Teacher, every sentence that starts with ‘I can’t bear it’ has a heavy price for our children.
You frequently mention the problems encountered in business life, especially due to these issues. What would you like to say about this?
In many meetings with hundreds of people, “Why do you want your child to be happy?” I asked. The answer I get is mostly like “Let him be successful…, let him have a comfortable life…” In short, what is understood from happiness is “a comfortable life”.
Parents say, “Our children should not experience the difficulties we experienced.”
However, if those people see themselves as successful, they do not think that it was the difficulties they experienced that brought them to that point. This is what I say most commonly. And this is how children and young people whose psychological immune systems do not develop, who have been captured by the five-choice exam system and have been successfully poisoned, emerge, and even if these children study in these schools in the future, all the obstacles in front of them are removed by their mothers and fathers, mostly by their mothers, so they are left unprotected against the difficulties of life. . In a sense, it is like a classical vaccine injecting antibodies into the body by weakening them. Young people who do not face the difficulties of life and grow up in a protected environment become people who have a false and unreal “self-confidence” and believe that they have the right to everything, without any apparent reason. Why did I say fake? Because he believes that he will develop safe behavior if he acts by rote, for example, eye contact, grasping the other party’s hand and shaking it, speaking loudly. However, competence is achieved as a result of difficulties overcome and experienced. Competence is built on past failures. If there is no failure in the past, it means the limits have not been pushed. So the only thing that pushes the limits is preparing for the exam. Moreover, getting good grades in exams is related to a function of intelligence and especially strong memory.
However, life success is a path other than academic success. At least half of it is outside academic success and is achieved by acquiring life skills in life.
There is a book on this subject called ‘My First Job’, which I wrote with my academic assistant. There are fifty-four stories in which people tell about the qualities that the jobs they did during their student years gave them in life before practicing their profession. The fifty-fourth is my story. We need to understand and explain to our children that happiness does not mean not experiencing difficulties. Because not experiencing difficulties means, in a sense, living a life full of pleasure. A life full of pleasure is realized by being happy with what money buys. Eating good food, shopping, going to the spa and getting a massage, sexuality, and having fun with your hands in the air is a good and pleasurable life. In short, it is a life without difficulties, and such a life can be bought with money and what money buys. Beyond this, the second level of happiness occurs when a person forgets time in the work he does. Psychologists call this “flow state”. The expression in an article by Çetin Altan that I read in my youth has been my guide: “If the pleasure a person gets from doing a job is more than the pleasure he gets from spending the money he earns from that job, that is real happiness.” This is a different kind of happiness.
At the third level, happiness occurs when one feels indebted to the world outside oneself and contributes to people, an issue, an animal, or nature. Happiness at this level is possible by “serving a purpose that transcends oneself”. Serving a purpose beyond oneself can be through religion or, as I just mentioned, through non-religious means. Nowadays, children are raised around exam success and the life success that this success is expected to bring. Just as we define exam and life success for our child, this definition in his/her life is shaped as earning money and having a position.
Generally, we do not make an effort to instill conscience and virtue in our children. Even when I say virtue, I am actually saying something very abstract. Maybe it would be more accurate to say it in its old concept form. Children need to acquire virtue. The concept of virtue comes from the word “fuzuli”. In other words, it takes its source from “what is not necessary”. If we do not provide students with something that is not necessary, then we will inevitably raise young people who pursue material values, live with extrinsic motivation, think of themselves as the center of the world, always see themselves as creditors from the world for no apparent reason, and believe that their rights have been violated.
This situation is in all life; It shows itself everywhere, in marriages and business life. When young people who say “I am the only one…, the only one…, I am special…” come together, life harmony cannot be achieved in the community formed and there is constant dissatisfaction. Undoubtedly, we all need love, money, prestige and power, but only if we deserve them. When we think we should deserve something, we start to remember our responsibilities towards life and the world we live in.
What are the characteristics of the generation raising children today and how are these characteristics reflected in their relationships with children?
This is one of the most important issues: The mothers of the Y generation who are raising these children today, that is, those born between 1980-90. The important feature of this generation is to believe that problems will be solved with optimism and enthusiasm. Generations aside, the middle and upper classes do not want to live outside the daily responsibilities of life, do not worry about them, and therefore do not want to fulfill their adult responsibilities, and they avoid these responsibilities as much as their financial means allow.
For example, young people who have reached adolescence do not know the districts of the city other than the area they live in. A significant portion of young people in Istanbul spend their lives in shuttles and in the family’s private car. A significant portion of young adults in this generation earn less money than their parents and are less likely to own property. They are tired, want to run away, but do not have enough equipment or savings, are stuck and unhappy. These parents say, “I couldn’t have a child.” In order to increase his chances in life, he sends his child to a private school by straining his financial conditions, makes him take lessons, does not harm his child and protects him from difficulties as much as he can. Again, the boomerang that I mentioned at the beginning is happening. When we say “I can’t do it”, we deprive ourselves of the equipment that needs to be developed to be independent in the face of life and to struggle with difficulties, and thus we do it.
