Indeed, God is both good and omnipotent. It is not He who creates all the evil in the world, but us. Almighty God could make us walk on a tightrope, but then they would not be people, but biorobots. We don’t make our children brainless executors of our will, but on the contrary, we try to develop them for independent life. Although there is a risk that they will become bad people, but so be it, it’s better than violence against a person. After all, if we heard
on TV that somewhere a person was locked up for many years from childhood so that he would not do evil (and without any prerequisites for this), we would say that this is a perversion. Because it is against free human nature.

In principle, God is not omnipotent. It was not for nothing that I singled out AS WOULD. Saint John Chrysostom was once asked a crafty question: can Almighty God create a stone that he cannot lift? In both cases, it turns out that God is not omnipotent. But the saint replied that he not only could, but also created it. And this stone is a man. Man is like God; he, like God, is free. Therefore, the only thing in this world that DOES NOT OWN GOD is the human heart. You won't be nice by force. And in this creation by God EQUAL to HIMSELF is the manifestation of the greatest Mystery of God’s love. The Almighty, He Himself, voluntarily limits His omnipotence, stopping before the freedom of the human person in respect for it.

Why do children, newborns, etc. die/become terminally ill? Why does the Lord give them life and then take them to himself? Why does the Lord take to Himself young mothers and fathers who have children left on Earth? Why does the Lord give children to mothers who throw them away as newborns or get rid of them in one way or another. And those parents who with all their hearts want to treat their children’s bodies still don’t give it?

There is no answer to these questions. More precisely, there is no answer to these questions together, and even to each one separately, when it is not about Nikanor Serapionovich, but about Ivanyvanovich. I am a young priest. But I have already heard more than one thousand confessions. And sometimes you hear something that makes you look in the mirror: have I turned grey? And every time a person comes to me and asks: “Why do I need this and that?”, I answer: “I don’t know, because I’m not God. Yes, I’m a priest, but This is why priests are needed, so that they, being equal to all other people, would lead them to God and speak to them on behalf of God. The ministry of a priest is the ministry of a mediator. And to stand in the place of God and decide for Him, and explain why God did this or that - forgive me, but who am I? I have great, but quite limited power - I know the commandments of God, and I have been given the power to forgive a repentant person on behalf of
God sins against these commandments. I can testify in confession and in Baptism the union between God and man, where a person promises to make every effort to become better, and God accepts him, forgives his sins and helps him improve. Having some experience, I can tell you what to do in a given situation. But I don’t know how God provides for each person individually - well, He doesn’t report to me, unfortunately!” I often encourage a person to think about his life and confess, after which there is already something to talk about.
For example, a woman comes to me, talks about her troubles and asks why. I suggest you confess, it turns out there were several abortions. I say: “And you ask, for what?” But I point out that this is nothing more than my guess, and most likely an erroneous one. Simply because I am NOT GOD. Only He knows about each person, what, why and how. Moreover, the question “for what” is incorrect. You need to ask: “why” - so that you come to your senses, repent and come to God. This is the correct answer.

These questions need to be considered from the point of view that God is free and exists on His own, He does not need additional conditions. We need them, both for life and for the realization of our freedom. And God gives them to us in the form of the world in which we live, with its laws and conditions. Including the laws of cause and effect. If a mother drinks throughout her pregnancy, this is a manifestation of her freedom, and why does God not limit her - already said above - what kind of freedom is this that I cannot use as I want? At the same time, mom starts physiological mechanisms harming her child. But if God limits their action, then this is again a limitation of the mother’s freedom. That is, she will be able to drink, realizing that she is harming the child, and suddenly there will be no consequences! The Lord, by His power, DESTROYS all these consequences. Then all this dialectic with freedom loses its meaning, and we should be destroyed - and that’s the end of it! Therefore, the Lord, in order for us to be people, free and equal to Him in this, limits His omnipotence and tolerates us harming ourselves and each other. Children also suffer from us. Why gives children to people who cannot raise them - that means they can. Only they decide that they don’t need it. And this is also for the sake of freedom. Why does he take his parents? Why doesn't he give children to those who want them? This is always the story of a specific person, with his characteristics, sins and shortcomings, which only God knows. The only thing I can say is that the Lord does EVERYTHING so that we improve and come to Him.

Therefore, trying to answer these questions in general means agreeing with this state of affairs. Apparently this is how it should be. But this is not so. It should not be! It is not right! And our conscience, our sense of love and compassion, inherent in us by God, makes us realize this. IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS WAY! And the Lord, being forced to allow this for the sake of our freedom, turns to us through our conscience and says: “Look what you do when you sin! See how wrong and monstrous it is! Repent and correct yourself!” And of course, this cannot exist in eternity. The Lord accepted the Crucifixion and death for this reason, so that by the Resurrection he could defeat it and give us the strength to overcome sin. And therefore it will be Last Judgment, and then - a new existence in which people will be saints, and nature will be ideal, not damaged by human sin. And all this will no longer happen. The same people who do not want to accept God,
will have the opportunity to live without Him. And this existence is called hell.

Anonymous writes 08/13/2014

Why religions and faith if they do not help us? People pray for the health of their children, but God doesn't seem to care about their prayers. And I thought about his existence, why did he create people, why did he allow weapons to be invented to kill? This is what I mean: if God exists, then he is no better than the devil!

Nikolay writes 10/15/2014

It is strange that people who ask such questions consider life, health and prosperity to be good. The question is initially posed in the format: “Why is God, who promises eternal and happy life after death, can one end earthly life so early and for no reason"? In this form, the question sounds simultaneously with faith and disbelief. That is, the person asking it does not dispute the fact that God exists and that everything is in his power. But he believes that God guarantees the resurrection of man (the human soul) after death. The exclusion of this guarantee allows a person to deny the first fact that he initially accepted - the very existence of God. Religion, in his opinion, does not save. What does salvation mean? in a jar? Caviar on bread? SUV on diesel fuel? Villa by the sea? Yes, many would like to be saved that way. Let's remember the story of Job - he loses his children, he loses his property, he loses his health and he loses his friends. Moreover, it is lost just like that. It’s just that the devil (thinks that) tempts God and gets permission to torture Job and his family. The situation is being resolved, let’s see who gets what in the end: Job’s lost children and servants are with God (there should be no doubt about their piety and patience). Job receives even more property and exactly the same number of children (who again follow the path of a pious father and come to God after death). Those who blasphemed God are put to shame. Those who believed in God's intercession to the very end are exalted. Whenever I hear questions somewhere about “why God allowed this,” or ask them myself, I remember the story of Job. “In days of prosperity, take advantage of the good, and in days of misfortune, reflect: God did both so that man could not say anything against Him.” /Ecclesiastes 7:14/ I would like to finish my commentary with the words of Elder Paisius the Holy Mountain: “God does not allow a test if something good does not come out of it. Seeing that the good that will happen will be greater than the evil, God leaves the devil to do his job. Remember Herod? He killed fourteen thousand infants and replenished the heavenly army with fourteen thousand martyred angels. Have you seen martyred angels anywhere? The devil broke his teeth! Diocletian, cruelly torturing Christians, was a collaborator with the devil. But, without meaning to, he did good Church of Christ, enriching Her with saints. He thought that he would exterminate all Christians, but he achieved nothing - he only left many holy relics for us to venerate and enriched the Church of Christ.”

Alina writes 04/17/2015

I would really like the children not to suffer. I don’t believe that they are paying for the sins of their parents. It's not fair. God could not allow such injustice. It's a shame that a lot of bad things happen to children in our cruel world. Why is that?????

