At present, parents do not pay enough attention to raising their children, since they do not see the value for themselves in such a pastime. Self-realization is carried out in the professional sphere, using all the creative potential. The task of educational institutions is to convince parents that creative self-realization is possible in joint activities with children. Moreover, such activities must necessarily be of interest to parents, therefore it is necessary to help parents find such activities.
creative self-realization, parents, upbringing
Currently, more and more parents receive secondary and higher education, enterprises and organizations are constantly working on the personal and professional development of their employees, information platforms offer a wide variety of trainings, master classes, webinars, etc. All this, to varying degrees, becomes an incentive for creative self-realization in the professional sphere: employees work hard and improve their professionalism, and, consequently, job satisfaction. This is certainly a very positive fact.
However, almost all people are family members (large or small) and carry out numerous responsibilities associated with this circumstance. One of those responsibilities is raising your children. Many researchers note the high employment of modern parents in production, concern with everyday problems, reduced free time, reduced time for communication and joint creative affairs with children [1; 3; 4].
We conducted a small study: we interviewed 156 parents under the age of 35 at one of the enterprises of the Krasnodar Territory. It turned out that with the same employment (including overtime), the respondent parents spent with their children a different number of hours: from 1 to 20 hours per week. At the same time, a direct relationship was established between the motivation of parents to actively raise their children and finding time for this in their professional activity schedule. Thus, it can be argued that the declaration of objective reasons in the form of "high employment in production" is often just an excuse for paying little attention to raising their children.
Based on the results of the survey, the reasons for the lack of attention to children were established, while the parents named at least 2 reasons:
- no pedagogical knowledge and skills - 76.8%;
- there is no desire to waste their time - 47.3%;
- there is no interest in classes with small children - 39.6%;
- there is no understanding of the interests of children in accordance with age - 41.7%.
As a result of additional questions, it turned out that most often there is no interest in joint activities with children, parents consider such activities in a certain sense a "waste of time", but at the same time they want to "save their face" and in the questionnaire they noted the lack of necessary pedagogical knowledge and skills.
We noted above that the professional development of modern specialists is aimed at developing creativity, initiative and realizing their potential. This is probably why the process of raising children does not fit into this trend, in other words, some parents do not see an opportunity for self-realization and the use of their creative potential in the process of interaction with children. Are there such opportunities?
The essence of "creative self-realization" can be viewed with the help of two concepts "creativity" and "self-realization".
The phenomenon of "creativity" interested many scientists, each of whom singled out those features that he considered the most important:
- the main characteristic of a person (V.V.Bailuk);
- activities to create new values (A.V. Petrovsky, M.G. Yaroshevsky);
- a way of positive self-realization (L.V. Vedernikova)
- the ability to find new solutions to problems (N. Rogers).
This list could be continued, since apart from the increased attention to the problem of creativity, there is still no common understanding of this phenomenon among scientists. We are closest to the position of A. Mateiko, according to which “creativity is the creation of new combinations based on the reorganization of the existing experience” [2].
The concept of “Self-realization” is interpreted as the process of disclosing and using the existing potential that is significant for the individual. In this case, "creative self-realization" is a continuous, personally significant process of disclosing and realizing a person's creative potential. Quite a lot of researchers have studied the problem of self-realization of teachers (R.M. Asadullin, N.M. Borytko, N.K. Sergeev, etc.). At the same time, there are practically no works devoted to the creative self-realization of parents in pedagogical activities aimed at their children. Numerous existing works on interaction with families in a preschool educational institution solve this problem through the fulfillment of tasks given "at home" by parents and children. Unfortunately, in most cases, parents are not interested in such work, and if there are many such tasks, then irritability appears: they do not like the teachers, do not like the kindergarten, school.
The business has found a solution to this problem - any crafts are made to order, which must be handed over to an educational institution. The task is completed. All got good marks.
This is because parents do not see their own value in completing such "tasks", they are not interested in them. We emphasize that joint activities with children should be of interest to parents, in which case they can captivate her and the child. Only then will pedagogical creativity appear and self-realization of parents will occur.
In our opinion, parents need to show examples for joint creativity with children:
- come up with a fairy tale with the child (or a continuation of an already known one);
- to create a home puppet theater;
- write poems or a song together;
- draw greeting cards to friends, etc.
The list is endless. The most important thing is to help parents find things that will be of interest to them and the child. Such work should be carried out purposefully and systematically: starting from the period of waiting for the child and until the child finishes school. Obviously, until now there is no educational organization that would carry out such work throughout the entire period of childhood. Therefore, we propose to distribute this function among several organizations involved in preschool and school education. It would be useful to have centralized management on the part of the district administration of education as a coordinator of work with parents and a guarantor of its continuity.
The manifestation of the pedagogical creativity of parents is due to the structural components of any activity: planning, organization, coordination, motivation and control. In the process of self-realization, two processes are carried out simultaneously: self-knowledge and creative self-development.
Therefore, we propose to work with parents to discover the possibilities of creative self-realization in the process of raising their children in several stages:
1) determining the personal meanings of parents regarding the upbringing of their children, in other words, identifying those value orientations that are basic attitudes for parents;
2) actualization of existing and obtaining new pedagogical knowledge; structuring the accumulated social and pedagogical experience; improving communication skills;
3) promoting the manifestation of the creative activity of parents;
4) parents' independent development of upbringing strategies;
5) determination of the direction of creative self-realization (types of creative activity).
It should be noted that creativity, shown in communication and interaction with children, influences both the personal and professional growth of the parents' personality. Answering the child to numerous "why?" they are often forced to turn to reference literature, in addition, their explanations must correspond to the age characteristics of children, be understandable to them. This circumstance requires parents to be able to simplify information, explain it in an accessible language. We agree that these are the necessary qualities in professional activity.
A separate topic is classes with children after school or kindergarten. The easiest way to solve the problem is to find several sections and after class send the child to them. But this may not always be relevant. In some cases, parents, satisfying the interests of their children, master new aspects of science and technology for themselves: chemical experiments, unconventional methods of multiplication, the influence of stars on humans, etc. In such joint hobbies, the personal growth of parents, enrichment with new knowledge, and broadening of their horizons take place.
In the process of upbringing, one of the main motives for the creative self-realization of parents is the desire to convey the maximum of life meanings and values to their child; help him reach greater heights than they reached themselves.
Systematic, purposeful work to create opportunities for creative self-realization of parents in educational activities will allow: a) to increase the pedagogical culture of parents; b) to strengthen the cooperation between parents and an educational institution; c) improve parent-child relations; d) to increase the intensity of the development of children.
1. Koltsova, E.A. Representations of employees of Russian organizations on the balance between work and personal life / E.A. Koltsova // Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics. - 2014. - No. 11 (2). - p. 160-168.
2. Mateiko, A. Conditions of creative work / A. Matejko / Translated from Polish by D.I. Jordanian. / Ed. Ya.A. Ponomarev. - M.: Mir, 1970. - 300 p.
3. Mospan, A.N. The balance of work and personal life among employees of a Russian enterprise / A.N. Mospan, E.N. Osin, T.Yu. Ivanova, E.I. Rasskazova, V.V. Bobrov // Organizational psychology. - 2016. - Vol.6. - No. 2. - p. 8-29.
4. Savinskaya, O.B. Work and family balance: strategies for combining professional and family responsibilities by working mothers in Moscow [Electronic resource] / OB Savinskaya. - Access mode: http://www.jourssa.ru/sites/all/files/volumes/2013_2 /Savinskaya_2013_2.pdf