The book ‘What I Know I Learned in Kindergarten’, which I recommend to be read in all my speeches, explains these in great detail.
Examples of what I am talking about are children who grow up outside big cities and in families that do not aspire to high life. In many parts of Anatolia, there are farmer, tradesman and worker families who raise children who reflect their potential in life. In my work outside Istanbul, I always see these young people in important positions in companies. The most important characteristic of young adults who are hard-working, patient and appreciative of what they have is that, starting from the day they know themselves, they have “partnered the family’s life, not their welfare.”
The issue is not just limited to reflecting potential into life. A study conducted by Çiğdem Demir Çelebi and Osman Sezgin from Marmara University reveals that middle-educated families are more successful than highly educated families in raising conscientious children. This confirms the issues I just mentioned. This study is a very stimulating and remarkable study as it reveals that raising conscientious and moral people is not related to education, and sometimes even the opposite.
-Sir, I attach great importance to readiness for parenthood. What would you like to say about this?
-Before marriage, there should be a marriage preparation course that lasts a few weeks, followed by a parenting preparation course. These are issues that municipalities can organize very easily. I think it will definitely be very beneficial for society.
We need to change and improve the understanding of motherhood and fatherhood together. In this regard, it will be sufficient to look at what prudent Turkish families have done throughout the generations rather than academic knowledge.
One of the biggest mistakes made by families with children in the first years is sleeping with the child and constantly sharing the same bed. This is very common in unhappy marriages and, in effect, the child acts as a shield to eliminate sexuality. The child should not serve this purpose.
One of the issues that I think is important is the way of addressing the child: “Mommy…, daddy…, darling…, love…, we did our homework…, we brushed our teeth…, we have an exam…”, etc., possessiveness that goes beyond the child’s identity, and efforts not to tear the child away from himself are extremely It is traumatic. Because in the end, it is the first five or six years of people’s lives that determine their stance and attitude towards life.
Do we start by trusting people or do we start by not trusting them? This is the critical point we encounter most in business life. Mothers and fathers should know that trust and establishing a bond with trust are gained in the first five or six years of life. This situation is not about whether you love the child or not. When every behavior of the child is intervened, when what he does is told “don’t do” and what he doesn’t do is told “do”, this secure attachment in the child is also broken and damaged. This situation is important for all life. When this happens, the child experiences “anxiety that I may make a mistake at any moment.” The egg must hatch from the inside, not from the outside. The hatchling hatched from an egg broken by external intervention has difficulty surviving.
It is of great value to talk to children about who helps them in the evenings and open such conversations. Talking about “what he has” in the same conversation helps him appreciate it. Children often become demanding about what they do not have and try to get a say in it. “When are you going to get that, “when are you going to get that?…”. These kinds of conversations are very valuable to show the child the value of what he has.
It is certain that buying too many toys for children and filling the house with toys dulls children’s creativity. While the child goes to painting and similar art workshops for creativity, on the other hand, he piles on toys at home. This is valid for almost every income group. The quality of toys changes depending on income level, but the attitude towards toys does not change. It should not be forgotten that fewer toys improve the child’s creativity.
-You told me. The excitement continues until the package is opened. Then it ends.
-Yes, because there is the same or similar one at home. There’s really no need for a new one. Then the same thing happens in relationships. The feeling of “If I lose it, I’ll buy a new one” causes wrong relationships in life. It is of great importance that we talk about what we have rather than what we want to have and what we do for those who do not have them. There are many dimensions reflected from toys to life. Relationships are an example of this. The value of the relationship lasts “until you unpack it.”
I am not a child development and education expert. I say this in every meeting. I raised two children. I also made a lot of mistakes. I am a person who loves to read and write, and I like to reflect and share my knowledge and experiences. Because, as part of my job, I encounter these children as adults. That’s why all my speeches and writings are pre-mortem autopsies.
Raising children is a pleasure without fun. This has to be accepted. The joy, fun, humor and order that are inherent in life should not be sacrificed to the child’s ability to fulfill his/her duties and success. Laughter, fun, joy and a fun table environment are more important than those I listed before. The value of a table that children will remember in the future cannot be measured by anything, because they will make their own children experience the same experience as they did.
– We say “Don’t let a stone touch your feet” for our children, teacher. When we clean those stones, in real life, the rocks hit our children that we can’t hurt. What would you like to tell about this topic?
-I think he should let plenty of stones touch his feet. The child grows up and down. He grows not only with his height but with everything.
* Prof. Dr. This is Acar Baltaş’s interview in Yadigar Işıldak’s book ‘Kıyiyorum Derken…’.