God. For each of us this word has absolutely different meanings. For some, God is the Universe, and some will write this word with a small letter. But for most of us, God is a person. Otherwise, you wouldn’t ask yourself the question of why God allows a miscarriage or a frozen pregnancy. Only Someone can allow anything. Those who believe in God also call him differently. In this article we will talk specifically about that God who is omnipotent, holds the entire universe in his hands, and who can change everything at any moment. And if God is omnipotent, then how is it that He allows a child to be conceived, and then die before birth? Many people are especially concerned about the question: “Why does God allow this in my life? For what?".

These are very good and the right questions. Because these questions have an answer.

When a woman experiences a miscarriage or loss of a child at any stage of pregnancy, the question arises in her heart: “Why?”, “For what?” This question is addressed to some higher power, which for some reason allows various events in life. If we ask ourselves this question, we imagine someone giving out kickbacks for bad behavior. It seems to us that bad things can only happen to us when we deserve it. But if something bad happens to us, and we don’t find what could lead to it, we begin to ask questions “for what” and “why”.

I asked God these questions myself when I was experiencing a miscarriage. Especially with my second miscarriage. I felt strong aggression towards God. I suffered from the fact that this happened to me again, and asked God how could He allow this to happen? After all, I was leading healthy image life, I never did anything bad to anyone. In my case, the situation was even more tragic because I was involved in charity work, helping people and serving God in church. Therefore, these questions were very acute for me. It took about 7 years before I received my answers.

God, why did you allow this miscarriage?

Lord, why is this punishment?

These questions, in fact, are not asked with the aim of obtaining an answer. They are more of a question containing an answer and a reproach. The answer says this: this is not a fair decision, You could not do this to me, You should not have done this to me. With this question we question the correctness of God's decision.

True, some women have a slightly different position. It is about accepting the will of God. They grieve about what happened, but at the same time they say “everything is God’s will.”

However, neither position is correct because they both contradict who God is. God does not punish anyone, God does not send curses, God does not directly participate in the conception of children and does not kill them in the womb. God does not take unborn children to heaven.

Everyone who believes in God, I think, will agree with me that God created this Universe, the Earth, everything that is on it, including people. And the key word in this sentence is “created”. This means that the action happened in the past, it is an action that has already been completed, it does not continue. God once created trees and put into them a system of multiplication and distribution throughout the earth. Likewise, man was created once, and a system for reproducing the human race was created.

Any system operates according to certain rules. When these rules are violated, the system stops working or functions incorrectly. Each system, however, needs management and support. Once God created the system, he gave us, people, the opportunity to manage this system. The control tool is primarily the brain. We can think and therefore we can manage. And people have been quite successful at this. Such areas of science as Reproductive Medicine, Perinatal Psychology, Gynecology, and others were created. All this is accumulated knowledge about how to manage those processes that God once created.

Why does this reproduction system fail, why does everything not work as God intended? The same science still cannot determine for sure the cause of half of perinatal losses. But today the number of perinatal losses and deaths of women in childbirth has decreased compared to previous centuries, when a woman with a miscarriage simply bled to death. People have made amazing progress, solving even such problems as infertility, learning to fertilize an egg outside the womb. Yet, a fifth of the total female population continues to experience miscarriages and perinatal losses.

This is because we are still in the process of learning about this area of ​​life. Failures occur when we violate the laws of creation. When we don’t know how it should function, when we don’t take something into account. We miss important details.

What we might be missing:

• Influence on the process of pregnancy and childbirth of our physical condition(pairs)
• Influence of psychological state
• Environment
• And other factors

Knowing and understanding how we are created and function will help us avoid most problems in our lives, including such difficult situations, like miscarriage and loss of a baby in the womb.

The birth of a child must necessarily be preceded by a period of preparation. It just seems that everything is fine with you in this regard. If a miscarriage occurs, if a pregnancy loss occurs, this indicates that not everything is normal and you need to look for the cause.

In this process, you can turn to God so that He can guide you in the right direction in your research. God is not your enemy, an evil uncle who punishes you for the slightest offense. We are destroyed by a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding of God and how the world was created.

Understanding the universe will help you find the answer to the question: Why did I have a miscarriage? God will help you with this, because He is Light. And God can turn the fact that tragedies happen in life into a source of strength, wisdom and even joy. In future articles, I will definitely share how, thanks to the fact that I experienced a miscarriage, I found incredible strength, gained wisdom and even more.

You can also watch the video

Greetings to everyone on the blog pages
Why does God take innocent little children? For whose sins do children die? Why does God allow babies to die?
This is the series of questions I heard at the funeral of our little parishioner baby Verochka.
Yes, this is how it happens, and the baby was not two years old, one might say she didn’t even see life, but the Lord took her to him. Yes, when an innocent baby dies, even a believer has questions: is there a God in the world? Where was He at that moment, where did He look and why did He allow it? First of all, this is a test of faith for the believer.

When an adult dies due to some serious and long-term illness, or when we lose our elderly, we realize that the cause of a serious illness is the person himself, and even when, you understand that there are no guilty parties here - it’s just the turn to pass on to another world . It’s hard for us to lose loved ones, both young and old, but when a person dies who has lived life and understood what life is, for some reason it is easier for us to find the answer - why the Lord ordered this, or why the person died before reaching a ripe old age.

Please note, when a person dies in extreme old age, by his own death, we do not look for those responsible, we do not ask any questions, everything seems to be as it should be. And if a person dies in middle age, we also understand everything logically, although we are looking for the culprits - it could be the environment, bad habits, doctors' mistake and so on, the list will be long.

For some reason, it’s always like this, when someone dies, we look for the culprits, we look for the reason, and because, realizing that there is God above us and he is omnipotent, we ask the question - why didn’t God save the baby? Why didn’t he save him, since the child had not sinned in anything? Some are in despair because there has been a misfortune in the family, they see this will of God as not fair, saying this - it would be better if you took a drug addict, or a murderer, a lawless one! Yes, so we see from our side, we have lost a little man who did not even have time to sin, to see the fullness of the world.

True believers will not blame the Almighty; of course, they have a number of questions: whose fault, for what sin did the Lord allow such grief? Heartbroken parents are looking for answers to their questions, but we don’t know the answer. Let's remember one moment from the Gospel about the man born blind: “And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him: Rabbi! Who sinned, he or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned, but this was so that the works of God might be revealed in him.” . (John 9:1-4)

Yes, many questions arise, but we will not receive answers in the near future.

There will be a lot “maybe that’s why...” « or maybe because... “And if we look for answers to why such grief is the death of a child, then it will not become easier for us. We do not know the affairs and plans of God, we cannot foresee our future even half an hour in advance, we cannot know anything for sure, especially the future of our children. We do not know God's providence.
When such grief comes to a family, we need to realize that we live in this world temporarily, and we have real eternal life precisely when the soul is separated from the body, because our body is only the clothing of our soul. After the separation of soul and body, the human soul remains alive.

It is clear that while we live an earthly life, we measure everything with an earthly yardstick, we think with earthly thoughts, we guess with earthly primitive guesses, we feel with earthly – bodily things. Naturally, we are so sad to part with the bodies of our loved ones, yes, yes, it is with bodies that we part, but our loved ones, their souls are alive and forever in our hearts, in our memory.

