The child has no interest in anything. "He doesn't want anything!" When a child lives without interest. Therefore, the way out of addiction is for a person to learn to live and develop

The teenage period in modern children begins much earlier than the classical 13 years. Already ten-year-old boys and girls are defending their independence, trying to separate from their parents and gain the right to do what they want. The editors of the Chips Journal spoke with the teenage psychologists of the center "Dot" Maria Zavalishina and Anna Privezentseva and figured out what to do if a child is not interested in anything other than YouTube videos, is rude and tests their parents for strength.

What to do with children who, at the age of 10-11, no longer want anything? Parents jump around them, take them on vacation, offer clubs, and all the kids want is to hang around on the Internet.

Anna: The child does not want anything - this is a traditional request to a psychologist, a fairly common situation. The worst thing that can be associated with this is the onset of the development of depression. But when a child is psychologically healthy and simply does not want anything, we explain this as follows: in adolescence, self-awareness begins to form - the child seeks to understand who I am, what I want, what I should do, how to live on. In order to understand who I am, I first want to give up everything that is not me.

Accordingly, all parental suggestions and ideas on how to spend free time automatically become irrelevant. Because I didn’t come up with this, I didn’t start it, and everything that parents offer is automatically not.

And if at the moment when the child refuses something, the parents calmly perceive it, move away from pressure, he has time and space to begin to navigate what he wants. This does not happen automatically and can take quite a long time. But this process is very important, you need to respect it: this is a way to learn how to make a choice.

But children do not sit with their faces turned to the wall or staring at the ceiling, they are most often occupied with gadgets or television. How to deal with such "I do not want anything"?

Maria: Against the background of personality changes, it is very important to remember that there are quite serious neurophysiological changes. The biochemistry of the brain of adolescents is very different from that of adults. To put it bluntly, the neurotransmitter that affects all cognitive processes, is responsible for the reward and pleasure system, and partly for stress resistance, is produced in adolescents in much smaller quantities than in adults. Including the feeling of constant boredom and dissatisfaction among teenagers is connected with this.

But at the moment when some kind of action associated with the reward occurs, this neurotransmitter is produced in much larger quantities than in adults. The teenager is like on a swing: most of the time he is in a depressed state, but as soon as he receives a “reward”, he plunges into a world of great pleasure. What exactly can be a reward is a separate issue. This is usually associated with peer approval or achievement within the game, as well as risky behavior (which can come in many forms). Children of this age, in principle, have little energy, but their willingness to strive for a reward is quite high. And if we're talking about gadgets, it's a very quick and easy treat; something that is always available.

And, of course, it is very difficult for a child to stop: the more you dive, the more you want. And one more thing: those structures that are responsible for control and arbitrariness in the brain have not yet matured in adolescents. And they end up in a cage: on the one hand, the flow of pleasure, on the other hand, boredom, and on the third, the inability to somehow regulate themselves and realize the consequences.

But does this mean that parents need to compete with gadgets? Offer interesting activities and constantly entertain.

Anna: At 11-12 years old, parents still have the opportunity to influence the behavior of children: the role of the parent at this time is quite large. Someone solves it by banning and restricting gadgets. This works for a while, but then the child will still say in a rude way: goodbye with their instructions and advice. I have not seen successful stories when parents controlled the time of using gadgets: as a rule, these attempts are doomed to failure with rare exceptions.

Arrangements like “you play for two hours, and then you go to do your homework” will be violated by the child. He will still play as much as he wants, because pleasure is beyond agreement.

But nevertheless, something can be done. For example, talking to a child. Do not tell him: “you must go to the sports section,” but talk in the vein of his personal development. Like: “Look, you are growing, your body is changing, it is important and good, probably, it would be to look after your figure, your body. It would be great if you went to some sports activities. Let's see what we have and what would you like and would be interested in.

Through negotiations, parents can achieve their goal: the child is engaged in sports three times a week, and not sitting in gadgets. But the goal is achieved not by a direct ban, but by expanding children's opportunities, horizons. It is important that the child learns to choose, has this option of choice.

