feat of marriage and motherhood. – This is the closest and most sacred connection on earth... Without the blessing of God, without His sanctification of the marriage, all congratulations and good wishes of friends will be an empty phrase. Without His daily blessing of family life, even the most tender and true love will not be able to give everything that a thirsty heart needs. Without Heaven’s blessing, all the beauty, joy, and value of family life can be destroyed at any moment.”
In the Christian Church, God's blessing to those entering into marriage is sent by the Lord in the Sacrament of Wedding. Civil marriage is defined by the Church as prodigal cohabitation, except in cases where one of the spouses consciously comes to faith while already married, and the other does not want to get married. In this case, the Church is based on the words of the Holy Apostle Paul: “If any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she agrees to live with him, then he should not leave her; and a wife who has an unbelieving husband, and he agrees to live with her, should not leave him. For an unbelieving husband is sanctified by a believing wife, and an unbelieving wife is sanctified by a believing husband. Otherwise your children would have been unclean, but now they are holy.”(1 Corinthians, chapter 7, verses 12-14). But then the apostle adds: “If an unbeliever wants to get a divorce, let him get a divorce; the brother or sister is not related in such cases; The Lord has called us to peace."(1 Corinthians, chapter 7, verse 15).
Consequently, if an unmarried marriage was concluded before the spouses became churchgoers, then the initiative for divorce should not belong to the believing spouse. If both husband and wife come to faith, of course, they need to sanctify their union with the grace-filled church Sacrament of Marriage (Wedding). (The name “Wedding” comes from the laying of crowns on the newlyweds.)
It happens that young people get married in the Church not out of conviction, but only because “it’s beautiful,” not realizing that church marriage is an indissoluble union.
“Unfortunately, those over whom it is performed do not always understand the importance of this sacred rite,” Bishop of Dmitrov Vissarion (Nechaev) instructed the brides and grooms. – That is why, even during its performance, they behave without proper reverence and do not prepare for it with preliminary prayers for the sending of God’s blessing. But if the celebration of Marriage is a Sacrament, then, like any other Sacrament, it requires a prayerful mood of spirit from those approaching it.
Just as those approaching the Sacrament of Confession must predispose themselves to it by a preliminary long feat of prayer, otherwise they will not receive the expected benefits for souls from it, so those entering into marriage must be in a prayerful mood of spirit not only during the performance of this Sacrament on them, but also before the performance his. Whoever does not have such a mood before the Wedding, then the grace of God bestowed in the Sacrament of Marriage falls on completely barren soil.”.
Advising those entering into marriage to refrain from amusements and vain worries before the wedding, the bishop further talks about how good and gracious the joint prayer of the bride and groom for blessings for the upcoming life in marriage is.
Before the Sacrament of Wedding, the Orthodox Church orders the bride and groom to confess and receive communion.
Church marriage is indissoluble, as is clear from the words of the Savior: “What God has joined together, let no man separate”(Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19, verse 6). Exceptions are made in special cases, as we see from the “Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church” adopted at the Council of Bishops in 2000: “In 1918, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, in its “Definition on the reasons for the dissolution of a marriage sanctified by the Church,” recognized as such, in addition to adultery and the entry of one of the parties into a new marriage, also the apostasy of one of the parties from Orthodoxy, unnatural vices, inability to marry cohabitation that occurred before marriage or was the result of intentional self-mutilation, leprosy or syphilis, long-term unknown absence, condemnation to punishment coupled with deprivation of all rights of the estate, encroachment on the life or health of the spouse or children, daughter-in-law, pandering, benefiting from the indecency of the spouse, incurable serious mental illness and malicious abandonment of one spouse by the other. Currently, this list of grounds for divorce is supplemented by such reasons as AIDS, medically certified chronic alcoholism or drug addiction, and the wife committing an abortion with the husband’s disagreement.”.
Reasons like “they didn’t get along” cannot be grounds for dissolving a Christian marriage. But what to do in such cases? Let us turn again to the diary entries of the holy queen-martyr Alexandra Feodorovna: “Due to the fault of those who get married, one or both, married life can become a misery. The possibility of being happy in a marriage is very great, but we must not forget the possibility of its collapse. Only a correct and wise life in marriage will help to achieve an ideal marital relationship.
The first lesson to learn and practice is patience. At the beginning of family life, both the advantages of character and disposition are revealed, as well as the shortcomings and peculiarities of habits, taste, and temperament, which the other half did not even suspect. Sometimes it seems that it is impossible to get used to each other, that there will be eternal and hopeless conflicts, but patience and love overcome everything, and two lives merge into one, more noble, stronger, fuller, richer, and this life will continue in peace and quiet...
Another secret of happiness in family life is attention to each other. Husband and wife should constantly show each other signs of the most tender attention and love. The happiness of life is made up of individual minutes, of small, quickly forgotten pleasures; from a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment and countless small but kind thoughts and sincere feelings. Love also needs its daily bread.
Another important element in family life is unity of interests. Nothing a wife cares about should seem too small, even for the gigantic intellect of the greatest of husbands. On the other hand, every wise and faithful wife will willingly take an interest in the affairs of her husband. She will want to know about his every new project, plan, difficulty, doubt. She will want to know which of his endeavors have succeeded and which have not, and be aware of all his daily activities. Let both hearts share both joy and suffering. Let them share the burden of worries in half. Let everything in their life be common. They should go to church together, pray side by side, together bring to the feet of God the burden of caring for their children and everything dear to them. Why don't they talk to each other about their temptations, doubts, secret desires and help each other with sympathy and words of encouragement? So they will live one life, not two.
Be afraid of the slightest beginning of misunderstanding or alienation. Instead of holding back, a stupid, careless word is uttered - and between the two hearts, which before were one whole, a small crack appears, it widens and widens until they find themselves forever torn from each other. Did you say something in a hurry? Ask for forgiveness immediately. Do you have any misunderstanding? No matter whose fault it is, don't let him stay between you for an hour.
Refrain from quarreling. Don't go to bed harboring feelings of anger in your soul. There should be no place for pride in family life. You should never indulge your sense of offended pride and scrupulously calculate who exactly should ask for forgiveness. Those who truly love do not engage in such casuistry. They are always ready to give in and apologize.”