And if we take into account the fact that the baby’s soul is pure, the baby did not have time to sin during his short life, then the baby’s soul remains with God. Parents need to remember that when a baby dies, they have a prayer book in Paradise.
It is very difficult and even useless to console grief-stricken parents, no matter what words of consolation are spoken, they will not help, the main thing is support from family and friends.

We must remember that everything that does not happen in our lives is only by the will of God, good example from Old Testament about the long-suffering Job (book of Job) as words of consolation, and answers to questions can be found in this book.
And finally, I will write: The most important thing is to see all the works of God, and to see in God, first of all, a merciful father, and not a formidable judge.

– Natalya Vladimirovna, let’s start with how a child, in principle, perceives death at a young age. Does it exist for him or is it some kind of abstraction?

– Contact with death for a small child is a contact with categories completely incomprehensible to him. In general, we must start with the fact that a small child, under five years old, thinks of himself purely egocentrically. For him, the world is a continuation of himself. Remember how a child plays hide and seek. He covers his eyes with his palms or hides his head behind the curtain and says: “I’m hiding, look for me.” If he does not see himself, then he is invisible.

Suffice it to recall the remarkable observation of Jean Piaget, the famous Swiss psychologist, which showed the level of egocentric consciousness of a small child. To the question “Do you have a brother?” the baby answered: “Yes, I have a brother.” “Does your brother have a brother?” - asked the psychologist. The answer was: “No, my brother doesn’t have a brother.” In other words, of course, the small consciousness perceives everything as an extension of itself. In this regard, he is immortal, eternal. As well as all those close people who are next to him. Anything that destroys this feeling of such totality, harmony, eternity, is quite emotionally charged and can cause deep and long-lasting consequences.

There is a Hollywood film that tells the story of a woman suffering from multiple personality disorder. The psychiatrist who worked with her discovered a striking connection between her illness and the severe trauma she experienced as a child. Her grandmother died, and her mother considered it obligatory for the little six-year-old girl to be present at the funeral.

The child did not want to, was afraid and hid under the house, in the basement. But she was discovered, forcibly pulled out of hiding and forced not only to attend her grandmother’s funeral, but to approach her, dead, lying in a coffin, and kiss her.

And from that moment on, strange things began to happen to the child, which later developed into a serious mental disorder. When the psychiatrist managed to heal a long-standing childhood trauma, the woman’s life changed, the illness went away, and mental integrity returned.

A thoughtless invasion, without experience and understanding, into a small and fragile children's world can be very traumatic. Moreover, it seems that an adult does not do anything like that. For example, a child asks: “Mom, are you going to die?” He had not yet been to a funeral, had not encountered the topic of death, had not lost anyone yet, but he had heard something somewhere. They read fairy tales to him, and this understanding of the finitude of life entered into him; he asks internal questions that his parents do not know how to answer.

Very often, during consultations, adults ask me the following questions: “My little son asked me: “Are we going to die? What will I do if you die? What should I answer? And I say: what do you do in such a situation? I, he says, avoided answering.

– Is this wrong? If you don't know what to answer?

- Of course, if you don’t know what to answer, it’s better to avoid answering. Because when you start saying: “Well, yes, we will die, we will be buried in the ground and eaten by worms,” this is a disaster for the child’s psyche. The child perceives the world in an incredibly colorful way; the child’s thinking is very concrete. He imagines very well how it will be and experiences strong emotions.

Therefore, everything depends on a very specific situation - what kind of child, what is the situation in the family, why does he ask this question.

– Have your children asked you this question? What did you answer?

– My child asked me a question: “Are you going to die?” I said: “I will live for a very long time, you will already become an adult, you will already have a beard, you will have your own children, and I will be old, I will get tired of everything, I will walk with a stick, we will sit down, agree, and then I will I'll die." That is, I framed the answer as a joke. Strictly speaking, my verbal answer was not as important as the intonation and mood with which I spoke about it. Because for a child who is asking such complex internal questions, it is very important for an adult to demonstrate a calm attitude towards this.

– If an adult is confident, then there is nothing to be afraid of?

– Yes: since an adult reacts so calmly to this topic, it means it’s not scary. It sets the attitude, the mood, the general outline associated with this issue. The child has no stability, no confidence in life, no boundaries - he lives here and now, in this moment. And it is very important for him to feel through an adult some restrictions, the boundaries that an adult sets for him, and this confidence in the future. Then these frames will begin to be his own frames. If a parent has anxiety, fear, or his own lack of processing of these issues, he conveys to the child not just some words, but precisely his own anxiety.

– Parents often want to protect their children from difficult topics – pain, death: after all, even at 12-13 years old they are still small, they live in a very happy world... Do you think it’s right to just not talk about death?

- It's an illusion. A child asks questions of life and death quite early, he just does it differently than an adult - more poetic, philosophical, romantic. I would even say, more religiously, if we talk about religion not as a certain confessional affiliation, but as a perception of the universe as a fairy tale, when all living things are somewhat similar to the ancient perception of the world.

Child psychologist and teacher Alexander Lobok showed that eternal questions about life, death, eternity, and love are inherent in a child quite early age- from 6-7 years old. These questions live in the child’s soul, but, as a rule, adults themselves are afraid of these questions, and even more afraid of talking about them with the child. As a result, the baby remains alone in this thinking. But if an adult is able to calmly accept such a child’s question and openly, but appropriately for the child’s age, talk to him about it, then the child experiences relief, because he is not alone trying to get to the answer, but there is an adult next to him.

It seems to me that such conversations are very important, because in this way we create some kind of common space, build trust in the relationship between us and our children. Trust is a complex category. A child trusts, but an adult no longer trusts, does not trust the world. And as a result, his own child thinks that there is something wrong with the child!

If a parent really tries to see the child’s world, complex and beautiful, not at all primitive, then this world opens up to him. And in it there is life and death, pain and joy. Everything is as it should be - like in a fairy tale. Here is Baba Yaga, a magical princess, a hero who defeats evil - all the archetypal images have been in us since childhood.

"Dad went very far..."

– Let's move from theory to practice. Someone close to you dies in the family... Naturally, an adult tries to protect his child from this pain. What mistakes could there be?

– Let’s say that a grandmother or grandfather dies in the family, God forbid, one of the younger people, for example, a dad. And very often adults choose this strategy: they say small child that dad had gone very far.

I will give you a slightly different example, concerning a story that is not as tragic as death, although internally it can be perceived just as painfully. For example, a child stepfather, stepmother. Or the child is actually adopted. His parents carefully hide the degree of relationship from him. There are a lot of stories that show to what extent this is wrong in psychotherapeutic terms... Here a small child is brought in with a very simple problems: He doesn’t remember information well and doesn’t listen. The psychologist, as a rule, draws with him, and the child talks about his experiences through the drawings. Here he draws a dark forest through which he walks and makes his way.

- And where are you going?

“I’m looking for mom,” says the child.

The psychologist asks the parents: “Is he adopted?” “How did you know? We don’t tell this to anyone!” The fact is that inside the child feels some truth about you. Emotionally, at the level of experience, he feels that something is wrong. And they are trying to tell him that everything is fine.

There are a lot of such stories. I spoke with adults who had the most severe consequences of this kind of situation: psychosomatic problems, social phobia, severe neuroses - all this snowballs.

– That is, adults are trying to protect and not injure the child...

– And they will injure him even more! The truth, expressed competently, never hurts. A lie hurts much more. Because we feel lies not with our brains, but with our hearts.

– How then is it correct to talk to a small child about death?

