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The article is subjective and expresses the personal opinion of the author.
The topic “At what age should I send a child alone?” Is never exhausted. Like disputes - what will the trip give? Socialization or a blow to the children's psyche? So far, the most sensible comment I read out was: “Send when parents are ready for this.” And here the problems begin.
I first encountered this more than ten years ago when I went as a counselor-animator-escort to sports camps with my son. He was then seven years old, and I could not imagine that I could let him go alone. But many mothers did not think so tragically.
In my care - I lived in a house with five more children - there was, for example, an eight-year-old girl with vision minus five, if not more. And she, of course, did not want to wear glasses. I learned about vision problems not from her mother, who accompanied us and could have warned me, but from the girl herself. In response to my request to clean things scattered across the floor, she flopped on her knees and brought each skirt or shirt to her nose.
In the next house Katya lived, another mother who did not dare to send her seven-year-old daughter alone. As one of the wards, she got a boy with a terrible allergy to literally everything - from pollen to fish.
We also learned about allergies not from the boy’s parents, but at the moment when he began to blush, swell and suffocate before our eyes
Mom did not put the child in the travel kit even antihistamine. Katya and I were so scared for someone else’s child that we nearly demolished the local hospital.
There was another girl - six-year-old Sonya. The girl was able that not all six-year-olds can - and braid, and wash shorts. However, Sonechka and non-childish knowledge abounded. For example, she informed everyone that her mother divorced her dad and is now looking for a new husband, and Sonya is stopping her. She just stated a fact. Mom, by the way, promised to come at the end of the camp, and Sonya waited for her every day.
And every night, Katya and I were on duty at Sonechka’s bed, which was screaming from dreaming nightmares. It was at night that the girl's head, stomach, legs started to hurt, and she fell asleep only by five in the morning. Sonya forgot her favorite toy at home - the cat Lusik, whom she never parted with at home. We called Sonya’s mother and begged to arrive early with Lucik, so that the child could already sleep peacefully. Mom sincerely did not understand what the problem was.
I did not let my son go from me, being hired as an assistant cook, a tutor in the camps and at the camps, to be with him. Because she knew that a young counselor would fall in love and go into feelings for all two weeks, and her son would rather starve than eat what he does not like.
I heard a million times that I am growing from the son of a sloop and a sissy. Not grown. At fourteen, he was already kayaking on Karelian lakes and pedaling a mountain bike in the same region. He traveled alone to other cities, reserved seat wagons - to our parental horror - became almost his native home.
However, he learned the main thing - if he does not call his mother at the appointed time, his mother will fly by helicopter and hang over his head. He will also find a million acquaintances who will appear in the place wherever he is, without contacting, and will tear his head off. And then mom will come and tear off her head again. Hyperopec? From my point of view, questions of responsibility and safety.
My daughter - a gentle, fearful beauty, the happiness of our whole life, a flower grown under a glass dome, I was not going to let go of one. Times have changed - family camps have become popular and even trendy. You can even come to the training camp with your child - he is training, and mom is pumping the press. The choice of family camps is huge - from soft parenthood and weaving amulets to gymnastics, ballet, drawing, theater, language learning and playing chess. Children traveling on their own were more likely the exception to the rule, although ten years ago it was the other way round - parents who pin children on their skirts were the exception.
On my last trip, I saw a girl sent to training camp alone. She, let's call her Dasha, was almost twelve. Someone else’s mother drove her to the camp, not even familiar with the girl’s parents. Dasha lived with coaches, and not hers - she trained in another club and lived in another city. It turned out that Dasha’s mother hadn’t seen anyone’s eyes before this trip. And not to say that she cut off the phone from excitement.
The girl attracted attention in all possible ways - from public calls to her mother shouting “where are my thongs?” To sudden disappearances
Everyone ran to look for Dasha, who could lock herself in the toilet, induce vomiting and announce that she had bulimia. The girl told horrors about her own family - they say her mother beats her, her father has a different wife, her mother is also in search and in the status of "everything is complicated." And no one knew what was true from Dasha’s stories, but what was fiction.
The girl, of course, drove everyone into a frenzy - swearing like a shoemaker, building eyes for waiters, running away in an unknown direction. To the final open lesson, to which the photographer was called, and the girls were supposed to come with hairstyles, everyone's eyes twitched from Dasha. She asked one of the mothers for a gel and tried to do her hair by pouring a half tube on her head. She approached the adults and asked: “Am I beautiful? Truth?"
She told me that she wants to grow faster to become beautiful. Then I found her in the toilet - Dasha cried because of her bra, which was sticking out from under her uniform. She beat herself on the chest and said that she was ugly. Dasha had a tantrum, and she did not go to training. I sat next to her, on the floor in the shower room, and talked about menstruation - it turned out that Dasha started having her periods, but her mother did not prepare her. And the girl thought she was dying. I took her to the store and showed what the gaskets are and what the painted droplets mean.
I was madly sorry for the girl who, after this camp, went to another home without arrival. She had to be intercepted by someone else's mother, who agreed to help. Dasha said that she had been traveling alone since she was six and was used to it. But she is not used to it. Rather, her mother got used to quietly letting her daughter go with strangers.
I looked at Dasha and remembered that Sonya - the girl with whom she sat at night ten years ago. I wonder how she grew up? She is now eighteen, like my son.
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