About big responsibility or about becoming a mother:
Man or man’s life is surprising. It seems as if you have experienced that stage of life, the stage of motherhood. It is clear and has already been discovered like a book which you have read and know it by heart. But life proves that you know nothing or almost nothing about it. Life is like a book which teaches you something new each time you read it, and you will realize and comprehend more and more in the course of time.
Motherhood requires great patience, responsibility and love which is of utmost importance, and all the other things would be pointless without it. I won’t have made a discovery if I say that love is the most important thing in life, but I can’t help saying that love is the bases of everything. “Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am”, but I am for Beethoven’s version “I love, therefore I am”. One of the requirements of motherhood is being responsible. It is not quite an easy thing to become a real mother. When I didn’t have a child, I imagined it to be very easy, but on giving birth to my first child I realized how difficult it is. The difficulty is that you are now responsible not only for yourself but also for a little human being whom you are to protect, teach, take care of, bring up, love and help… These duties are not easy things to do. If you are a mother, you should always be in a nonstop learning process even if you haven’t planned that. Maternity is the most responsible and serious work, women’s best career.
The stages of motherhood
I thought I knew what it was, but when my third child was born, I realized that I wouldn’t have comprehended, felt, experienced and had so many things if he hadn’t been born. With every new born child a mother passes on to a new “level”. Every time new things are revealed, new things are discovered. I want to speak about my discoveries and researches. Now I am reading more than I have ever done before, I am trying to find out everything connected with childcare. My kid and I manage our time. I am my child’s first teacher, and the child does what he sees. Everything is in my hands. They say that it is the mother’s hand that directs the world. The future of the world depends on mothers, on how they bring up their children. But we have to admit that bringing up children in families is not always done in the right way.
Healthy family, healthy community
My third child’s birth was unexpected to me. It might have been the least expected in my life, but my son’s birth took me to a new cognitive level. Now the world and our corner in the world are worrying me more than ever before. I want to see the world clean, I want to have a healthy state and healthy society. In the result of my concerns and dreams I found Masaru Ibuka’s book “Kindergarten is Too Late”, and inspired by my son’s birth I translated this book into Armenian. I dedicated my translation to my son when he became one. The book is intended for all the parents, and as a teacher I became convinced once again that bringing up begins in the family and should consistently be continued at school so that the learner might become a creator and we will have a healthy developing society. The author of this surprisingly kind book is of the opinion that children are capable of learning everything. He thinks that environment has a great influence on the new born infants and suggests simple and comprehensive methods which favour the child’s development. To his mind children can playfully learn the things which are assimilated by the adults with great difficulty. The main thing here is to use a new experience in time. And only the one, who is always beside the child, can feel the phenomenon “in time”. The book is addressed to all the fathers and mothers who want to give new wonderful opportunities to their kids. I am thankful to Susan Markosyan for editing and publishing my translation in Dpir. I think it will be useful.
Nothing is at random in life. I once again became convinced of it when my son was born. Now I know that we must be careful and find out what children want. They are born as individuals and they know what they want, when they want, what they need. We should simply provide them with all the options and possibilities of this big world. In our family we like to record the first steps of our child “Grisha’s Performance”, “I Can”, “Laughter”, “8 Months in 50 Seconds”. In this way we discover ourselves and the world step by step.
Professional development
Finns say: “Either we prepare our child for examinations or for life. We choose the first one”. I haven’t mentioned Finns at random. Their educational system is considered to be one of the best in the world. Glancing backward at our schooling times and then looking at today’s educational system, I see that hardly anything has changed. The child works hard, studies well to pass his next in turn examinations well. There won’t be anything else until society’s way of thinking changes, until they stop saying that they have had better times. It is bad that it is the 21st century but inside the school walls they still live in those years. There shouldn’t exist walls separating the inside and outside: the child shouldn’t prepare for living, he should live.
Our author educational programme gives us a chance to choose and have many things in common with the Finnish educational system. The author educational programme doesn’t allow us to remain in the same place, life is going on, and you are to make progress too, otherwise how can you bring up the new generation.
Being on maternity leave isn’t an obstacle at all if you want to be engaged in pedagogy, in a little alternative way: we read pedagogical articles of foreign educators, translate and present them, and in this way we try to be useful to both us and others. Bringing up my little son and looking at my two other children I have become sure that:
· Every child is different; the children in the same family and even the twins are different; so the teacher should have an individual approach to each child.
· The teacher should consistently continue developing the good traits which were installed the children in their families and try to rectify possible shortcomings.
· The teacher should try to reveal the child’s inner abilities and develop them.
Translator: Yura Ganjalyan