– In conversations about death, religion has always played a special role, especially with a child, whose picture of the world is entirely mythological, fairy-tale. You can say: “Dad has gone to God, he looks at you from heaven, he prays for you, he is your friend, he is alive, you can talk to him.” What would an atheist say about death? For him, the person has died, the person no longer exists, the connection is lost forever. And then you can add in accordance with the atheistic perception of the world: a person will turn into grass, worms, butterflies, a cycle of substances will occur in nature... For a child, such an answer is horror! For him, it’s a disaster to separate forever. For his mind, the thought that there will never be a mom or dad again is unbearable.

One day an adopted girl whose mother had died was brought to me for consultation. The child was brought in because she is aggressive, is not friends with children, and is hostile to everyone. I look at her and understand: this seven-year-old child has already experienced such horror... It is not clear whether she had a father, it is impossible to find him. But there was a mother, and she died. And the man who adopted her (initially adopted her together with his wife, but then they divorced because the wife could not accept the child, and the girl remained with her adoptive father) did not understand what to do, how to help her.

When I started talking to her, I saw what pain lived in her. I started telling this girl:

“Mom is there, she’s alive, she’s just alive with God. And she sees you, she knows everything about you, she watches you, she prays for you, you just have to try to feel it, think about it, talk to her in your mind.”

And suddenly she said an amazing thing: “I can’t hear my mother, because when I try to do this, they interfere with me.” "Who's interfering?" "Children". This is where aggression towards children comes from! She studies at educational institution at the boarding house. It is clear that there is resentment here: after all, these children have parents, but she does not. But at the same time, she explains to herself this way: “They prevent me from hearing my mother.”

We agreed with her that she would talk to her mother every day, write letters to her, that is, she would return her to herself.

“How can you be offended by your mother?!”

– Surely the child also has a feeling of injustice: why was my mother taken away from me? Even if they say to him: “God took my mother,” it still seems unfair - why did he take it? I prayed, but my mother died...

“God took my mother away” is a bad phrase, you should never say that to a child! We don’t even say that to ourselves, but “The Lord allowed it.” We tell the child that mom was sick and she couldn’t cope with the illness, so she left.

The child will still have a grudge against the parent. Grandparents are always more mature, older, their departure is perceived more gently by the child, and when a parent, a young person, leaves, there is a huge resentment towards the parent. As that girl said: “Why did my mother leave me?” I told her: “Mom didn’t leave you, she couldn’t overcome the disease. She just couldn't. The disease turned out to be stronger. She did not abandon you, she is next to you not with her body, but with her heart and soul, with her love.”

That is, here it is necessary to avoid the topic related to offense as much as possible. Although we must understand that the child will definitely have this resentment. You can’t say: “How can you be offended by mom, dad, God?” What does “how can you” mean? He is offended, which means he can do it!

When a child is in severe trauma, we have no right to aggravate it with guilt. By saying “How can you be offended!”, we push the child into this feeling of guilt. But he’s just in pain, he’s very sad, he wants to feel loved one, hear his smell, his voice, but this is completely different. Both Kübler-Ross and Frederica de Graaf write about this: first – denial, then anger, resentment, then despondency and inhibition, then acceptance. These are all stages of grief.

– How long can these stages take? And are they the same in a child as in an adult?

– No, with a child everything happens much faster! It just depends on how the adult interacts with it. Roughly speaking, any parent should just not be lazy and pick up a textbook on developmental psychology, see what a child can do at three, five, ten, understand the level of thinking, perception in at different ages. It is no coincidence that geometry begins to be taught in the 7th grade, because abstract thinking is formed only by this time.

Before that, the child’s thinking is concrete. So the conversation should be the same. Here is dad or mom - with you, you can talk to them, write letters. He will ask: “Can they write to me?” “No, they can’t write to you, they can tell you, but you can hear.” And the child will hear, I assure you.

You see, it is more important for a child to survive than to be destroyed. If we feed everything that preserves him, he clutches at this straw. “Anyway, mom is with you, she loves you so much, she prays for you all the time, now you have such an incredible protector in heaven.” He will say: “I don’t want her to be in heaven, I want her to be here!” And we continue to stick to our line: “Yes, and I want her to be here. But she's not here. So let's look there."

One boy told me incredible, poignant words about the death of his beloved grandmother, which I remembered for the rest of my life.

He said: “I cried so much when she passed away, I loved her so much, and suddenly I had a dream of her sitting on a cloud, looking at me from there and smiling.” What is this? Did the Lord send him such a dream? Or was his soul trying to heal? I think it's both.

Because the psyche is, in some way, a gateway to another world. The Lord knocks on the other side, and we open the door on this side. Here we must give the child the right to be offended, angry, and not tell him: why are you doing this? We must tell him: “Yes, and I feel it, but still... let’s look now from the other side.” That is, you need to help the child find support in this intolerable position. Because the child is looking for these supports, but often cannot find them himself.

– What kind of rituals could there be? Let's say something connected with the personal belongings of a mother or grandmother, with what mom loved?..

– Yes, of course, you can take your grandmother’s favorite cup and say: “Grandma left this cup for you, so that now when you drink tea from it, it would always be with you.” Here is the watch that your mother gave you; when you look at it, you can always know that in this watch your mother’s love is ticking.” The child needs these reference points! I think this is a very important line, it helps the child get used to it and reconcile. In principle, a child accepts changes much faster than an adult - the totality of the psyche saves him.

– What about going to the cemetery? With a funeral?

– Let’s say a child really wants to go with us to his grandmother’s grave, after the funeral. So he comes to the grave and asks: “Where is grandma?” What should I say to him: “Grandma lies in the ground”? This is terrible. But what is the correct answer then?

– This is truly terrible! You can say it differently: “Grandma is above us. She is with God, looking at you from heaven. And here is a special place, a place of memory, we all come here together, in the summer we plant flowers, take care of this place. She looks from the sky and smiles, glad that we came.” Gradually the child will begin to realize what is happening, but this should happen gradually, naturally.

As for the funeral, you need to understand that this will be a serious test for the child. He will be very frightened by a dead body, which is completely different from a living one. I don’t know: is it worth subjecting the delicate psyche of a child to such tests? But if he wants to go with adults, or rather, he doesn’t want to be left alone without his family, then perhaps it’s worth taking some kind of assistant who will insure the child and take charge of him if something happens. We need to think through this point very carefully.

Although it is very difficult when we lose a loved one. We ourselves are in grief, and then there are the children. But we must understand that we are adults, we have significantly more possibilities control yourself. And the child is completely naked, small and defenseless creature! If we can't take care of him, there's basically no one else to take care of him.

The model of experience is set by adults

– Indeed, what can we do if an adult himself is in a state of shock, cannot come to his senses after the death of, say, his wife or his husband... But we also need to support the child, explain to him. But he can’t, it’s hard for him to cope with himself. What to do?

– Of course, in this case, one of the close people should take on this burden. Close relatives need to understand that the future of the child depends on their involvement, on their emotional concern and mercy. No more and no less. God forbid, dad died, mom, unfortunately, in such cases is often in a state of insanity - and she has every right to be so. This means that someone close to you should take care of the child.

– But a child shouldn’t see his mother in a deranged state in such a situation?

- Of course you shouldn't. But she is not in this state all the time, and her loved ones should help her get out of it.

Often they prefer to take the child away, to take him somewhere, to his grandmother, for example. But it seems to me that this cannot be done, the child cannot be taken somewhere even in this case. Otherwise he will feel completely out of touch.