It’s not for nothing that we paid so much attention to the “recipes for family happiness” from the holy empress-martyr Alexandra Feodorovna. Many contemporaries of the holy martyr Nicholas II, even among his obvious ill-wishers, recalled that they had never met such a friendly and happy family that could serve as a role model for everyone. Naturally, with such an attitude of the royal spouses towards each other, the spiritual and mental health of their children was out of danger.
But how often, especially in modern families, the causes of children’s illnesses, not only spiritual, but also physical, are the mood in the family, the atmosphere of unlove, disrespect of parents for each other.
The infidelity of one spouse becomes a disaster for the entire family.
“Many people think that the Church prohibits fornication simply from the principles of Christian morality,– writes Archpriest Boris Nechiporov. – But that's not the point. In marriage, husband and wife form a special unity, but fornication creates a crack, a schism, a black hole. And this, in turn, puts the heaviest burden on children.”
Doctors have proven that for a woman, the first sexual contact is not only a strong psychological shock, but also affects her heredity, since the male seed, having entered the female body, inevitably causes changes in it, which subsequently affects the offspring. That is why it is necessary for a girl to maintain chastity, to preserve herself for marriage. Maintaining purity before marriage is equally important for a man.
But a more serious sin than fornication is adultery. “The biggest sin and the biggest crime in the family is treason, adultery. Betrayal in the family - the sin of Judas - leads to the death of marriage and the breakdown of the family. In a family with children, this is the greatest religious, moral, social, and biological tragedy. If such a misfortune happens in a Christian marriage, the faithful half (husband and wife) must remain faithful. Dante argued that “true love cannot but be mutual. And fidelity in response to betrayal sometimes works miracles and brings back the lost one after a while...”(I.M. Andreev).
Archpriest Boris Nichiporov:
The fornicator or adulterer tells himself that no one will know his adventures. But the heart feels that mystically this is not only not hidden from anyone, but everyone knows about it: heaven, earth, children, wife or husband... The second illusion is that in fornication there is supposedly only the physical combination and there is no spiritual depravity. The Apostle Paul responds to this by saying: “Nothing should possess me. The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Or do you not know that whoever has sex with a harlot becomes one body with her? For it is said: the two will become one flesh...<…>Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you? (1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 12-13, 16, 18, 19).
The advice of many would-be psychotherapists appears to be a consequence of incredible spiritual and professional degradation: “If you have sexual incompatibility with your husband (wife), find yourself a partner (or partner).” Partner! These “specialists” do not understand anything about the science of man and fully correspond to the gospel image: "They – blind leaders of the blind; and if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 15, verse 14).
I may be asked, what should I do if there really is incompatibility? And I will answer. We must understand each specific case, but firmly know that moral failure does not give rise to either mental or physical comfort. On the contrary, such advice gives rise to a whole series of problems and worries.
Christianity is fundamentally about sacrifice. For the sake of saving the human race, the Lord sacrificed Himself for the sins of people and called upon the disciples following Him to self-sacrifice - to bear their cross. The establishment of a Christian marriage as a matter pleasing to God is also never complete without self-sacrifice.
How many times have you heard that a person left his family for the sake of a career, work, because of the inability to come to terms with some qualities of his spouse, because for some reason his “other half” became uninteresting, etc. But people who marry with the intention of spending their entire lives with one single person do not leave themselves such a loophole as the possibility of divorce. Being ready to sacrifice themselves in the name of the family, they overcome many trials, discovering new wonderful qualities in each other and growing from love to love.
Chapter 2
Conceiving a child
In a good, friendly family, the birth of children is always a joy. And this joy is not overshadowed, as in many modern godless families, by thoughts about the upcoming difficulties with the advent of a new person. Bearing in mind that the feat of marriage is a feat of martyrdom, husband and wife are prepared in advance for the inevitable sacrifices for marriage. In this case - in the name of the child that the Lord gives them. The mother must come to terms with the fact that with the birth of her child she will need to devote herself to him, forgetting for some time (preferably for as long as possible) about work, even her favorite one. The mother will invariably have to worry, and lack sleep, and get tired, while giving up many things that are familiar and pleasant. The husband must also understand this and become a real support for his wife and children, and not only support the family, but also take a full part in raising his sons and daughters, and, at first, in caring for them. If spouses approach the conception of a child with such readiness for self-sacrifice, realizing what a great Divine mystery it is, what a great event the birth of a person is, then it will not even occur to them that the child may be unwanted or unplanned. “Family planning” (what a common, familiar phrase these days!) is left exclusively to God by believing spouses. No matter how many children are born in a family, no matter how difficult it is, the mother and father will not perceive the birth of another baby as a test, but only as a blessing.
Speaking about conceiving a child, we emphasize: the Church does not bless the use of contraceptives. Why?
Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov answers this question this way:
...The use of a contraceptive is the same as mechanically emptying the stomach to once again accept unnecessary food. This is a kind of self-deception, the transformation of labor life into meaningless physiological exploitation of the human body without the implementation of labor activity... If God blesses children, then we must give birth to them. The use of contraceptives stimulates irresponsibility towards the great Sacrament of Marriage - this Divine, mysterious institution, amazing in its meaning. In marriage, two people unite in love - and from two cells uniting into one, a new person appears, who has never existed on earth, with his own abilities, characteristics, carrying within himself the entire genetic range of his ancestors...
Contraceptives are unnatural means... Therefore, from a moral point of view, such means cannot be used. The Church cannot bless this as a perversion of human nature created by God... Moreover, it is known how harmful every single contraceptive means is.
That is, when it comes to whether to kill a child or not, people think about their health - it is harmful for them to give birth.
And when it comes to contraceptives, they deliberately harm him. This means that it is not a matter of health, but of passion.
If the wife does not want to be a mother or the husband, calling her his wife, does not want to have children from her, then conscience powerfully forbids even approaching the marital bed.
