Cries and Whispers

ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ

ВЫСШЕГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ

«ЛИПЕЦКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ПЕДАГОГИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»

Л.М. Кузнецова, Ж.Л. Ширяева

PROBLEM PARENTS OR PROBLEM CHILDREN?

Липецк – 2007

УДК-43 (071.1) Печатается по решению

ББК 81.432.1 - 923 редакционно-издательского

Совета ЛГПУ

Л.М.Кузнецова, Ж.Л.Ширяева. PROBLEM PARENTS OR PROBLEM CHILDREN? Пособие для студентов старших курсов факультета иностранных языков (английское отделение). – Липецк, ЛГПУ, 2007 – 155с.

Рецензент: зав. каф. КОИО

к.ф.н., доц. В.П. Бойко

© ГОУ ВПО Липецкий государственный педагогический университет

Липецк – 2007

Contents

Preface

Part I. Problem Children

Ready! Steady! No! (test) John Ferrimah.

Cries and Whispers. Peg Tyre.

The Lumber Room (Extract / Part 1). Hector Munro.

Можно ли заставить ребенка слушаться? Бенжамин Спок.

The Lumber Room (Extract / Part 2). Hector Munro.

Очередь за лаской. Лидия Суворова.

The Difficult Child. L.G. Pamuchina, T.G.Shekova.

Между двух огней. Алла Булатова.

The Difficult Child (a list of words).

The Spoiled Child. Alife Kohn.

Разве ж это дети… Катаржина Лангрен.

Obedience (poem). Garrison Keillor.

Former Stamp Collector Jason Cowley on Why Being Cool Leaves him Сold. Judith Martin.

Children are our Best Teachers.

Future Toy Boy. Sarah Sennott.

Part II. Problem Parents

Should you Smack Children? John Slaiks.

Ten Reasons Not to Hit your Kids. Jan Hunt.

Порка делу не поможет. Диана Колосова.

Hyperactive? Just Go to a Park and Climb a Tree. Jane Barron.

Permissiveness: “A Beautiful Idea” That Didn’t Work? Людмила Памухина. Тамара Шелкова.

Юный император или чопорный джентльмен? Игорь Рябцев.

We Preach Baby Worship but Practise Baby Farming. James Whirly.

Хороший ли я родитель? (тест)

When Parents are Toxic to Children. Keith Ablow.

Do Parents Know their Kids? Steve Rouge.

High Anxiety Screws Up Our Hi-Tech Heaven. John Lurks.

A Nation of Wimps. Hara Estroff Marano.

The Waiter was Wired. Jan Mackinnon.

Child Neglect and Abuse. David Merck.

За что убивают детей. Вероника Сивкова.

A New Way of Understanding the Problems of Parents and Kids. Debra Wesselmann.

The Nature of Nurturing. Bill Cleeve.

Supplement.

PREFACE

Having and raising a baby is part and parcel of most people’s lives; that’s what makes the family happy, complete and close-knit. The toddler’s first steps, as well as the first loss of a milk tooth and the child’s first uttered words can’t but stick in the parent’s memory. All parents are so sentimental about their children’s firsts! However, on the darker side there are quite a few hurdles which parenting inevitably entails. Both children and parents may turn out to be hard to deal with. Read through the book and decide for yourself whether it is harder to bring up a problem kid or to be brought up by a problem parent.

Part I. Problem Children

Ready! Steady! No!

Are you ready to have children? Try these simple tests.

The mess test. Smear peanut butter all over your hands, then rub on the sofa, curtains and walls. Draw pictures of dinosaurs with crayons on your favourite wallpaper. Place a fish stick behind your bed and leave it there all summer.

The toy test. Obtain a 55-gallon tub of Lego. (If Lego is not available, you may substitute roofing tacks or broken bottles). Have a friend spread the contents all over the house. Put on a blindfold. Walk to the kitchen or bathroom barefoot without screaming.

The supermarket test. Borrow two goats and take them with you to the supermarket. Always keep both of them in sight and be prepared to pay for anything they eat or damage.

The dressing test. Obtain one large unhappy live octopus. Stuff it into a small net bag, making sure all the arms stay inside.

The feeding test. Half fill a large plastic jug with water and suspend it from the ceiling with a stout cord. Start the jug swinging. Insert spoonfuls of soggy cereal into the mouth of the jug while pretending to be an aeroplane. When you’ve finished, dump the contents of the jug on the floor.

The night test. Fill a small cloth bag with a 4-6 kilos of sand. Soak thoroughly in water. At 8 pm start to waltz and hum while holding the bag. At 9 pm., lay down the bag and set your alarm for 10 pm. Get up, pick up the bag and sing every song you have ever heard. Continue singing (be inventive) until 4am. Lay down bag. Set alarm for 6 am. Get up and make breakfast. Keep this up for five years. Look cheerful.

The physical test (women). Go to the nearest chemist. Hand your wallet to the assistant and ask her to help herself. Go to the nearest supermarket. Ask to see the manager and arrange to have your pay cheque deposited there directly. Purchase a newspaper. Go home and read it quietly for the last time.

