Tag: children

Lyudmila Petranovskaya “If It’s Difficult with a Child”

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The book If It’s Difficult with a Child by Lyudmila Petranovskaya is part of the “Close People” series. I decided to read it almost immediately after finishing the first book in the series, The Secret Support: Attachment in a Child’s Life. The first book focused on the various stages of a child’s development and how their behavior changes significantly during each stage. In this new book, the focus shifts to something else—how to deal with challenging situations when “it’s difficult with a child.” Both I and Lyudmila Petranovskaya are careful not to say “a difficult child” because it’s usually the situations that are difficult, while the child often becomes difficult due to the circumstances.

In this book, the author also addresses various situations, but one of the main messages is to try to see things from the child’s perspective and to understand why they act the way they do. Often, once you do, their behavior seems much more logical and even obvious.

This applies to many situations where something is forbidden for the child but allowed for adults. There are countless examples, starting with “you have to go to bed at 9 PM” or “you can only play on the computer for half an hour.” The child sees that their parents don’t go to bed that early, so why should they? Or if their father spends most of his time in front of a monitor (regardless of what he’s doing), why should the child be limited to just half an hour? Simple prohibitions no longer work in such cases, as the child doesn’t see any logic behind them.

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Maternity Care in Cyprus

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The idea of writing about pregnancy and childbirth in both Belarus and Cyprus came to me after a discussion on Facebook. I’ll try to explain the differences in approach, and everyone can draw their own conclusions.

I’ve had six pregnancies. I managed the first three and gave birth in Belarus. During my fourth pregnancy, we moved to Cyprus. Later, I went to Belarus for a “vacation,” where, at seven months, I gave birth to a stillborn baby. My fifth and sixth pregnancies were managed and delivered in Cyprus.

In Cyprus, healthcare is free for a narrow segment of the population. For everyone else, insurance is necessary. A new system is currently being introduced, but I’ll explain how things were back then.

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We will sing with the voices

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I write a lot about books, but I’ve decided to turn my attention to life and music videos—songs that have intertwined with my sense of self in surprising ways.

Age brings interesting changes to how we perceive the world. I’m sure I’m still far from the wisdom of the elders, but even at 42, I can see how different I am from my twenty-year-old self.

We start to enjoy books we once thought were boring, while the ones we once loved now seem odd (how could I have liked that?). The same goes for songs, even from artists I never listened to before—they suddenly feel relevant.

But deep down, you still feel like the same young guy, thinking not much has changed. Then you catch your reflection in the mirror or look at your kids and realize that others no longer see you the way you feel. And you don’t even have to look far. At work, you see all these truly young people, full of energy and just beginning their careers.

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Lyudmila Petranovskaya “The Secret Support: Attachment in a Child’s Life”

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As an experienced father, I hadn’t heard of Lyudmila Petranovskaya. Turns out, my wife has known about her for a long time and reads her articles. I discovered her book on the recommendation of a colleague, a man. That’s when I learned that L. Petranovskaya is a well-known child psychologist in the modern world. And her book The Secret Support: Attachment in a Child’s Life introduced me to her as an author.

The book’s main message is to show that children always need their parents and that they seek support from them. However, they do this in different ways during different stages of life, which is why certain behaviors and “problems” manifest.

What really stood out from the first pages is that the author doesn’t try to present her opinion as the only correct one. She immediately states:

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About school. Part 2

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Continuing my story about our school.

Starting from 10th grade, students begin to choose their subjects. The first selection isn’t that serious. The subjects are divided into blocks, and students must choose one from each block. There are mandatory subjects like Math, English, and others.

After 11th grade, the choice becomes much more serious and important. Students narrow their subjects down to three, though they are allowed to take up to four if they want an additional challenge. The results of these exams will be submitted to universities. Students select subjects based on the requirements of the universities and specializations they hope to apply for in two years.

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About school

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I’m often asked about my children’s school. I’ve written about their education a few times already, but I decided to gather everything in one place.

We moved to Cyprus from Minsk. There, my children finished 6th, 4th, and 1st grades. The eldest attended a gymnasium, while the younger ones went to the local primary school. It was an elementary school, from first to fourth grade. After that, they would have needed to transfer to another school or apply to a gymnasium. The school itself resembled a kindergarten in its layout (it was actually a former kindergarten building). This is important for understanding the kind of learning conditions the children had in Minsk. They were learning English as part of the curriculum. Tima didn’t study it at all (in the first grade). You could say their level of English was almost non-existent.

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Giving Birth in Cyprus (Through the Husband’s Eyes)

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I haven’t written in a long time, and there were objective reasons for that. At the same time, my wife has been insisting for a while now that I simply must write about childbirth, as a male perspective on this topic is somehow more valuable than a female one. Well, the stars have aligned, and I’ve become a father once again, so all the impressions and experiences are very fresh.

As you may know, I’m practically a heroic father, as I now have five children. The first three were born in Minsk, Belarus, and the last two — in Lefkosia, Cyprus. Each time, I did my best to be as present at the births as possible (to the extent allowed by medical practices). So, I have plenty to compare. I’ll try to describe the whole nine-month process. I should clarify that our experience is based on private clinics. Some aspects will surely differ in public hospitals.

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Anna Starobinets “Look at Him”

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A very poignant, very honest… and very heavy book. Especially for those whose family has experienced something similar—the loss of an unborn child. At the same time, it’s a very necessary book. Necessary for everyone to understand the nightmare it is and how it continues to be perpetuated by modern medicine in the post-Soviet space. And especially necessary for those who have gone through it. We, as husbands (and sometimes as parents), can never truly understand a mother who has lost a child, but such a heartfelt story about this pain can help us come closer to our families and cope with the loss together. Not the loss of a “fetus,” as the doctors call it, but our child. Who will always remain our child.

My rating: 5/5