Indeed, how sad that many parents perceive the “unplanned” conception of a baby as an unfortunate accident! But, according to doctors, the effect of all contraceptives is abortifacient. Conception still occurs, but the fertilized egg is killed in the first days after the child is conceived. The human soul, placed by God in this cell, dies - already a real child! Can anyone hope that the children born later will be healthy and happy when so many of their brothers and sisters were killed in such a covert manner?
The fact that the sins of parents are reflected on children is not “a figment of the imagination of the churchmen.” This is confirmed by life itself.
Archpriest Artemy Vladimirov:
Our children suffer even before their conception, or rather, the suffering that voluptuous parents inflict on each other, scolding their own nature, is reflected in the physical and mental state of their future children.
The Church instructs believing parents to abstain from marital relations on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday (from the evening of the previous day to the evening of the current one). The three allocated days are special: on Wednesday our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed by Judas, on Friday he endured the torment of the cross and death, and on Sunday he rose from the dead. In the same way, great and especially revered Christian holidays and, of course, the time of the four fasts - Nativity, Great, Petrov, Assumption - and the first Easter week - Bright Week - a person should spend in abstinence, in prayer, and pay special attention to spiritual life. The prohibition of married life at this time is not artificial: long-term observations show that children conceived on such days are quite often born sick.
Archpriest Artemy Vladimirov:
According to the testimony of some church writers, the state of a child’s soul is largely predetermined by the state of hearts at the sacred hour of conception... If people, due to their spiritual ignorance, give themselves up to voluptuous thoughts, dreams, imaginations, if they corrupt themselves with unnatural fornication, then they are thereby already undermining the creative powers of their child.
And of course, there can be no talk of conceiving a baby “under the fumes of wine,” when the child not only physically, but also spiritually can become a victim of the parent’s passion for alcohol.
– Elena, the topics you are currently dealing with are very sensitive and loud. Every week there is news about the removal of children. Are there really more cases like this or are we starting to see them more in the media?
– The media started talking about it more. If you look at the statistics, then, on the contrary, in recent years there has been a decline in the number of cases of both seizures and deprivation of parental rights. The peak was in the early 2000s, when these numbers were huge. Even now, from my point of view, they are excessive, shamefully large for our country, despite the decline.
We have more than 30 thousand cases of deprivation of parental rights a year, officially about 3 thousand seizures, but these statistics do not include children who, in real life, are taken from their families by law enforcement agencies due to an act of neglect. We have practically no exact statistics on police seizures, but it may correlate with the number of children in institutions– there are fewer of them too. However, we are still talking about tens of thousands of children who are removed from their families. With such numbers, one or two stories could be written every day.
It is precisely because the media began to raise these topics that not only the public, not only parents, who are sometimes overly frightened, but also the state began to pay attention to them. This is the correct story: now they have begun to say that this is impossible, that the legislation and practice that we have are truly flawed. That there are big problems with the way we work with families, how decisions are made that a family cannot raise their child for various reasons.
Why are children actually selected?
– Are we taking any action at all to work with the family? You write and speak a lot, and your foundation works a lot in the area of family support. You try to help your family for as long as possible - as much as possible. But in the public consciousness there is such a stereotype: if there is a problem, then they will immediately come and take the child away if there are not enough tangerines in the refrigerator.
– We do not know of a real situation where someone would be taken away due to a lack of oranges or tangerines. But there are situations when a family lives in difficult conditions, for example, in winter they have no heating - it is clear that, on the one hand, this is an obvious threat, you can really freeze and get sick.
On the other hand, instead of these people with children being at least temporarily accommodated in a hostel, because it is cold not only for the children, but also for the parents, the children may be taken away. Unfortunately, there are cases when the living conditions of a child become the reason for selection.
My personal opinion -There is one and only reason why it is really possible and necessary to save a child from a family: when he is threatened with real violence there, when he is being cruelly treated.
I would like, of course, that no parent could offend their child, unfortunately, this is not the case. Alas, sometimes it is parents who kill and rape their own children. It is precisely because such cases occur that in all countries of the world there is a state policy regarding the protection of children's rights. For some unknown reason, we use the term “juvenile justice”, which is about something completely different – about juvenile courts.
Politics related to the right of the state to interfere in the family exist everywhere, and our country is no exception. Soviet legislation of the 20-30s was very similar to today's, even more stringent. There were even more reasons why the state could find parents poorly fulfilling their parental responsibilities.
Soviet Russia was not anything special; at that time, legislation related to the protection of children’s rights was being formed in absolutely all countries. Before this, in previous centuries, the concept of protecting children's rights as a legislative norm practically did not exist. However, shortly before this, it was generally possible to own people, buy, sell, and forcibly separate families. So the idea that there was some kind of golden age, and then Soviet legislation came and ruined everything, is a complete illusion.
Photo by Anna Danilova
Many social relations are changing - women gain the rights to education and to vote. Then children have at least the right to life, which the state protects in a situation where a parent becomes a threat. It is impossible to live in a state where there is no such law, where a child cannot be protected, where a parent can rape him, can kill him, and no one has the right to intervene in this situation.
It is clear that in any country there will be certain laws that determine what to do if a child is in danger in his own family, if something bad is being done to him there. Then certain mechanisms and tools arise that help identify this danger. "How do you know? “The neighbor told me.” But we understand that this seems to be not enough.
Why do they beat the little ones?
– In this regard, I immediately remember what they often say about America: I spanked a child because he screamed for a long time, made a scandal, and the neighbors called the social service. In this case, you can imagine how much a two-year-old child can scream because he was not allowed to bite off the pie on the side he wanted, or they cut a cucumber, but he wanted to eat it whole, and he immediately feels uneasy.
“I doubt that’s the case in America.” I understand that this is not very representative - all sorts of TV series and movies, but, nevertheless, quite a lot of educational violence in families is shown there. You need to look at what legislation is there, it varies greatly from state to state. Indeed, there are countries where any physical punishment is prohibited by law. You either accept the rules of the game, or you leave there and live in a country where the rules of the game are different.
