The other day I was talking to a friend of mine, an actor and puppeteer. He was overcome by childhood memories of how his grandmother told him and his brother the fairy tale about Little Red Riding Hood, and how they liked to hear how the wolf answered the girl about his big eyes and ears and teeth. The brothers laughed until they dropped. But now my friend can no longer understand what fascinated him so much in childhood and what he lost as an adult. Now he is staging “Little Red Riding Hood” in a puppet theater, as a director, and thinks about this topic most of the day. And what did I remember myself? I don’t have such memories of my own, I have others, for example, about the “horned goat”, which at first softly creeps along your body, carefully rearranging its hooves, and then suddenly “gore-gore-gore!” This moment of contrast was known, we expect it, for the sake of it the entire procedure of goat goring was carried out, and each time it caused a whole flurry of frightened and delighted squeals. I also remember one of the early children's games "We went and went for nuts." The adult rocks the child on his lap, first evenly, saying “let’s go, let’s go...” And then suddenly - “thump into the hole!” And the child falls between his knees. The effect is the same - squealing, laughter, a storm of delight. And the demand “boom” is repeated. What is so necessary for babies in these sensations? And my grandson and I came up with a completely absurd game of exchanging legs and arms. He whines, for example, that he hurt his leg, and does not want to accept any reasonable arguments or regret, he just started his organ and won’t stop. “Okay, Vovan,” I say, “let’s change. You give me your bruised and sore leg, and I’ll give you mine, big and strong.” “How can we change this?” - Vovan’s eyes were already round and he stopped whining for a moment. “Forever,” I say, “we’ll change. I’ll have your pretty little leg, and you’ll have mine.” Vovan thinks for a few seconds and forgets to whine, then he turns his head violently: “No, woman, I won’t be able to drag your huge leg with me.” “Well, so, are we changing or not?” - I ask again. At this point Vovan is already laughing, completely forgetting about his previous suffering. Absurd therapy. A fresh look at the same world, only from under a stupid hat. K. Chukovsky constantly resorted to constructing absurdities: either a miracle tree in the garden grows with shoes, or they run to extinguish the blue sea with mushrooms. And everything like that. This helps to destroy unstable and unnecessary stereotypes in a timely manner. In conditions of absurd prevention, only vital, socially necessary ideas about the world and behavioral formats survive and take root. And the rapid pace of growth and development in early childhood simply implies a rapid change in the processes of creation and destruction in order to build a new, more advanced structure of the body-psychic shell in time (developmental psychologists also call these structures new formations). You can't get by with just pitying and stroking. So Little Red Riding Hood was completely amazed by her grandmother's huge eyes (so that she can see you better, granddaughter), ears and teeth (yeah, that's to eat you!) Isn't this similar to goat goring? And isn’t Little Red Riding Hood completely transformed in the wolf’s belly with a happy ending after this, as it should be in a normal child’s life after a moment of fear? Such fairy tales and games are an inoculation against the fear of transformation, the new. world, all kinds of xenophobia. Adults are often completely spoiled in this regard, having been burned by milk, they begin to blow on water. And they are afraid of “evil” fairy tales, “aggressive” games and in general the loss of a white and fluffy baby. I have to watch with horror how hard stubble and prickly insolence emerge from this “baby” at every step. “Alien,” in my opinion, we, adults, have only one good way out, since fate brought us together with children and childhood. it makes sense to relive your own childhood, to go through the crucible again