Disciplining Of Preschoolers In The USSR

During one of the recent online conversations, I’ve realized that many disciplining techniques applied to me when I was a small child are considered completely inappropriate nowadays. And I am not talking about spanking.

In fact, the only case of spanking I remember was when my father spanked me when I wet my pants when we were walking on the street. I remember it vividly precisely because it was something out of the ordinary. 

Mom never spanked me, but she was very creative with other disciplining techniques. For example, when I was between two and three, I was afraid of her umbrella. I do not remember the origin of this fear, but I remember that I was so afraid that I would cry when it started raining outside, and she wanted to open an umbrella while holding me. 

So when I didn’t want to take a midday nap, she would put that umbrella in the corner of the room and say that she would return and open this umbrella if I didn’t sleep. 

At about the same age, I was afraid of behemoths. And in this case, I remember why. The reason was one of the Korney Chukovskiy poems about “poor girl Lialechka”. Since my home name was Lialechka, I was sure that it was about me. Then there was a scene when the wild animals wandered around the city streets, and it mentioned the entrance to the courtyard (“podvorotnia”) where she saw a frightening behemoth!. And since our house had “podvorotnia”, it was in my eyes something that could happen to me! 

My mom knew about these fears, so she told me that if I didn’t do something she wanted me to do, she would call for a behemoth in red pants! (I have no idea about where the red pants were coming from, but that’s what she used to say).

Then in detskiy sad, I remember that I was always in trouble! I honestly felt like I was punished for something every day, and I thought that life would be much happier when I finally went to school. The most frequent punishment was putting us “in the corner,” but the worst one was sending to bed in the middle of the day. I remember how my best friend Nika and I got into trouble(I don’t remember what the crime was), and we were told to start undressing. And I thought it was OK, I could do it, but Nika started to cry, and we were forgiven. I remember how we played with the dolls, and we were disciplining them the same way the teaches were disciplining us, using the same words. Many teaches yelled at us regularly, and we called them “cruel teachers.” The teachers call some of us “bad children”, and some of us “good children,” and I still remember the names! And I am pretty sure that the parents were aware of what was going on, but it was considered nothing out of the ordinary. Moreover, they could additionally punish us at home if they thought that the “crime” was worth the punchment.