Final assignment. Find a couple who already have a small child. Lecture them on how they can improve their discipline, patience, toilet training and child’s table manners. Give them as much advice as you can for as long as you can. Enjoy this experience. It is the last time you will have all the answers.

John Ferrimah

/ Digest, 14, 2005/

SET WORK

I. What is meant by:

to smear, a fish stick, to put on a blindfold, octopus, to suspend sth. from the ceiling with a stout cord, soggy, a cloth bag/a net bag, to waltz, a beanbag chair, chemist, to have one’s pay cheque deposited, assignment, toilet training, to hum.

II. Find in the article the English for:

арахисовое масло; цветной карандаш, мелок, контейнер, кровельный гвоздь; босиком, вопли, крик; не упускать из виду; втискивать; сетка; раскачать; крупа, каша; опрокинуть на пол; пропитать что-либо водой; завести будильник на 10 часов; прикрепить; правила поведения за столом.

III. Points for Discussion:

1. Does the headline of the test ring any bells with you? Account for its choice.

2. Are the names of the offered tests suggestive? Explain what it is that makes every test humorous. What’s the idea behind each of them in plain English?

3. Are you still ready to have children after reading the article?

Cries and Whispers

Best-selling British nanny Tracy Hogg has advice about bringing up baby. Marry Poppins would plotz.

On a recent national TV news-magazine show, a red-faced infant was squalling. As the cameras rolled, the bleary-eyed mother juggled the crying child and a mobile phone. On the other end of the line, Los Angeles-based nanny-to-the-stars Tracy Hogg listened to the wails. “Put her over your shoulder,” Hogg cooed into the phone. Eventually, the child quieted. Later the pert, blond Hogg calmly bathed another newborn while the mother whipped out her video camera and filmed with the unwavering intensity of a news chopper hovering over a freeway pileup. “I understand a baby’s language,” said British-born Hogg, her accent as thick as Yorkshire pudding. “It’s my gift.”

Hogg says she is to newborns what Robert Redford’s character was to horses in the three-hankie movie “The Horse Whisperer.” She says she can “read” a fretful baby and figure out what it needs. Ballantine Books believed in her and paid her a whopping $750,000 for a two-book deal.

The first, “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer,” has become a best seller, and her 29-city author tour aims to make her name as familiar as Dr. Spock. Hogg’s premise is simple but enticing for REM-deprived parents: you can have a new baby and still get your beauty sleep. “I think that by taking the proper steps, babies don’t have to be disruptive,” says Hogg. “You should be able to lead a normal life.”

She counts a host of L.A. power moms among her clients, including Jodie Foster and Jamie Lee Curtis. Twentieth Century Fox Television president Dana Walden says Hogg moved in for six weeks after Walden’s daughter was born. “With Tracy’s help, our daughter now sleeps 11 hours a night. Some people we know who have babies - smart people who run studios – are still racing into their babies’ rooms when they wake up in the middle of the night.” But that peaceful slumber doesn’t come cheap. Hogg charges $500 for a two-hour phone consultation and $1,000 a day to stay at your house.

You can’t afford to spend what could be a year of college tuition on a baby nurse? You can buy the book for $22. It’s filled with quickie questionnaires, cute acronyms and your basic over-the-back-fence wisdom. It advises new moms to put Baby on a schedule and to figure out if Junior is bawling from hunger or simply fatigue. But some of her advice is downright kooky. If your child cries when you put him down for a nap in his crib, pick him up, soothe him and put him down again. Repeat this until he settles – up to 120 times, if necessary.

“All that picking up and putting down, it seems a little wearying for the parents,” points out Dr. George Cohen, editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics book “Guide to Your Child’s Sleep.” “It doesn’t sound very practical.”

A registered nurse in England, Hogg left her two daughters, then 8 and 11, with her mother and moved to L.A. in 1992. Unable to use her nursing license here, she began taking care of babies. She had, as they say in the movie industry, “great word of mouth,” and soon Hogg opened her own baby-equipment store in Encino, Calif. Her book and her Web site claim that she got a master’s degree in hypnotherapy from the University of California, Irvine. But a university spokeswoman says they have no record of her. Earlier, according to her book and Web site, Hogg was “assigned” to the “great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital,” an apparent reference to London’s famed Cheat Ormond Street Hospital, where she, in fact, attended a three-week-end-long training course. And a “stint with the World Health Organization in India” turns out to refer to a two-week trip she took there in 1989.

A Ballantine publicist says the company is standing behind its author. When pressed, Hogg herself grows vague, then teary, then dismisses questions about her credentials with a brisk, nannylike “Never mind.” Says Hogg, “I know that I’ve helped a lot of people along the way. And nothing can take away from that.” For now, the success of her book has the phones in her store ringing off the hook, and she’s already working on her next volume, “Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for Toddlers.” She knows those babies she’s been “reading” are bound to grow up.

Peg Tyre

/ Newsweek, Dec. 26, 2004/

SET WORK

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