Yes, mom is sad and cries, but he is also sad, he also feels bad. The child and mother are connected, and together they must survive the passing of a loved one. If she hugs him, they cry together - that's good. But it happens the other way around: she cries in one corner, and he cries in another, God forbid, in another room or even in another apartment. The model of experience is still set by adults: either grief is experienced together, or one by one, everyone scatters different angles. Grief either unites if people face it together, or divides if everyone copes with it on their own.

– It happens that a person needs to be alone for some time...

- Certainly! It's about not that he should totally hold the other in his arms.

Let's imagine completely specific situation. Mom is in serious condition from the loss of her husband. They decide to take the child to the village to live with his grandmother, and as a result we get a complete break. He cannot be taken to the village to see his grandmother! You can take him somewhere for a day or two, and then bring him back. When we see that mom has come to her senses a little, we need to tell her: you can’t completely relax, you have a child, pull yourself together. Yes, your loved one is gone, but your child remains. This is about life, it is important for her too. This will give her mobilization and inner strength just get ready. And then this child must be brought home, at this moment he and his mother can cry together and hug. This is the meeting point! It definitely has to be there. And, as a rule, it doesn’t happen.

Not long ago I counseled a man who had experienced the death of his wife. He came with a very clear request: his daughter is 16 years old, and she has completely gotten out of hand, exists completely separately. And her mother died 1.5 years ago. The first question I asked: how did you cope with the death of your wife? And from the story I saw that he experienced her completely separately from his daughter. The first thing I said: you should talk to your daughter about her mother’s departure, because she is alone in this grief, and you are alone.

Do not look for those to blame, but recognize your pain

– One of the articles described a very difficult situation when a woman’s beloved husband died – he crashed in a plane crash. And his brother was supposed to fly instead, but he didn’t. And this woman, in her terrible grief, shifted all the blame onto her brother and hated him, and the children witnessed this. Why is this situation so scary?

- Let's leave the stove. What gives rise to this kind of reaction? Let's imagine a situation where what you said happened. The wife knew that her husband’s brother, a more distant person to her, would fly on this plane, but her husband flew. And crashed. I have already talked about the stages of grief: first denial, then resentment and anger. She is at this moment in the transition from denial to anger. She should blame someone for this grief. Anyone! Someone needs to pay for this and answer. This, unfortunately, is often and quite natural. It is no coincidence that these stages are described; almost any person who is faced with the tragedy of losing a loved one goes through them. And this is normal, but getting stuck in them is not normal, and many get stuck and stuck for years, or even for life.

– What causes you to get stuck?

“We are held in them by our ego, we feel sorry for ourselves, we are sad, we do not agree with what happened, and therefore we need to find the guilty, the extreme ones. But this path is a dead end - the ego is called to circle around itself, around its own pain, its own loss, it does not allow one to escape from the captivity of egocentrism. The only way out is to forget a little about yourself, your pain, your loss. Find the courage to admit that there is no one to blame for the death of a loved one. What happened is a mystery that requires openness and trust. And only the personality in us is capable of this, and not the ego at all. A person is able to think about others, what they feel, what is difficult for them. And this breakthrough is saving for a person, it transforms grief into wisdom, pain into compassion, sadness into hope.

If we return to the woman, then with her is her child or her children, who also lost a loved one - their father. Moreover, by her behavior she sets a certain way of relating to what is happening. Who knows, maybe in many years they will begin to blame others for what happens to them or their loved ones. Can such an attitude be called Christian? Obviously not.

But what exactly is the Christian path, and why is it so difficult? Because we have to choose not the easy road, but sometimes the difficult one, not natural reactions, but unnatural, or rather, supernatural.

We want to immerse ourselves in our pain, because we have lost a loved one, a loved one, and we have to think about others, about their pain, about their suffering... It is very difficult, but this is Christianity.

We must take ourselves by the scruff of the neck, pull ourselves out of the resentment and just wake up. And understand: I’m just suffering insanely, I’m in incredible pain, and no one is to blame for this. If the children just see my pain, and not an attempt to blame someone, it will be a much healthier situation for them, it will be correct. They too will be able to feel their pain, mourn it, move through it and come out. Then, having gained this experience of meeting their own pain and getting out of it, they will also feel the pain of another person. And they will become compassionate, merciful people. If they get stuck in this pain, if they say that someone is to blame, then they will not be able to feel the pain of others.

– You mentioned the Christian attitude towards pain, the Christian way. How do you feel about the words “you are Christians, why grieve so much? Why are you crying like that? - such an attempt to console, to shake up a grieving person?

– This is a terrible phrase, in my opinion, absolutely merciless! You see, Christ wept over Lazarus. God cried like a man when he lost a friend! And when a person loses a loved one, and they say to him: “You know that he didn’t die, stop killing yourself like that,” this, excuse me, is neurotic religiosity. It is formal and external, not internal. Before us is a person, not a robot, he is not a totally spiritual being. He experiences loss in body, thoughts, emotions...

When my beloved aunt, who was practically my second mother, passed away, I could not remove her number from my account for many years in a row. mobile phone. As a completely grown man! It was a deep longing, both childish and adult, because my aunt was a huge figure in my life who taught me to love. Her loss will never go away for me emotionally. But that doesn't mean I don't understand that she is with God. I ask her for help when I feel bad. Her and mom's.

It seems to me that when we have a person in front of us who has lost a loved one, in a truly Christian way we would simply hug him and cry with him. Share his pain. This is precisely a much more Christian gesture when you can be with a person in his pain. Take part of his pain upon yourself, and not tell him that everything is wonderful or how to worry correctly.

– As a rule, people who say that have not experienced anything like this themselves, right?

- Certainly. These are absolutely theoretical things.

“What a blessing that we were able to say goodbye”

– The death of a loved one can be sudden, it happens that he passes away gradually, and adults know about his imminent death. How to tell children about this? There are situations when a parent is afraid to tell the truth and does not bring them to say goodbye to, say, dad to the hospital, but simply to visit him. And although each participant in this last meeting understands that it is the last, this is not said. It is not right?

– Frederica de Graaf wrote amazingly about this in her book “There Will Be No Separation.” Everyone should read this book, because we will all, one way or another, encounter death in our family. And we must know how to deal with this. I completely agree with everything she writes there. She has been working in a Moscow hospice for 12 years, and before that she had extensive experience working in a London hospice. So she says that saying goodbye is extremely important. The child has the opportunity to see a living parent, not in a coffin, not this body, which does not look like your loved one, but alive.

– Even if he is in serious condition?

- Yes. Now there is a law that allows relatives to go to intensive care, but previously they were not allowed. It's terrible when someone leaves and you can't say goodbye. Although historically, traditionally, farewell has always been a part of life. When the person left, all the relatives came, approached him, took him by the hand, cried, and said some words to each other. This is an incredibly important point.

There is a book by Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, “The Liturgy of Death,” an amazing work, and he writes exactly the same thing there. He writes that culturally, death has traditionally been within life. Only in last times The fear of death appeared when there was a loss of connection with God, and religion became a private matter for everyone, such a devaluation of sacred space and the ultimate experiences of human life occurred. As a result, death occurs in closed doors- in the hospital, in intensive care, where no one is allowed. And the man leaves alone. It's just a disaster. From so many people I hear: “What a blessing that I was able to say goodbye!” and “What a pain it is that I couldn’t say goodbye, I didn’t see my loved one before leaving.” It's always the same phrase.