The dialogue is important: not “you will go to English because you are a loser”, but “look, you want to travel and it will be cool if you learn some language.” By the way, games or videos can also be the starting point for such conversations. For example, if children play online games, there are often foreign teams there, and there are many English-speaking bloggers on YouTube, and the child has a need to understand another language.

My call is this: there is no need to veto the games, because most often this confrontation leads to a serious conflict. The game must be woven into the reality of the child in such a way that it is not the center of his life and the center of your conversations and relationships.

Often in the family, the struggle to give up the gadget comes to such an absurdity that parents and children simply stop talking about any other topics, as if there is nothing more to talk about besides how many hours you played today and how long it can go on. Parents enter into a dependent relationship with the child and thus begin to support his dependence. It is still important to maintain sanity: less panic and more constructive proposals.

Maria: Now all the processes responsible for perception, concentration, memory are changing. Teenagers today and those who were teenagers ten years ago are very different. Even at the level of physiology: they have different ways of perceiving information. And people still do not really understand what to do with it. It seems to me that I will act as a kind of evil cop, but I have a different position regarding gadgets: control should begin in childhood, and not when a teenager is already playing. I agree that late bans will not work, but restrictions are very important because the child himself is not able to regulate them. They should appear at an early age when the child comes into contact with digital technology. But most importantly, it should not be a scandal, violence, and should not start spontaneously and suddenly.

It is more or less clear with younger teenagers, but how to interact with older children who do not want anything? You can’t press anymore, but what can you do? Maybe you need to "become a friend to the child"?

Maria: After all, a parent is not a friend. The child has friends, and they have a different function, different relationships. And the parent has a position that involves, among other things, the introduction of restrictions, building boundaries and other regulation. There just needs to be a balance in everything.

Anna A: I agree that the function of a parent is not to "be a friend." The parent has responsibility for the child. He is legally, at least, responsible for it. But you need to understand that the responsibility of the parent also has its limits, it is not unlimited. A person can control only what belongs to him - for example, his body, his feelings, emotions, thoughts. But he cannot control another person, in particular, a teenager. No matter how much he wants to and no matter how much his responsibility dictates it to him.

Brutal attempts to control a teenager look like violence, and in fact they are. These attempts are usually met with a stiff rebuff from the teenager, but if he does not have enough strength to fight, he simply quietly sabotages. For example, a parent says: "Sit down, do your homework." The teenager, as it were, sits down at the table, opens the textbook and picks his nose for the rest of the evening.

All that a parent can do in this situation is to say in plain text: “I think that it would be much more important and more useful for you to do this and that. I'm ready to give you the opportunity. Ready to pay for you, ready to record you, ready to take you, ready to support you. If you need help, ready to wake you up in the morning, and so on. I am ready to do all this, because I worry about you and love you. But then comes your responsibility." Such a conversation is possible somewhere from the age of thirteen, fourteen. And then everything at this point, period. The parent can't do anything else. A teenager must learn to take responsibility for himself, for his life.

The sooner the parent gets rid of the illusion that there are some tricky methods that can get the teenager to do what he wants, the less difficulties he and the teenager will find.

Often, all the forces of a teenager go to protest, he fights with his parents instead of sitting down and thinking about what to do with life. And when teenagers find themselves in a situation where no one puts pressure on them, they begin to do something themselves. After some time. Everyone has a different way of doing this, depending on intelligence. Someone understands this in a month, someone in a year, someone in two. But at some point they all understand that it is impossible to live like this, something must be done.

If the parents do not put pressure on them, ask how things are going, feed them lunch, and so on, then the teenager still has the opportunity to take advantage of the parents’ offer or come up with something of their own and ask the parents for help. Here is how I imagine it.

The psychological center "Tochka" is open for group classes for teenagers 11-17 years old, and for children 9-10 years old. It is also possible to sign up for an individual face-to-face or skype consultation.

Hello, Alexander.