It seems to me that any normal parent should understand that hitting your child is unacceptable. Beating a small person who is still completely dependent on you, who trusts you, who loves you... We teach our children not to hit younger ones - this is a normal idea. The youngest for us is our child, he is still completely dependent on us. This is a situation in which an adult should not use his capabilities to the detriment of this child.
It is clear that there are situations when a parent will yell at a child, spank him, or scold him. It is clear that parents should not be afraid that in this situation someone evil will come and take their child away from them because they did not cope differently. When a child runs out onto the roadway, at that moment you will not explain to him: “You know, my friend, there may be different consequences of your actions.” The state cannot and should not take away a child for spanking. Only for violence that truly threatens the life or health of a child. And on the one hand, this should be clear and understandable to both parents and the state, but on the other hand, this should in no way provoke parents to use violence as a measure of education.
– It is clear that, perhaps, it is impossible to beat children and really flog a child with a belt until they bleed, but situations really are different.
– There is no need to flog a child with a belt, whether it bleeds or not. In general, spanking is also a very strange element of education. You won't spank your child when he turns 15, will you? No, you won't. Why? Because he can fight back.
It turns out that you really hit him while he is small, while he cannot answer you. Do you beat a helpless junior because you are older and stronger? Until he learns to fight back? This is truly some kind of horror!
It’s completely abnormal to do this to your children. At the same time, it is clear that there are difficulties, a person can break down, spank, slap in the face. This is not a crime, but one should not assume that beating a child is a normal, ordinary way of parenting.
Because you know, it happens that he lost his temper in such a way that he threw the child onto the concrete floor, and he broke the base of his skull and died. We should not get used to such educational measures that cause pain to the child and do not teach us to restrain ourselves in moments of aggression and anger. This is not a way of parenting - this is a parent who has not yet learned to cope with his own emotions and irritation. It's difficult, but you have to learn.
Who works in guardianship and how
– As I already said, in any country there are laws that determine how the state intervenes in the family. They can be very detailed, describe certain situations, procedures, there can be a million different services. They can be very wide, as we have here.
When the legislation is extremely broad, it means that the decision is left to the discretion of the person who comes to the family on behalf of the state. In our country, all decisions regarding the child’s residence in the family are made by the guardianship authorities. At your own discretion.
– Don't we have any clear algorithm?
“We don’t have an algorithm, we don’t have order, we don’t have criteria, we don’t have special services that would receive specialized education and work with families if a signal is received by the guardianship.”
– Do the guardianship services have any clear understanding of in which case a child can continue to live in this family, and in which case it is dangerous? I return to the notorious oranges in the refrigerator.
– The guardianship authorities have legislation that states that if there is an immediate threat to life and health, they have the right to take away the child. So you come to work in the guardianship authorities. There is no such university specialty, you were not prepared for this anywhere...
– Are these not psychologists?
– There is no requirement that they be psychologists. In general, who is a guardianship officer? This is an official, an administrative worker who makes a huge number of decisions related to housing, parental divorces, various property issues of incapacitated adults, foster families and adoptive parents.
He has the right to make decisions regarding incapacitated adults and any children - not only those whose parents have been deprived of parental rights or who are left without care. For example, children who have a share in an apartment in a situation where their parents divide it among themselves during a divorce. These officials work mainly with the letter of the law. Their task is to protect the rights of children within the framework of all those regulations that contain them. In particular, they have one point where it is written that in the event of an immediate threat to life and health, they will take the child away.
– What is a threat?
“They have to define it.” We don’t even have a legal requirement to have some time for an investigation! How do you determine how you know it is a threat to life and limb? You are not a doctor, you are not a psychologist, you see a family once.
Perhaps at one time it was originally intended that some other work should be carried out before this. The legislator meant that this is the extreme point, and it is set when we have some kind of process before this. There are some other services that respond to some other signals, which is still not terrible, but help is needed.
But all this does not exist as a single process, so a school or just some neighbor can call the police or the guardianship authorities and convey information that, from his point of view, something wrong is happening. The guardian must come and make a decision based on her idea of what is good and what is bad, based on what she sees with her own eyes. And we all have completely different ideas.
Now they are very actively discussing on Facebook the life of a member of the former group “War” who left our homeland, a mother of many children who lives in Europe and leads a rather specific lifestyle there. In the comments there are many of our fellow citizens who are so worried about the fact that our children are being taken away from their families, and there they are actively shouting: “Take it away! Social services urgently, guardianship, call the police, save, help!”
This is the main commentary on her stories about how she and her children live. Why? Because in our minds, her lifestyle with children is wrong. We have a certain philistine idea of what is right.
It turns out that any person can judge whether any other person can be a parent. But it can’t really be like that! It is clear that, basically, completely ordinary people work in wards, not monsters, not villains, with our usual idea of what is right and what is wrong. Therefore, they usually look at things that probably wouldn’t seem right to you: for example, if it’s a brothel, if there are citizens around who are heavily intoxicated with alcohol or drugs.
The bulk of the situations that the guardianship authorities and the police are faced with are still not oranges, these are really situations where people already live in deep dependence, and it is difficult, when you see this, not to think that it is bad for the child there.
It `s naturally.
Can children live with cockroaches?
– Of course, there are situations where there is no alcoholism, but people live quite marginally. We have a foster family with four children. They live in an apartment together with a drinking grandmother, who was once deprived of rights to the mother of these children, with her brother and sister, who also drink. They have one room where the six of them live.
And when we first met this family, we came to them– In the apartment, cockroaches walked in two layers, because there are so many of them that one crawls along the wall, and another overlaps on top of it. We lived with this family, I don’t remember exactly, but there were more than twenty cats, more than ten dogs, there were also some hamsters and chinchillas. They love animals very much and quite consciously surround themselves with these animals in these conditions.
You are part of such a family. There is a smell of alcohol from relatives, there is generally a very specific smell there. A small child is walking, there are cat bowls with food, he takes something from there and eats it. What is the impression most people get? They see that they urgently need to remove the children from there, right?
– The cockroaches should probably be removed first. Yes, the picture is scary.
- This is the picture. What do we usually not pay attention to in this picture? How the children are doing there and what kind of relationship they have with their parents. It is clear that we look with our eyes, but we do not know how to look with our hearts and minds. We know with our eyes - we are designed that way, and we sense the corresponding smell with our nose.
