HOW NOT TO GROW A SELFISH One of the fears of parents is that the child will grow up to be an egoist. Therefore, many adults, almost from an early age, try to eradicate selfishness in a child. Let's first remember what selfishness is. Egoism is behavior entirely determined by the thought of one’s own benefit and benefit. Selfishness manifests itself when a person puts his own interests above the interests of others and acts in his own interests to the detriment of the interests of others. It is normal for a small child to always put his own interests above the interests of others. Growing up, a child begins to care not only about his own interests, but also to think about other people. Ideally, this happens naturally. The child sees how everyone in the family cares about each other, feels the care of family members and himself, and begins to learn not only to take, but also to give. However, parents sometimes begin to teach their child “not to be selfish” from an early age. How do they do this? They require that the child always, without fail, share sweets and toys; they scold the child if he does not want to do this or simply forgot. Is this an effective technique? If a child shares not of his own free will, but because his parents insisted on it, then the child himself does not change because of this. Only his behavior changes. Let's give an example. Grandmother always forced four-year-old Maxim to share. And, indeed, when his grandmother was nearby, Maxim always shared. But when his grandmother was not there, Maxim never shared. He just knew that his grandmother would force him to share anyway. And it was easier to give in. Therefore, Maxim did as his grandmother demanded. But how can you help your child not become selfish? One effective way is to help the child see the selfishness of others. This does not mean that a mother should suddenly eat a kilo of candy in front of her child and not share. You should not provoke situations where the child will be the object of selfishness. It is best to find some situation in the outside world. I'll give you my example. Somehow it happened that I demonstrated the phenomenon of selfishness to my children using the example of monkey families in the Sukhumi nursery and at the Institute of Physiology named after. I.P. Pavlova. I’ll immediately make a note for adult readers. Egoism is a social phenomenon, a phenomenon of humanity. Animals have neither selfishness nor altruism. But children need not be privy to such subtleties of psychological science. At least for now (dear readers who want to discuss whether animals have selfishness, I refer you to the classic works of A.N. Leontyev, A.R. Luria, L.A. Firsov and others). However, watching an animal can be very beneficial for children. Let's return to egoism. So we went to feed the monkeys. The monkeys stuck their paws out of the cage, and we gave them pieces of carrots and apples. Monkeys are very different. Some are quiet and calm, others are active and even aggressive. But the children were especially impressed by the family of monkeys: a female, a male and a baby. Do you know how the male behaved? The male always pushed away the female and the cub and ate the food himself that was given by the visitors. People tried to outwit the male: they threw food to the female and the cub, distracted him so that they could take a piece of carrot... After just a few minutes of observing the animals, the children begin to think about what is happening. And here it is a pedagogical situation! All that remains is to ask the child what he thinks about this. Whose behavior he likes and whose he doesn’t. Children are usually very impressed by the male's behavior. After visiting the monkeys, they tell everyone for a long time about what they saw. This is a good reason to talk about the behavior of people around you and about the child himself. So, you can ask your child if it happened that dad ate the whole cake and didn’t share it with anyone, etc. You can remember situations when the child shared and praise him. Such impressions are quite enough for a 4-5 year old child. To see the behavior of an animal, which among people is called selfishness... And at home, on the contrary, to see the care of loved ones for each other. Of course, this is not the only possible way. I'm sure you can come up with some.