The behavior of the child described by you really causes alarm. Most likely, you would like your son (or daughter) to grow up as a harmonious personality that combines the ability to master new technologies, good physical health and development, the desire and ability to achieve success in the profession, as well as the ability to communicate with people around. And, of course, various activities, including active types of hobbies, contribute to the development of all these skills. But a hobby is an activity that a person likes, and as you already understood, it is impossible to make someone fall in love with any activity. In this case, it is precisely the fact that your child is disturbing, without being distracted by anything else.

Unfortunately, it is not clear from your question what exactly attracts him - communication in social networks, viewing some specific pages or computer games. In any case, at the moment it is important to understand whether the child has it or not yet. If you see clear signs of addiction, it will be difficult to do without the help of specialists. On our site you can find free addresses in your city.

One of the main reasons for a child to leave for virtual reality is usually the psychological situation in the family and his emotional state. If he feels depressed, does not feel recognition, respect for himself in real life, he can seek and find these feelings in the virtual world. Try to restore trusting contact with the child, then talk frankly with him, share your anxiety for him and tactfully ask what exactly he gets in the process of "communication" with the computer. You can then work with your child to come up with a way for him to get it in real communication with people.

Not the least important is the parents' own behavior in relation to the computer, since children often copy their actions, even if the words of their parents contradict these actions. Try to soberly assess how often and why your family uses a computer or other gadgets. And, before introducing prohibitions and restrictions on the use of equipment, you need to check how much you can follow them yourself.

It is also important to show love to the child more often, strengthen his self-esteem, show him respect, notice and praise him for real achievements and spend more time with him. All this will show him the great value of live communication compared to online communication and will allow him to believe in himself.

Anastasia Vyalykh,
Family psychologist

Archpriest Maxim Pervozvansky. Photo by Yulia Makoveychuk

As a rule, addictions affect people whose other resources and aspects of life are not in development. Psychologists say that the resource is being pumped, development is underway, when a person lives a full life, enjoys it.

You can work a lot, get tired, but at the same time get energy from this work, want to work again. We all know that when something starts to turn out, in work or in something else, a person experiences an upsurge - this is familiar to every schoolchild.

For example, at the sight of a quadratic equation, a student becomes ill, and as soon as he learns to solve it, he immediately suggests: “Let me solve it again, let me try again.” This happens with physical labor, and in general with any kind of activity. A person studies mathematics, a foreign language, whatever, and when something starts to work out, when he has a drive, he develops.

Or like exercise. No matter how hard a person tries to play football, he fails. And suddenly: great, it’s gone, he understands how it’s done, every day he has new successes, and he can’t wait to go out to play. Even though he gets tired of it all.

As soon as the process of development of different aspects of the personality stops, as soon as a person stops mastering some types of activity with pleasure and drive, stops comprehending something new, he has stagnation, a desire to rest, relax in one way or another, escape from life. Running away from life leads to addictions.

This can happen to anyone. And with a first-grader whose personal resources are not developed. And with an adult, a very, very developed person. What matters here is not what you have already gained in life, but dynamics.

When you get stuck in something, no matter at what level: you were a great theologian, mathematician, lawyer, builder, and then you stopped developing in this matter. For you, it first becomes commonplace, routine. Why do postmen never become world walking champions even though they walk long distances every day? The postman walks 20 kilometers every day, in principle, he is a healthy person, but he does not develop as an athlete. It does not increase the speed of walking, does not increase the range of walking, does not change its quality and technique. He just walks and walks. And this is a routine.

Addiction is just the wrong development, the wrong movement.

“I’m just resting and I’ll stop at any moment”

The person is tired, and he still has a desire to rest passively. And there are certain dangers here. Especially if the resources are not yet very developed, as is the case with schoolchildren, young people who do not have clear goals and understandable ways of living life. And then passive rest suddenly gives a semblance of drive - from a computer game, from chemical drugs, from alcohol.

Therefore, the way out of addiction is for a person to learn to live and develop.