– But if you remember my question about the children who were brought to their father, but were not told that he was dying. After all, the children still saw their father, is this not the same thing?

“If they had been told that they were going to say goodbye, they would have behaved differently: they would have allowed themselves to feel what they already felt.” They would take him by the hand, cry next to him, and there would be a secret meeting. You can’t deprive a person of this moment. A separate topic is whether to lead small children. It all depends on what kind of child it is. Strictly speaking, this is the responsibility of the parent. There are children who are not worth leading.

– What are these?

– Very sensitive, impressionable, highly vulnerable. But if the child is normal, strong, healthy, of course, when mom and dad are not in tubes, not at the last stage of the disease, he needs to be brought in to say goodbye. Just recently Frederica talked about this. She told how one very courageous military man left. Rarely does anyone leave like that. It was painful - he had lung cancer, he was breathing heavily, for two whole months he could only sleep while sitting - and no moans, complaints, or whims. He asked his family to come, his children and his wife, and told them: “My dears, soon I will not be here, you must stick together, be together. I love you very much". Frederica spoke simply in superlatives about this care. She said so: he left like a warrior. And such care for children is a fantastic example of both life and death.

But when they start telling the children: “Let’s go, let’s visit dad, he’s not feeling well,” and at the same time he dies, then the children feel a lie, and lies always separate! Adults, recalling their childhood, when they lost their loved ones, say: “I felt that he would leave. I had a dream, I just knew...” So that’s how it is.

– When parents don’t say anything, does it give rise to mistrust?

– This, first of all, gives rise to a feeling of deep loneliness. I am alone in my grief. And then - not distrust, but alienation. The man closes. After all, they lie to him about the most important thing. And it closes. If it's a child, it simply slams shut.

How do teenagers feel?

– Natalya Vladimirovna, how do teenagers react to the death of loved ones, they are not little children anymore? How to talk to them about this?

– We must proceed from what the teenage world is in general. This is a world of searching for yourself, searching for your identity. That’s why there is a lot of maximalism, sometimes nihilism, struggle with the world of adults, with parents. The social context and peers are extremely important for a teenager. It is with them that such experiences are discussed, less often with adults. But this is often due to the fact that adults have failed to build friendly, warm relationships with their grown-up children.

Here specific example. The family has three children. Middle child passed away - cancer. Left behind is an older sister, a teenager. It’s one thing to bury mom and dad, and another thing to bury your child. It’s simply impossible to survive, it’s unbearable for a parent! Mom tried to hold on with all her might, but the loss of a child can topple even a very strong woman. Dad completely collapsed emotionally. As a result, this girl was left alone with herself. As far as I can tell, she still hasn't come out of this experience. This experience of meeting death was stuck in her, although almost 10 years had passed. She still has problems - in communication, with suppressing emotions. She does all sorts of extreme sports, and this is always the edge between life and death.

– What does extreme sports give such a person, what need does it satisfy?

– As I understand it, this is repressed pain: she is trying to somehow compensate for it, to feel herself on the edge.

If a teenager experiences this trauma or loss like this - with friends, and very often - and withdraws into himself, without mourning, without talking about it with his parents - a powerful emotional barrier arises between him and his parents. Because the most important thing that happened to them, they experienced apart. In addition, it will remain an unlived trauma, repressed into the unconscious. This means that this is a time bomb, the mechanism of which will tick and tick and is ready to explode at any moment. There can be a variety of consequences - emotional “collapses”, social problems, even psychosomatics, phobias, etc.

– As for psychosomatics: there was such a difficult story when his father was killed in front of a boy, and a few months later this guy fell ill with oncology...

– Yes, this is suppressed unbearable pain. Therefore, a child at any age should talk about his experiences with adults, with loved ones.

– Natalya Vladimirovna, if the topic of death is so difficult even for young children, why do teenagers treat the topic of suicide so easily? If at the same school someone jumped off the roof, why is this considered heroic? Why is this so easy to understand? This is a related topic, but still...

– It is necessary to separate the deep reaction and the demonstrated reaction. There are such scary things as fashion. Do you understand? Suicide fashion. There are many such stories on the Internet that generate waves of discussions. After all, everyone writes about this, talks about it, and now this poor man who committed suicide becomes a hero. It’s not he who is the hero, but they make him a hero!

Recently, one boy told me that he took pills, in general, practically playing with life and death. And the situation was not about pills at all. He had absolutely no contact with his parents. It turned out that it was his silent cry: pay attention to me! He played to this limit, and such a suicidal “game” with pills was just a cry towards his parents, who did not see or hear him.

The boy drank large doses of antidepressants that were at home, but no one called an ambulance. How can you not notice this? You had a full bottle of antidepressants, and suddenly you have half a bottle. The parent represses the information that his bubble is half full. It's scary to think about it. And the fact that the child drank is not so scary. This is how it happens: “My pain is more important to me than the pain of my loved one, that’s what stops me. I’ll pack it in beautiful form and say that I’m afraid to injure my child by asking the question: “Are you swallowing pills?”

If we talk deeply about this problem, I think teenage suicide is not about death. This is about a severe discrepancy with your own life.

– Is this always due to misunderstanding between parents?

- Not only... First love that didn’t happen, betrayal of a close friend, some kind of boycott was announced, the whole class is not talking. This is confusion in front of life, from which a teenager finds such a way out... If you ask him: “Do you understand that suicide is the end?”, he will not answer. Because for him it’s a bit of a game: oh, I’ll die, let it be worse for them!

– How then can you talk to a teenager about this topic?

– This is a completely separate topic. You shouldn’t talk to your child about this, but about how he lives. About his life! What happens to him, what he loves, how those around him treat him.

I spoke with one woman whose father beat her mercilessly throughout her childhood and adolescence. She admitted that she was on the verge of suicide for two years. She said: “When I turned 14, and he began to beat me as if I were a child, it was not so much painful as it was humiliating. I started thinking about suicide.” This is a step of desperation, of course.

I’m not talking about these terrible things and subcultures that simply zombie the minds of children, where the word “death” is pronounced like the words “candy, theater, walk.” It's like such an adventure. “Let’s play this adventure.” This concerns these terrible things associated with Internet subcultures, quasi-realities in which something completely creepy happens...

But in any case, you need to talk to the teenager, take an interest in him and his life.

When to see a psychologist

– In what case should a child facing the death of a loved one be taken to a psychologist?

– In my opinion, given what is happening with society now – and today it cannot be called healthy – a visit of an ordinary, healthy child to a psychologist once a year, in my opinion, is the absolute norm. Just as the concept of medical examination was introduced earlier, so, in my opinion, it is necessary to do the same with psychological counseling: here, too, we need our own medical examination. Parents may not notice something, may mistakenly believe that they are doing everything right, and often come to a psychologist with their child when the situation is almost irreversible.

So it’s absolutely normal to come for a consultation once a year, the psychologist will tell you: “Everything is fine, relax” or tell you what could be corrected. After all, the child very often cannot formulate what worries him, and a hidden problem emerges in drawings and some projective diagnostic techniques. And it is easier to fight any weed while it is small than when it has already grown in all directions and began to bloom lushly.

When there is a trauma in the family, such as a serious illness or the death of someone close and very significant to the child, of course, it makes no sense to immediately take the child to a psychologist. It is necessary to create an atmosphere of trust and shared grief that is experienced by loved ones together.