When we came to this family, it turned out that the guardianship twice applied for deprivation of rights, and the court refused twice. This is nonsense - people live in very poor conditions, and the court refuses twice. We began to look into the documents, and it turned out that every time people who knew this situation, teachers from school, someone else came to the court and brought a testimonial where they wrote that the parents love their children very much, the children are very attached to their parents, they have good relationship with each other. There were no beatings and the parents were not accused of abuse. The guardianship came, saw all this, said: “Ah-ah! We’ll deprive you urgently,” but the court refused.
This generally rarely happens: usually the court completely agrees with the competent opinion of the guardianship and does not make any decisions itself. In this story, people saw this human element, the quality of the relationship between parent and child, they were hooked by it, and they made their decision based on this. This rarely happens in our country, unfortunately.
In fact, the key point is in family relationships. Conditions are something that can be changed. Cleanliness can be purchased. Cockroaches can be poisoned.
My family and I eventually agreed that they would give away most of their animals. It was very difficult for them, because they knew each of their cats and dogs by name, they knew the history of each of them - but they do not have a private house, this is a problem for all the neighbors. In the end, they did it for the sake of the children.
Such things can be changed to some extent. There is never such magic that a family that has lived for many years in similar conditions, like in the movies, will suddenly become neat in an ideal Moscow apartment. There will still be some non-ideal conditions there, but they will be better, they will be more tolerant in terms of some sanitary ideas, norms and rules, and at the same time the children will remain with their parents.
What happens to a child who is taken away?
– Tell me, do guardians make a lot of mistakes in terms of confiscation? From time to time, news comes across that children were first taken away and then returned. How can you imagine the hell that happens to a child when he is taken away from his mother in hysterics and then placed in an unknown place? He’s already used to it, he lives like this, he knows: this is his mom, dad and his entire environment.
“Unfortunately, we look with our eyes; we do not take into account the most key story associated with relationships, with the child’s feelings, with his understanding of how the world works. When he lives in a family, this world is always primarily focused on the main adults who take care of him - mom, dad, grandmother or aunt with whom he lives. This is called attachment. This word is gradually entering our everyday language; twenty years ago it was not much used in this context - about the significant relationships that develop between parents and children.
Within the framework of the law, there is no concept of error - they simply either take it or don’t take it. There are no halftones. If they take it away, they will sort it out later. They can return it. It's not that mistakes happen, but that there is no normal procedure. Which would be based primarily on the interests of the child, on the idea of what is happening to the child, what he feels, what could harm him.
– Nobody cares.
– It’s not that I don’t care. You immediately start to imagine cruel people who don't care, and people just don't understand it or they don't have the tools, they don't have the opportunity. It is not included in the norms. For example, there are a number of countries where it is written: if you suddenly need to pick up a child, you need to find any of his relatives, call them and deliver the child there.
Or, if you need to take him to a government agency, then you need him to take his favorite toy, his personal belongings, so that they explain to him what is happening. It is clear that no one should be grabbed by the hand or dragged into the car without explaining anything. But we have nothing that would regulate all these situations. The guardianship just has to make a decision, that’s all. And take the child to a government institution.
– In some countries, the child remains in the same school, in the same class, in almost the same environment, as far as I know.
“We are the country where it should be like this by law.” Our legislation has changed. If a child is now removed and placed in an orphanage, then it is written in black and white that the child must be placed as close as possible to his place of residence, the same school, the same leisure facilities must be maintained.
Unfortunately, we have a problem with the fact that what is written is one thing, and what is done is another matter.In practice, children are still distributed like logs into the first available space. For some reason they take me to the hospital before that.
No one thinks about how a child feels when his whole world, his entire habitual way of life, breaks down.
He loses not only his mother and father, who, perhaps, could not cope with something or were actually rapists towards the child. He loses everything: he no longer has anything, no familiar people, no familiar things.
- It turns out that a child is placed in prison...
– Essentially, yes, our child has been a victim several times. Let’s say there was some kind of violence that a child suffered in the family, then we immediately break everything for him and push him into an isolated environment. And if there was no violence, there were some poor living conditions, insufficient parental competence, which the child did not particularly understand...
This big guy already understands that if he walks around with lice all the time, it’s not very healthy, because everyone at school endlessly looks askance at him. When a child is small, he does not understand such things. He understands whether there is a mother who takes care of him or not. There is that mother who smiles at him and takes him in her arms, or she doesn’t.
Again, it may turn out that the mother does not smile and does not take her in her arms. We had a story when guardianship found a newborn baby in a box under the sofa where his mother had stuffed him. She didn’t take him out of there, didn’t feed him for several days, he almost died there.
There are all sorts of situations, but basically for a child these are close people to whom he is accustomed, whom he loves - and now he is torn from everything. They don’t explain to him why, what happened, why he was grabbed and taken somewhere. They usually tell him: “You are now going to the hospital, to a sanatorium, to one place.” It's still good if they tell him something. It happens that they stuff you into a car and drive away in silence. The only thing they tell him is: “Don’t yell!” - something like that. We have no understanding of how the child feels, that this is traumatic for him.
Photo: Charitable Foundation “Volunteers to help orphans”
What do healthy children do in hospitals?
– We also have a completely stupid procedure that forces a child in this situation, which is as scary, stressful and incomprehensible as possible, to be taken alone to an empty place. If they bring him to a shelter, they put him in an isolation ward or in a quarantine block, if they don’t have an isolation ward, that is, in a lonely space where there are no other children, because you never know what he’s sick with.
Not only are there no other children there, there is often no permanent teacher there either. At best, there will be a nurse's post outside; she is not in this room with him. She will come to him to bring food, take his temperature - and that’s all.
Or the child goes directly from the family to the hospital, where there are no conditions for caring for children. There is absolutely no one in the hospital room who will sit with him. There he wants to cry, scream, ask: “What will happen next? What's happened? Where are my parents, why am I here?
