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Quote by Michela Murgia

“Adesso al check-in, alla domanda "corridoio o finestrino?", rispondo "ovunque, purché non sia vicino a un bambini" e la hostess di terra, vittima anch'ella dietro il suo sorriso, mi guarda con comprensione. Entrambe siamo consapevoli che non c'è alcuna possibilità che una creatura di tre anni non rompa i coglioni a nessuno per la durata di un volo di nove ore e ogni mammina che imbarca un pargolo questo lo sa benissimo. È lei a mettere in conto che, in nome della presunta tenerezza che dovrebbe ispirare il suo bambino, le persone che incontrerà sopporteranno senza lamentarsi una quota di molestie che non hanno scelto. Questo tipo di mammina si incazza quando l'attesa tolleranza non si manifesta e cerca di ribaltare il piano delle cose. Diventa giudicante. Stizzita dice: "Ma è un bambini", come fosse il suo lasciapassare per imporlo al mondo. Lo vedo anch'io che è un bambino, dannata mammina, ma è proprio la ragione per cui non dovrebbe essere qui, tra adulti che non hanno e non vogliono bambini o che li hanno responsabilmente affidati ad altre persone pagate per subirli, invece che pretendere che i presenti di un intero ristorante, di un aereo o di uno scompartimento si imprivvisino gratis puericultrici, nonni e babysitter del tuo pargolo irrequieto.”

Quote by Michela Murgia

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Michela Murgia

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“Secondo te mi sento così inutile perché non ho figli da guardar crescere?" mi ha chiesto mentre facevamo i piatti. "Ma come non ne hai, hai sposato un bambinone che non se ne andrà mai di casa, non patirai neanche la sindrome del nido vuoto." Con le mani nella schiuma del lavello abbiamo riso, ma eravamo un dittico strano e pietoso, lei giovane già coi rimpianti e io vecchia con ancora delle pretese.”

“Oh, Lilias,” Uncle James groaned. “For heaven’s sake, why couldn’t you have drawn a flower or something?” He glanced at me and said, “I’m sorry – she’s going through a bit of a macabre phase at the moment. I suppose all children do at some point, don’t they?” I nodded, but couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever gone around drawing grisly murder scenes and presenting them to people as gifts.”

“Any parent would be dismayed to think that this was their child’s experience of learning, of socializing, and of herself. Maya is an introvert; she is out of her element in a noisy and overstimulating classroom where lessons are taught in large groups. Her teacher told me that she’d do much better in a school with a calm atmosphere where she could work with other kids who are “equally hardworking and attentive to detail,” and where a larger portion of the day would involve independent work. Maya needs to learn to assert herself in groups, of course, but will experiences like the one I witnessed teach her this skill? The truth is that many schools are designed for extroverts. Introverts need different kinds of instruction from extroverts, write College of William and Mary education scholars Jill Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. And too often, “very little is made available to that learner except constant advice on becoming more social and gregarious.” We tend to forget that there’s nothing sacrosanct about learning in large group classrooms, and that we organize students this way not because it’s the best way to learn but because it’s cost-efficient, and what else would we do with our children while the grown-ups are at work? If your child prefers to work autonomously and socialize one-on-one, there’s nothing wrong with her; she just happens not to fit the prevailing model. The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself. The school environment can be highly unnatural, especially from the perspective of an introverted child who loves to work intensely on projects he cares about, and hang out with one or two friends at a time. In the morning, the door to the bus opens and discharges its occupants in a noisy, jostling mass. Academic classes are dominated by group discussions in which a teacher prods him to speak up. He eats lunch in the cacophonous din of the cafeteria, where he has to jockey for a place at a crowded table. Worst of all, there’s little time to think or create. The structure of the day is almost guaranteed to sap his energy rather than stimulate it. Why do we accept this one-size-fits-all situation as a given when we know perfectly well that adults don’t organize themselves this way? We often marvel at how introverted, geeky kids “blossom” into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it’s not the children who change but their environments. As adults, they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don’t have to live in whatever culture they’re plunked into. Research from a field known as “person-environment fit” shows that people flourish when, in the words of psychologist Brian Little, they’re “engaged in occupations, roles or settings that are concordant with their personalities.” The inverse is also true: kids stop learning when they feel emotionally threatened.”