When people can cry to each other. When they can share with each other what happened because it happened in their common family. When this stage has already been passed, it would be very reasonable to take the child for a one-time consultation, so that the psychologist says: “You have coped with the least possible losses for the child” or “Go several times to help neutralize and complete those repressed traumas that are not obvious in the unconscious.” behavior and speech of the child."

– Let’s explain: is an experience displaced into the area of ​​the unconscious when consciousness cannot cope with it?

- Absolutely right.

– How long does this take?

– I would say this: the child, as a mentally integral being, does not want to repress anything, and does not have the experience of repressing it into the unconscious. On the contrary, he rather quickly and openly asks some questions and tells his parents, for example: “I hate you, mom!” This is a high degree of anger about some reason. How do parents usually respond to this? They shout, interrupt, hit me on the lips. What it is? This is a ban.

The child is still an immoral being; he says immoral things. We must first find out what caused this reaction. Then say: “Let’s come to an agreement. “I hate” is a very difficult word, strong. You can’t hate tomatoes or cats,” and so we gradually introduce the child into a certain moral and cultural context.

If we teach him to block and repress experiences and emotions, at first he will resist this. And when he learns to do this, he will do it automatically and instantly. As soon as he encounters pain. Therefore, if such a repression mechanism is launched, it is impossible to return everything back without working with a psychologist. The person has already lost contact with his soul, one might say.

I recently read an interview with a very famous comedian, extremely popular. Quite a lot has been written about him in various media that he allows himself to make jokes where they are completely inappropriate: he does not feel the line between where a joke is a joyful thing and where it is total inappropriateness, even offensive. He said something amazing in this interview: “People who call themselves psychologists believe that the tendency to joke all the time is a neurotic defense against the pain that lives inside. But I don’t agree with this!” And then he gives the following example, apparently from personal experience: “When I was at the funeral, they asked me: “Why are you so sad?” - he said and laughed at this anecdotal story from his life.

Of course, from this text we can conclude that he is a deeply depressed person. And he says this directly: “When I’m not joking, I fall into a colossal degree of despondency and depression. That's why I joke all the time." It's his choice. His way of coping with himself. But it is absolutely obvious that this person is, in fact, deeply and seriously traumatized by something.

And if he takes the position that one can joke always, everywhere and for any reason, no psychologist will help him, because he does not even have a request for such help. But I think that sooner or later his life will push him to understand that a joke does not save and help in all situations. That you sometimes need to turn your face to pain, to grief and gain much more than by turning away from pain and grief.

– Is turning your face to pain the only sure way to get through it?

– As scary as it sounds, yes. Because the phrase “Remember death” is, in fact, about life. It is correct when, when we lose someone close to us in the family, we experience this loss together, when this person remains in our family, his photograph hangs on the wall, we remember him, we live without losing touch with this person. Like the ancient Christians in the cemetery it was written “so-and-so is alive, so-and-so is alive”: the first thought when reading this inscription is about this person’s meeting with Christ, joy about him. If this is in the family, it reaches another level of depth of mutual understanding. Health increases in the family. And also warmth, support, love. And vice versa, if everyone in the family begins to remain silent, laugh it off, block this topic, cry in the corners, this is a serious blow to the family.

Move on with your life: stepmothers and stepfathers

– Let’s assume that some time has passed since the death of a loved one, and we need to move on with our lives. What mistakes are there, what can be done wrong?

– This is a very delicate topic. The fact of our parenthood is not that we are already parents. We become parents all the time, it's a process, not a fact! At some point we may be parents, but at some point we may not be, while being one according to legal parameters. This requires great inner sensitivity.

It happens like this: a person in the family left, the child survived this loss, coped with it, did not force it out, he lives on. There are photographs of one of the departed parents. And the parent has not yet coped with the loss, he is still there. I had this experience, it was very difficult. When her incredibly beloved husband died, she was left with two teenage children, the youngest and the eldest. adolescence. And the wife, living behind this husband, as if behind stone wall, finding herself without him, turns into a child who... is nursed by her own children.

– Where do they get the resource for this?

– They have no resource, but they also have no way out! And this is a doubling of the loss. You lost your father and you lost your mother. She is alive, but she is so lost in her grief that she does not eat, does not wash, does not leave the room, does not work, does not talk to anyone. They feed her, wash her, and try to bring her back to life. And this is a monstrous situation... I don’t want to blame anyone here - everyone has their own limit of strength. But it is important to remember that not only we, but also our children have a limit of strength, and not to shift your burden onto them. This is our adult responsibility to them.

– Should an adult always remain an adult in order to be a support for his children?

- Certainly. A child should not grow up like this, in leaps and bounds.

– Could it be that the father or mother died, and the second spouse is trying to replace them, to become both mother and father for the child? And how correct is this?

– Here you still have to start from the child. If we come from a child, we will never go wrong. If it seems to us that he needs his mother, that he is sad, then we need to talk about her. And if we don’t know whether he’s sad or not, and we start talking, then we open this wound, try not to let him calm down, we remind him of this all the time. And vice versa, it happens that he wants to talk, remember about it, but it seems to us that enough is enough, time has passed.

Everything we think about another is our fantasy. You need to ask someone else about other things, you need to be sensitive and attentive to your own children. They themselves will make it clear what they need.

– It often happens: the mother leaves, and after some time the stepmother comes to take her place. What are the pitfalls here?

– I have encountered a situation of this kind in my practice. Mom died, and 1.5 years later the man, a widower, married a woman who began to struggle to replace his children’s mother. Be good and attentive, do everything for them. And the children rebelled! The father said: “Well, how can that be! She tries so hard, but you don't accept her. Such selfishness!

And when they came for a consultation, we began to talk with her and with him, it turned out that she actually did not see the children point-blank. The main, deep motive is to be a good wife to your husband so that he is satisfied. And the children feel it. They lost their mother, who was their own, oriented toward them, who thought about them, and gained a stepmother, who, in fact, curried favor with her husband.

– What should a stepmother do in such a situation? She cannot replace a mother, but at the same time she cannot help but take care of the children - they are one family!

– And it shouldn’t be replaced, that’s the point! She can never replace her mother. Yes, naturally, you need to have a lot of patience and sensitivity, because the stepmother did not give birth to these children, did not raise them, did not spend sleepless nights with them when they were little. But she has the opportunity to love them. And they have the opportunity to love her, not as a mother, but as Aunt Masha, for example, do you understand? Our dad's wife. Aunt Masha should become an older friend, a person they can trust.

– But comparisons are still inevitable...

– When a child says: “But my mother didn’t do that,” the stepmother should say: “What did your mother do? I'm not your mother. I don't know if I can do like your mom. I probably won't be able to. How can we arrange for you to accept what I do?” It seems to me that the key word here is respect: respect for these children, for their grievances, for their intolerance and anger. This is inevitable, because it hurts them to see dad next to another woman. It hurts them to see that some other aunt is eating from their mother’s plate. This is not about my aunt. It's about their pain. When she understands that their outbursts are not addressed to her personally, that it is simply about the pain that is in them, she will no longer have to defend herself. She does not attack them in response to their complaints against her, she says: “I understand you, this is very difficult. But we need to do something further, live together.”

“Some people almost ask their children for permission: “Can I marry this woman?” or “Can I marry this man?” Is this worth doing?