“I remember when, at the age of seven, I found myself in a hospital box alone, they came to see me once every two hours. I knew what, where and why. My mother brought me there. But I still cried constantly for the first two days there.
- Imagine that you don’t understand what happened, you were just torn out - and now you’re here. Why here? Nobody here. Very scary, very worrying. A child is such an object, he needs to be examined, you never know what he is sick with. In some other countries, when a child is found on the highway at night, for example, he is taken to a foster family or a small group home. Nobody is afraid there.
We have such a fear of infections, diseases, epidemics that sometimes there is a feeling that we are completely sick with obsessive-compulsive syndrome. Germs, germs all around – it’s such a horror! This is so much worse than the real trauma we inflict on the child...
This can be organized humanly. There is no worse potential infection than what we have been doing to these children for years, causing them incredible trauma. We then grow up as adults who are afraid of doctors, afraid of hospitals, afraid of being alone, but don’t know why they are afraid.
Dad killed mom: who is to blame
“It’s clear that this is a severe trauma for the child.” At the same time, there are many situations when we read in the news that a father hacked a mother to death with an ax in front of his children. It turns out that at some points they went too far and for some reason they took it away without understanding it. And in some moments they overlooked it, maybe, on the contrary, they should have “removed” dad a long time ago.
– The moment of “overlookedness” needs to be taken very carefully. In orphanages, unfortunately, we saw children who witnessed terrible tragedies in the family. It hasn't always been a story that can be seen because the family lives behind closed doors. If they live in a more or less good high-rise building, where the walls are not gutta-percha, and even more so in a private house, then you can’t really hear what’s going on there.
Sometimes it’s really a story where dad beat mom, mom called the police - everyone knew, but no one did anything to help. And sometimes it is one-time, especially if we are talking about people with a borderline mental state.
I believe that we should not blame guardianship for something happening in the family. If they are to blame for this situation, it means that in every family we should have a special web camera from the guardianship authorities, so that they can remotely monitor what is happening with you, and, if anything happens, they will go out - there are no other options to find out what is happening with you inside.
But society and our valiant police agencies are often very much to blame for this.
Stories where dad killed mom are most often stories about long-term violence, everyone knew about it, but the violence was not against the child, but against the mother. And my mother, perhaps, even wrote statements to the police, which were not allowed to proceed because of “family squabbles.”
And loved ones who saw everything, but believed that people would figure it out themselves. Or, according to the new law, they imposed a fine, which dad paid from his salary, became even more angry, and the matter ended badly.
In this situation, the question is rather why we still do not have a normal law on domestic violence. There should be a protection order when, as a rule, it is not the victim who is isolated, but the one who commits violence. There must be real courses of help, because most family conflicts are due to the fact that people do not know how to engage in dialogue. Any problem leads to aggression, irritation, anger, which a person does not know how to restrain, or he holds it in for a long time, and then it comes out in a very aggressive form.
If you look at our prisons, a huge number of women are imprisoned for killing their husbands. As teenagers, we went with an Orthodox group to women’s colonies - this is the main article. Most often there was long-term domestic violence, and then at some point the woman could not stand it, and it ended in murder. We have not studied this topic at all.
What to do about domestic violence
– We say that there is no need to hit children, also so that the child does not grow up with the feeling that this is some way of solving a problem: when you don’t like a person’s behavior, you can model it by hitting the person.
It would seem, what's wrong with that? My dad beat me, but I grew up to be a man. I grew up as a man and I beat my wife. Why? Because she behaves incorrectly. I learned from childhood: if a person behaves incorrectly, then his behavior is regulated by violence.
– It turns out that in our country a woman in such a situation is essentially not protected.
- Yes.
“Recently there was a big story about a woman who had killed her husband being imprisoned. He had beaten her for many years before this. It turns out that this is not self-defense?
- This is a very difficult story. We have many wards who ran away from home because it was simply unsafe to stay there. Sometimes the husband started beating the child too.
In these situations, firstly, we have no obvious legal protection. Secondly, she runs away, and the man lives well in the apartment, he has no problems. She's on the street, she has nowhere to go. State crisis centers work as follows: a person can live there for two months. Where will she and the child go in two months? How will this situation change? She doesn't change at all.
We had a ward for whom we raised funds for a room. Her husband beat her for many years and drove her blind. He beat her and then locked her at home so that she could not go out and write a statement. When he calmed down, he began to release her, but by this point she no longer had such open injuries that could be shown. She went to the police several times, but could not prove anything. She filed a complaint against him twice.
In this situation, it turns out that, unfortunately, there seem to be laws, police, and some kind of protection. In reality, it works very poorly. In addition, police officers have a belief, based on their experience, that such women are more likely to withdraw their reports. Therefore, they themselves very often, we hear this from every second woman, say from the doorway: “Well, why am I going to take it from you? You will come and pick it up later. Figure it out yourself."
In a situation where a person is in danger, he comes to the only place where he can be protected, and there he hears this or some kind of giggles and giggles about something that you and your husband did not share. When a person is in danger, nothing but the desire to help him and protect him should arise in any public servant, be he a police officer, social services worker, or a doctor.
This should be a reaction at the level of automaticity. You'll figure it out later. She could have cheated, they will make up later - it’s just none of your business. Now a person has come to you who is in danger, you must help him, and everything else, all your thoughts that maybe she is lying, that they have such a strange love-carrot with elements of sadomasochism - this is generally everything doesn't matter. The investigation will begin later, when everyone has calmed down and is safe.
In our country, this has not been worked out at all, not only from the point of view of legislation, but also from the point of view of practice and understanding of those people who work on the ground. Nothing will change until every police officer in our country believes that violence, including domestic violence, is important, and people need to be protected from it, and not some kind of nonsense that can be brushed aside.
What happens to refuseniks
– Elena, I know that you came to charity to take care of orphans after you and your little daughter spent time in the hospital and looked at refuseniks. You recently wrote on your Facebook blog that you ask for information about where there are still such children in hospitals. It seemed that this problem had been resolved; this was no longer the case. Isn't that the case again?