An interesting example is Sherlock Holmes. He was a drug addict. Most of the time he was in remission. But, when did he fail, when did he start using drugs? When he was bored, when he said that he now has no interesting business, except to shoot at the wall with a pistol and use something narcotic. That is, there is no interest in life. Since Holmes is a strong, multifaceted personality, as soon as that same interest arose, he immediately got out of this state.

And in real life, a person, especially a weak one, especially a young one, has very little chance of getting rid of any kind of addiction on his own. No matter how strong he thought he was. By the way, most addicted people live in such self-deception: if I want to, I will stop at any moment. I am strong. I just don't want to. But this is just self-deception. And so the path of healing usually begins with the recognition that you are weak and unable.

It is necessary to force to engage in and overcome “I don’t want to”

What to do? Sometimes forced: go to school, do homework, get involved in various activities, offer something. And there is hope that at some stage he will be able to catch the drive from study, from work, from something else.

I see this well in the summer on the example of my own children. Here sits, say, my son and he is bored. And try to get him to help me with something, say, cut firewood. He says: "No, I can't, I don't want to, I won't." I suggest: "If sawing is boring, let's already sawed generations." And then the sawn ends, there is nothing to prick. “Come on, I’ll cut,” the son suggests. It seems that only half an hour has passed, and he has already gone into a rage, has already turned on, he is already interested in the process of work itself.

The same applies even to games. I say: "Let's play badminton now." In response, I hear: "It's boring, I don't want to." We play boring for the first five minutes, he barely beats, reluctantly, without interest. Then you look: once, he has already begun to enjoy, he is already asking: "Dad, let's play on."

This moment of involvement through overcoming your own “I don’t want” is very important.

So if there is even the slightest danger of addiction, the first thing to do is to move forward, to develop. The physical side is the easiest to develop. It's the easiest with her. Therefore - a gym, a swimming pool, a bicycle or skis. The best thing is targeted exercise. Not just went out to run, although for a start this is also great. And then professional growth: study, radio engineering, whatever! Communication - constructive, interesting, also plays a role here.

It is with a child that it is a little easier because at some stage he must be forced to do what he may like over time. It is clear that if he does not have the ability, then this business is not worth doing, you need to look further. Let's say it doesn't work with music, but it works great with chess or with hockey.

And it's the same with education. I did not accidentally talk about quadratic equations. Yes, school and parents - we make children learn. But, first, forcing, trying to organize the process so that the child can enjoy what he is doing. And then he starts to have fun.

It's the same with books. As a teenager, it always seemed to me that for some reason all books start for a long time, and the first 20 pages are nothing interesting. But if you break through the first 20 pages, then you can’t tear yourself away, and then you regret that the book ended so quickly. Therefore, yes, you need to force to read and play sports, and study. Force it to develop.

Sometimes words are useless

In order to fight the addiction of a teenager, a young person, the help of specialists and the consistent and purposeful movement of the family are needed. Sometimes there is no strength, no desire, no skill for him, and in this case there are very few chances.

With adults, everything is not at all simple, because the real way for an adult to get rid of addiction is for him to want it himself. When we see an adult who is in such a dependence, this speaks precisely of the underdevelopment, of the infantilism of the personality.

It is possible to bring him out of this state only in a very tough way. And very risky for a person to understand that if he does not change now, does not take responsibility for his life into his own hands, he will be kicked out of the house, he will have nothing to eat, and so on. All these methods are very inhumane, and not every relative of the addict will dare to use them.

But words are useless here.

It is necessary to stop helping a person in his way of life. Then there is a great chance that he will be able to see himself, see his problem, and with the help of specialists and relatives, begin to deal with it.

You need to understand that any other person, except for yourself, lives his own life and makes his own choice. And the two sons of Adam, Cain and Abel, are a constant reminder to us. No matter what you do (here is Adam talking to God), your child can still choose some other path. And, unfortunately, if we are talking about serious, including chemical addictions, then statistics show that not everyone is cured.