– I think not. It turns out that the responsibility for such a step is shifted onto the children. This doesn't mean you shouldn't talk to your children about it. But when we package it into a permission form, it's not very good idea. We confuse the roles: we turn children into parents, and we ourselves become children. You could say: “I will never forget my mother. I will always love her, but enough time has passed, it’s difficult for me to be alone. Life requires solving a lot of problems. I find it difficult…"

Usually, the child needs to be accustomed to this woman, she should come to the house sometimes, you can go on vacation with her. Children are not fools. They all feel and understand that dad is going to marry her. She is not yet in her mother's place. She's just a guest. And it’s easier for them to settle down with her, because in this position there are no obligations. They are slowly getting used to it.

If she behaves correctly, delicately, carefully, but at the same time firmly, then a certain atmosphere of contact gradually arises. Then the father can say: “Guys, this is how things are, mom is mom, she will always be here, this is always her home” - that is, you need to make it feel that no one is changing anyone for anyone. “But life requires some kind of movement, so here is Lena. I want to marry her. What do you think?" That is, we are not trying to ask them to make a decision, we make the decision ourselves, but we make it clear that it is important to us what the children think about it. It's a subtle difference, but it's there.

– It happens that children themselves propose to a widowed father to marry or a widowed mother to marry...

– It seems to me that this is always completely surprising, touching and providential! We need to take a closer look at this aunt or uncle whom children offer us; perhaps the truth is spoken through the mouth of a baby. The Lord somehow pushes dad towards this woman, for example.

In such a difficult situation, when children lose their parents, and we bring in their place a person with whom there is no contact, this is terrible. Therefore, of course, it should not matter how the children react to our new husband or wife.

If we feel that the child has chosen, and this person can become dear and close to me, perhaps this is a providential path.

– Is the trauma associated with death reversible? How reversible are its consequences for a child of any age?

– I would reformulate this move.

Pain makes us human. Joy is joy. And pain makes us human. Therefore, closing yourself off from pain is wrong. Trauma is only bad when it is repressed and not lived through.

I can speak from personal experience. A man of incredible delicacy, tact, depth, inner beauty comes, and I can be sure that he has a lot of injuries. He is like this because he has been through a lot. I survived and came out of it. When a person has the experience of suffering and overcoming it, he becomes wiser, kinder, more compassionate, deeper. Pain teaches us to live! The main thing is not to get stuck in it. There is no need to waste energy trying to protect yourself or your child from pain, but you need to be with him, because he alone cannot do it. You need to go through this pain, not tangentially, and come out to the light, to gratitude, to God.

Interviewed by Valeria Mikhailova

Reference:

Natalia VladimirovnaInina– practicing psychologist, head of the Center practical psychology and counseling at the Russian Orthodox University; employee of the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, teacher of the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian.

Born in Moscow. In 1994 she graduated from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, in 2005 she graduated with honors from the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov at the Department of Personality Psychology. Author of the courses “Personality Psychology”, “Psychology of Religion”, “Psychology of Faith”, “ Psychological counseling", etc. Gives a course of lectures on practical psychology at advanced training courses for clergy in Moscow at the Moscow Orthodox Theological Academy (MDA).

She developed and hosted her own program “Fulcrum Point” on the Spas TV channel (2007–2009). Author and co-author of the books “Childhood Test. On the way to yourself,” “The Robe of the Soul: About Divine and Human Beauty.”

Please read this article from Awake magazine:

The Bible's Point of View
Death of a child. Why does God allow this?
Although some religions teach this, God does not actually take children away and cause them to die—a realization that brings relief to many bereaved parents. And God does have the power to prevent death. However, He still allows people to die.
Therefore, parents who are saddened by the death of a child may be perplexed: “Why does God allow this?” All death, whether caused by accident, disease or violence, almost always seems like a cruel injustice. Especially the death of a child. In one cemetery, on a monument near a child’s grave, a desperate protest was written: “So small, so cute, gone so soon.”
How can God allow such torment? If your child has recently died, no explanation, no matter how reasonable, will immediately remove your pain. In biblical times, even men who had strong faith struggled with the unjust tragedies of life and asked God why He allowed this to happen. (Compare Habakkuk 1:1-3.) But the Bible contains answers that can comfort us over time.
First of all, understand that your child did not die according to God's will. Even the destruction of the wicked does not bring pleasure to God, much less the death of a child. (Compare 2 Peter 3:9.) God is certainly deeply saddened by the death of a child. After all, we understand the tragedy of death and sympathize with its victims only because we are capable of love. And we are able to love only because we are created in the image of God. We reflect to some extent God's perfect capacity to love (Genesis 1:26; 1 John 4:8). The Bible assures us that God reads the deepest feelings in our hearts, knows the number of hairs on our heads, and even knows when a sparrow falls from a tree. Therefore He is called the “Father of mercies” (2 Corinthians 1:3; Matthew 10:29-31).
God obviously does not want any of His intelligent creatures to die. He intends to remove death, to swallow it up forever (Isaiah 25:8). With such views, why does He still allow death, especially childhood death, to continue?
God allows children to die for the same reasons as adults. It was not God, but Adam who chose death. Back in Eden, before their rebellion against God, Adam and Eve were warned by God that if they sinned, they would certainly die. If they had remained devoted to God, they would still be alive today. But they recklessly abandoned the most precious inheritance that they could pass on to their children - the right to a perfect, eternal life on the ground. Having sinned, they were no longer perfect. All they could pass on to their offspring was sin and death (Genesis 3:1-7; Romans 5:12).
You may be wondering, “If the cost was so high, why did God allow Adam and Eve to sin? Or why did He not quell their indignation before they could pass on death and misery to their children, and to ours too?”
God allowed our first parents to disobey because He did not intend to create a world of automata in which His creatures would serve Him simply because they were programmed to do so. God, like any parents, wanted people to obey Him not out of coercion, but out of a sense of trust and love. He gave Adam and Eve ample reason to trust and love Him, yet they still disobeyed and rejected His leadership (Genesis 1:28, 29; 2:15-17).
Why didn’t God kill the rebels immediately and on the spot? God has already communicated His intention that the earth will one day be completely populated by the descendants of Adam and Eve. He always accomplishes His purposes (Isaiah 55:10, 11). But more importantly: in Eden he was nominated decisive question. Does God have the right to rule over man and is God's way the best, or can man rule himself better?
The only fair way to resolve this issue once and for all is to allow a person to dominate himself. History has answered this question very cruelly. We are surrounded by the sad results of human rule - a world in which the death of innocent children is such a common event that it almost fades in a sea of ​​other troubles. Six thousand years of human rule have shown this: the idea that man is capable of governing himself without God is not just a sad illusion, but a gross lie. As long as a person governs without God, he will live and die in suffering.
Jehovah, a loving and just God, has a wiser choice. Like the parents who, out of concern for the future health and happiness of their child, allow their beloved child to be subjected to the pain of surgery, God has permitted, for the sake of the eternal future, that man should feel the pain caused by self-government. And just as the pain of surgery does not last forever, so the reign of man and his injustices will soon come to an end. In the book of the prophet Daniel it is written: “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that will never be destroyed. This kingdom will not be given to another nation. It will crush all these kingdoms and put an end to them, and itself will stand forever” (Dan 2 :44) When the Kingdom of God dominates the earth, millions of children will rise from the dead and be welcomed. Then many will “come to great amazement,” as the parents of the first century A.D. experienced. BC, whose children Jesus brought back from death to life through resurrection (Mark 5:42; Luke 8:56; John 5:28, 29). And when all mankind is eventually restored to the state of perfection lost by Adam and Eve, then, including children, no one will die anymore (Revelation 21:3, 4).

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