Tatiana N. (SLE) - On Authority, On Rejecting Restrictions

My mother told me that when my older brother was born, they brought her a baby with huge blue eyes—very calm, utterly serene. But when they brought me, the baby had eyes full of demand. “You looked at me and it was straight away: give it to me, give it to me, I want it…,” my mom used to say. And from my earliest childhood she apparently understood that the moment you try to restrict me in any way—that’s it. I’ll go in headfirst, like a battering ram. Apparently this showed up very early, and that’s why the main method of upbringing was that my mom gave me complete independence. That had a very strong effect on me.

To this day, my mother’s word is law for me…

<…> My mom didn’t restrict my freedom. As a child I was mostly outside in the yard all the time; I didn’t have any kind of “cage,” so to speak. In general, there was freedom.

It’s also important to say that you have to trust a child like that. This factor is very important. If I went somewhere, my mom fully trusted that I wouldn’t be doing anything bad: if it was a five-to-seven-year-old child, I wouldn’t leave the yard or get lost; if it was, say, a high-school student, that I wouldn’t start drinking, smoking, or staying out all night; if it was a working young woman, then I would work, and so on.

You shouldn’t give any rigid instructions to such a child at all. There’s an expression I once liked: “Barsik [a cat] doesn’t like being stroked against the grain.”

The main thing is to allow me to be who I am—not to restrain me, not to limit me, not to give nagging recommendations, not to make harsh remarks. Of course, in childhood there probably were some recommendations. In general, in some ways I was obedient—in the sense of coming home on time, leaving a note about where I’d gone. That’s actually the most important thing for me: control inside myself when my mom isn’t around. I left home at seventeen; my mom wasn’t nearby, but I couldn’t do something my mom wouldn’t approve of. I had certain moral principles. She never forbade me anything. She would say, for example, “If you’re going to be late, call.” That’s just how things were done in our family.

Even now, when I’m visiting my mom, if she goes to the store and I go somewhere else, I leave a note: “Went there, will be back at such-and-such a time.” That information really pleases her.