The tablet must be issued and collected

The most common addictions today are drugs, alcohol and computer. It is clear that drugs should not be in a person's life. For nothing and never.

But gadgets and alcohol in reasonable "doses" are present in the life of almost any adult. When should a child be allowed?

Restrictions on alcohol are understandable - they are associated with physical age and legislation. Nevertheless, the family needs to form a culture of drinking alcoholic beverages.

If there is an alcoholic or alcoholics in the family, especially those who are in a state of "tying up", then, of course, alcohol does not appear on the table in such a family. Since there is already an alcoholic in the family, it means that there may be a certain tendency to addiction. There are cases when alcoholics become alcoholics with very small doses and infrequent use. There are some people who just can't - it's genetically determined. Therefore, it is necessary to know the history of your family in terms of addictions.

Computer, tablet appears more often at primary school age. And here you just need to strictly limit.

The gadget should be issued and climbed if we are talking about children. If a child is given a tablet, and he is left alone with Playmarket and YouTube, he can download any game there, he can watch any video, even if the parents have set age limits, and nothing dangerous will happen, and this uncontrolled search is not useful .

When a person is in free swimming: from roller to roller, from toy to toy, and this is not determined by time, then the person simply goes into this virtual world and it is not so easy to pull him out from there. It's better not to let this happen.

Hello! My son is 4.5 years old. My child is not interested in anything except cars (swims with them, sleeps, takes them to kindergarten, throws tantrums if they are removed from him) and sometimes picking up pictures from puzzles and garages from a designer for his cars. From early childhood, he has no interest in drawing, modeling, listening to fairy tales. Sometimes at home he wants to help me clean up or take apart an old tape recorder, run around on the street - play ball or just play outdoor games. In the near future we plan to take him to the sports section. Today in kindergarten, I was advised to deprive him of cars for a certain period of time so that he could become interested in something else. Is this correct in your opinion? From my point of view, it is impossible to categorically deprive a child of his favorite hobby, otherwise he will completely withdraw and stop being interested in cars. What if we "kill" a great mechanic or engineer in him?

Psychologists Answers

Hope hello.

Why do you think that your son nothing not interested? He loves cars, plays with them, collects puzzles, plays constructor - this can not be called "nothing" at all. These are his actual interests, and they are quite appropriate for his age.

I suppose that you are worried about the lack of motivation for educational games - such as modeling or drawing. It happens. there is nothing wrong with that. Of great importance is, for example, how these classes are served by adults. If we are talking about classes in kindergarten, and the teacher advises taking away the boy’s favorite toys, then maybe the classes are not very interesting for children? The will at this age is not yet developed - and to do what is "necessary", but do not want to - children still do not know how.

As for reading, here you need to develop rituals, for example, before going to bed. Maybe he doesn't like the "fabulous" genre - choose something else, read it yourself, discussing what you read.

Sometimes at home he has a desire to help me with cleaning or take apart an old tape recorder, run around on the street - play ball or just outdoor games

Why are there no interests for the boy? .. You have a fully developed little boy.

Sports section - try it, but here you need to consider what kind of sport suits your boy - team or individual, and watch his mood. To force is a disastrous thing, neither you nor the child will have enough strength.

Today in kindergarten, I was advised to deprive him of cars for a certain period of time so that he could become interested in something else. Is this correct in your opinion?

I don't think this is correct. You just need to expand his range of activities. unobtrusively captivating and paying attention to what he already likes, not considering it as nonsense.

If you have any questions - please contact us, we can discuss everything you are interested in on Skype.

Trofimova Julia, psychologist, Elektrostal, skype consultation

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Hello, Nadezhda, you are completely right. stops asking and closes on his fantasies (cars). Therefore, it is important to return to the son Trust in his parents and give him Basic acceptance of him only by the Good and the Best. Then in half a year or a year he will become sociable and responsive in relationships again. isolation. And this will restrain his natural development and interaction skills.

Karataev Vladimir Ivanovich, psychotherapist-psychoanalyst Volgograd

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