– I try to be very rational about what I write and do, but this post turned out to be emotional, the cup was simply overflowing. Of course, the situation is very different from what it was in the early 2000s when we started. There are fewer children, and they do not spend such long periods in medical institutions. In many regions, children now have nannies, and most of these nannies are paid by NGOs that work in these regions. But the problem has still not been fundamentally solved, even though we have succeeded in changing the legislation regarding children who are in hospitals.
What does our situation look like? The child may be removed from the family; the family itself can refuse to raise a child either in the maternity hospital or later; a child can be found on the street alone, and he has no family - but all these situations always ended in a hospital.
This child needs to be placed somewhere. It was assumed that he might be sick with something, and he was sent to the hospital for examination. In the list of documents with which the child was sent to an organization for orphans, “medical examination” was written, which means that somewhere he had to undergo it in advance. The children were sent for this examination for a completely indefinite period. At some point, somewhere these deadlines began to be limited to a month, but in reality this was not observed.
The point is that most of these children were not sick. The fact that a child lives in a family where the mother drinks does not mean that he is sick. The fact that a child walks alone on the street and is not very closely watched by his parents does not mean that he is sick. If the mother abandoned the child in the maternity hospital, most often he is actually healthy or has those pathologies that will be with him all his life and do not require him to be in the hospital at all.
– In general, even just from a blood test you can already understand almost everything.
- Fluorography plus a blood test - and you already understand that your child, at least, will not infect anyone with anything terrible. And all sorts of very, very rare diseases are also very, very rare, and all of us sitting in this room can have them, the risk is about the same. As a result, a completely healthy child was in the hospital. Firstly, he caught every possible hospital infection there, and because of this, he then lay there longer and longer.
Let's say a child is 11 years old, he was taken away from his family, he wanders around the ward, he is bored, he feels bad, everything that we talked about is happening to him, he is stressed, he is crying there - but he can cope with it. What if he is a newborn? Besides the fact that he feels bad and is stressed, he doesn’t know how to eat, he can’t change his own diaper, he can’t do anything at all. He can only lie down.
When I first went to the hospital with my child, I saw exactly this.
I found myself next to the chambers of children who lay alone and did not even cry continuously, but howled like animals. It was the sound of dull despair when you realize that no one will ever come to you.
In fact, of course, nurses approached them, but not as much as a small child needed.
– When there is one nurse on the floor with boxes... I remember the situation when she comes, starts feeding the floor, and by lunchtime she feeds the rest of the floor with an ice-cold breakfast.
– It’s good if it’s for lunch and not for dinner, because at that moment there were a lot of children. Now they have begun to write about this, then little was written about it, but in reality the situation has changed greatly in the opposite direction: then there were from 20 to 30 children in the hospital, now there are no more than 6-10. Their number has decreased by 3-4 times.
Why is silence worse than a child's cry?
– At that moment, when I was there, no nurse could have coped. The nurses were, of course, also busy with those children who were really sick and needed some procedures - this is their functionality, they have scheduled responsibilities. And besides, there are babies there who need to be fed, diapers changed and sat with. This is a baby, you can’t just leave him and not approach him for 3-4 hours between changing diapers.
Can you imagine what a small child is like, just lying in bed alone, without an adult, without care, without hands?
One of the scariest things I have seen in my life is how these children stop calling for an adult.
We started visiting hospitals in the Moscow region and Moscow; I personally visited more than 20 hospitals where there were such children. One of the worst was the hospital, where there was complete silence. In ours they were crying, because here they were still approached. They knew they could come, and they were desperate, but they kept calling.
I came to the hospital, where there were about thirty children and that same one nurse on the floor, during feeding. The children were there for quite a long time. Nowadays they really most often do not last more than a month, but then it was months.
The children knew that feeding was around this time. How does the baby behave before feeding? He begins to actively show his dissatisfaction with the fact that he has a need to eat, but it is not being satisfied right now. He starts yelling. We walked through the wards where healthy six to eight month old babies lay absolutely silent. Their faces were so tense!
The nurse took a bottle and placed it on the pillow next to each baby, because she could not feed everyone - she was alone, and there were thirty of them. He grabbed her with his teeth and began to suck in such silent tension, because over these six months he had already had the experience that if now he did anything - a sound, a movement - she would fall and spill past. And all he needs is to be able to suck out the milk without moving at all. It really is such a nightmare! You understand that what they did to these children will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
What is needed to minimize trauma to children?
– Why did they do this to these little children? Because no one thought about it. We just didn’t think that we needed separate personnel for this examination, if for some reason we decided that they needed to be examined in hospitals. That this staff is not about feeding them and changing diapers, but about caring for this child individually. Maximum one adult for two babies, no more. And that’s it, he should always be with them.
As a result, these individual posts still do not exist in many hospitals. Only a few regions, the Moscow region, for example, have added such personnel to their staff, while most of the nannies that exist in the regions are paid for by funds.
And most importantly, the legislation has already changed, and today children who are removed from their families or abandoned by their parents must be placed immediately in an organization for orphans, where it cannot be said that everything is in chocolate, but at least there are educators there . And he needs to be examined on an outpatient basis - like any child, taken by the hand to the clinic.
The situation there is a little different: there are no hospital-acquired infections that can be contracted by a completely healthy child. The teacher should take him by the hand for examination or, if he is a baby, carry him to the clinic - as usual, we examine our children who are not sick. Hospitals are not a place for examination at all, they are a place for treatment.
It turned out that we ourselves also missed one point - those children who are brought by the police. Maybe their mother will come and pick them up in the evening. Maybe they will be sent to a shelter. They were not included in this order of the Ministry of Health that I am talking about, that is, legislative changes are required so that these children are not taken to hospitals. Or, if there is at least one such child in the hospital, there would be an individual post right there.
They write to me about this regularly. In some places we are trying to connect, in some places we do not have enough resources, because, despite the image that the “Refuseniks” will come and the problems will be solved, we are a relatively small organization. We have our own specific projects. We have a limited number of employees. We don't have enough hands.
After another letter about children who are lying alone in the hospital without care, I simply ran out of patience, because this is impossible! Fourteen years have passed since we raised this problem and made it public. It would seem that it was necessary to solve it immediately, but everyone simply stubbornly forgets about these small children in hospitals.
Photo: Charitable Foundation “Volunteers to help orphans” (www.otkazniki.ru)
It seems to me that today - no matter how much money it costs - the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Social Affairs needs to take responsibility for ensuring that in the situation of at least one child without parents in the medical system there are always individual posts. And then gradually decide by law so that children do not end up there at all. We have a clinic for examination.
How children from orphanages are treated
– There is also a separate category of orphans in hospitals. These are those who are not newly identified, but already living in orphanages. Who actually ended up in the hospital for treatment. We are talking about young children, we are talking about children with severe developmental disabilities.
They, too, most often go to bed alone, because it is not possible for the orphanage to snatch a staff unit, when there is one teacher for six children, and put them with one child. There is simply no such possibility physically. And a small child either lies alone or does not go to the hospital. This is also a disaster.
We encountered children who were not operated on in time. For example, a cleft lip is the simplest thing. If this defect is eliminated at an early age, then no one even knows that the person had it. If this is not done on time, the operation will leave marks at an older age. We saw these children who were not operated on on time, because the hospital did not accept them for surgery without an accompanying person, and the orphanage could not provide one.
Imagine this - a person does not have surgery on time because there is no one to take care of him!
When the state takes away a child or the parent himself abandons the child, the state seems to say: “I undertake the obligation to provide the child with care and attention. And I, as a state, as a regulator, will definitely do this better than that unlucky parent who caused some harm to the child or simply failed to cope with something. I’m big and smart, I decided that I would take him for myself and continue to take care of him.” How? So he ends up alone in a hospital bed. So that he does not receive the necessary medical interventions on time.
Of course, we understand that there are a lot of problems there, and they are often associated with optimization and savings on financing, but it seems to me that there are things that are shameful to save on. Save money on something else. Don’t hold an extra festival, clear away the clouds at the parade, let us stand in the rain, but you simply can’t skimp on children.
How to make sure no one suffers
– What are the most expected and necessary changes in your area right now? if you had unlimited possibilities?
– Of course, the most important thing is a general support system for all families who live in this territory. Not only those for whom everything is already so bad that their children are taken away from them or they themselves abandon them, but in a situation where a child simply appears in a family, he should have a completely obvious opportunity to remain calmly in it.
To do this, in every territory of our country, which is large and very difficult in terms of relief, scale and characteristics, in every place where a child could theoretically be born, where people live, there must be an accessible school, kindergarten, leisure and medical institution, work for parents and housing. These basic things should be there.
The state must guarantee that if there is a village called Rodnik, there is work in Rodnik; if there is no work in Rodnik, then it will organize transport to the nearest place where there is work. To give children the opportunity not to travel 70 kilometers to school, let it be a junior or even a secondary school for 5 people, then they can start traveling somewhere. People should have the opportunity to independently provide for their lives economically and generally humanly.
– Live, work and get treatment.
– Live, work, get treatment, study, teach children. And there should be some kind of leisure, this is also important. To prevent people from using alcohol as their only way of leisure, they must have a place and opportunity to relax in some other way.
You can invest in people themselves doing this, for example, organizing some municipal competitions for organizing leisure time, let people take this municipal money themselves, show their initiative and think from below what they need - a sports ground, a fitness club, library with gatherings, folk choir. Of course, if people themselves have not organized themselves, then the state must be the initiator of this whole story. And if they show initiative, do not hinder, but support.
The second story is when everything is bad. There must be a built-in social system associated with the individualization of the response to a specific case. There is a family, it turns to social protection, or neighbors apply in its interests, a person arrives whose task is not to discover whether you are a criminal or not, but to understand what is happening to you and make a decision together with you. “Nothing about us without us” - this applies not only to people with disabilities, but in general to any groups of people in relation to whom any social work is carried out.
It is clear that there will also be situations when we actually need to protect children from their parents. Not when we take them away because the parents couldn’t cope with something, and we don’t want to help them, or their life is bad, but when there is real violence, real neglect of the child’s needs, not from a lack of resources. In this situation, we must have the fastest possible response, and the child must first go to the family.
Again, there is not a single country where there are enough temporary guardianship families. Orphanages and group stay institutions in one form or another are everywhere; no matter what they tell you about countries where “they don’t exist”, they exist. It may be some kind of private small group home for six children, but it will be there. We need to do the same.
Let there be small family-type group homes, no more than 12 children per home. Anything more than 12 means barracks, where it will actually be very difficult to do anything. Well, OK, 20, we are big, we love everything big. 20– This is already a big house, that's the maximum. The whole story there will be based on social and psychological assistance, on the rehabilitation of children and their speedy return or placement with a family.
If it is possible to somehow restore the parents - they, for example, are in a heavy drinking binge, but theoretically they can be taken out of there, and then they want to be with their children - then we work with the parents. If they almost killed this child and kept him tied up in an iron box, it is clear that we will not return him.
You need to quickly find a family that will take this child so that he doesn’t stay in this nice house for 12 or 20 children until he is 18 years old, because it still isolates him from society and excludes him from normal social life.
The main story of supporting any family is individual response to crises. It is necessary to clearly distinguish between situations when the family needs support, treats the child well and wants to be with him - and when the family is a danger to the child, treats him badly, and the child suffers from real violence. Now they are not separated in our law: either people are poor, or they are beating a child - approximately the same order of reaction to this, but it should not be that way.
– We practically painted a picture of a bright future.
– We, however, have forgotten children with disabilities, and this is now one of the key categories in orphanages. This means there must be a huge number of services to support those families who are raising children with special needs, and not just some kind of proper medical rehabilitation or timely assistance.
First of all, it is necessary to ensure that the world around such children begins to accept them. They grow, they won’t always be small. This is a school, then some jobs, this is accompanied accommodation. An opportunity for such children to go out into the world and become part of it. Some people may need very little support, but it will make a huge difference in the lives of these children and families. Families also find themselves isolated today.
And there are children with very severe disabilities, they need support until old age, and, therefore, there must be a full cycle of support. We must become a society that knows how to accept people.