Tangi - Over-aged Children - Reviews, Society

Tangy is a concept that came into use relatively recently, after the release of the French comedy of the same name. This is the name of the main character of the film, and now this is the name of an adult child who does not want to be separated from his parents, remaining in a childish position. At first, the word "tangi" was used only in colloquial language, but now it is also used by professional psychologists.

Program for years

In a nutshell about the plot of the film. A married couple has a son, so cute that his mother exclaims: "Tanguy, you can always stay with us and live in this house!" Here it is, "parent programming" in action.

A careless parental word can create a scenario for the child's life, that is, become a kind of instruction, according to which he will unconsciously build his life

How often parents say in their hearts what they really don't want their children. "You will go to jail", "you will grow up a fraud", "nobody will marry you", "nobody will love you" …

In this case, parents proceed from their own interests:

• dump anger,
• get rid of their own fears,
• express their hidden desires.

Likewise, Tanguy's mother is driven by parental egoism, the child seems to her a cute toy. But 28 years pass, and the son, in accordance with the program given to him, continues to live in the parental home, refuses to move and expects them to support him, because he is still studying and preparing a dissertation.

At the same time, Tanguy remains sweet, and his behavior towards his parents is polite and respectful. Parents are burdened by the situation, a confrontation begins between them and their son: they try to get him out of the house, and Tanguy - to stay.

Vegetable in the garden

Childhood and life with parents has many benefits: they take care of you, support, provide, love, accept with all your shortcomings, remove a fair amount of responsibility from you.

The child is like a vegetable in the garden, which the gardener takes care of, and he only baskes in the sun and absorbs nutrients

It is not true that children want to become adults as soon as possible. When a child says: "I want to be an adult!" - he means something concrete, beneficial to him and with true growing up, that is, with responsibility, not associated. For a child, “being an adult” means watching plenty of cartoons, going to bed after midnight and eating ice cream despite a sore throat.

Speaking about adulthood, the child confuses "permissiveness" and "responsibility". In reality, growing up is an increase in the level of responsibility, and responsibility is scary. And children can resist growing up. We see many examples in the literature: perhaps the most famous is the eternal boy Peter Pan.

Help separation

Human children are not alone in their unwillingness to become independent. In the animal kingdom, it often happens the same, and then the parents help the cub to separate, and not "in a good way", but "in a bad way." Birds can throw the chick out of the nest, predators can growl at the grown offspring, driving them away from their territory.

Separation, that is, separation, is a reciprocal process. Both children and parents take part in it. It is not easy for both

It so happened that most often they talk about a situation in which the child wants to separate, and the parents prevent this (more often mothers, a woman is more symbiotic than a man, that is, she is prone to psychological merging with the child).

Perhaps, in our country, this is also due to the great cultural and psychological change that occurred after the collapse of the USSR. Soviet culture was quite symbiotic: people crowded together in a small area. There was no concept of “psychological privacy”, and something “of our own” was perceived negatively, as threatening the “collectivist” one. Therefore, Soviet parents and post-Soviet children turned out to belong to very different generations with sometimes opposite values.

In Soviet families there was a lot of “common”, and the word “mine” was considered almost a curse, like “voluntarism” in a well-known comedy. So on the territory of the post-Soviet space, situations are typical when a parent turns out to be more symbiotic than a child, and does not allow him to grow up and separate.

Tanga Phenomenon

But let's restore justice: there is also a "Tanga phenomenon" when the children themselves do not want to separate. Of course, if both the child and the parent maintain a symbiotic union, there is a kind of balance, homeostasis (dynamic balance), really unhealthy. There will be no conflict between them.

But what if the parent still maintains sanity and realizes that something is wrong? There is an episode in the film when Tanguy's parents, after his refusal to move and lead an adult life, buy their 28-year-old son a crib with toys to emphasize the absurdity of the situation. An adult's attempt to ignore his adulthood is just as ridiculous.

Recently I had a joking conversation with a colleague - a family psychotherapist:

- I gave birth to a child - and there is something to do before he comes of age.

- Uh, no! - corrected a colleague. - Now I have given birth - and before retirement there is something to do.

Then she clarified:

- Until the child retires.

There is some truth in this joke. Growing up occurs as the level of responsibility increases. In the past, responsibility was delegated to the child early, sometimes even too early (for example, in peasant families, when the child received household duties on the fly). In the modern world, it is possible to avoid responsibility. For example, at the age of 28, Tanguy continues to study and, under the pretext that he is still a “student,” demands that his parents support him.

And how the separation of the child from the parent occurs largely depends on the separation of the parent from the child. Even if the child does not want to grow up, the parent can influence this process.

What if your child is Tanguy?

• 1. See him as an adult and treat him like an adult. Without "lisping" and indulgence.

• 2. Delegate to him his part of the responsibility as an adult family member. This also applies to finances and the solution of common family problems.

  If an adult child lives with his parents, he must contribute to common expenses: utilities, food, household funds. An exception is the student who is getting the first higher education. (We are not currently considering "emergency" cases, when we are talking, for example, about serious health problems and disability).

  Also, an adult child should take part in household chores: cleaning, shopping. Family responsibility (visit grandmother, pick up in the evening from the younger brother's section). And there is no exception for the students.
• 3. Don't take responsibility for it. He must take care of his clothes himself, cleaning his territory, solve problems with his friends and partners.
• 4. One does not want to leave the parental “paradise”, so “paradise” should cease to be such. “Tangi” is a comedy, and in it parents begin to create a kind of “hell” for their son: make noise at night, spoil his things, compromise in front of the girl. Of course, this is wrong; one should not go to such extremes. But your son or daughter should clearly understand that childhood has already ended.
• 5. Don't let your boundaries be violated: If your children try to violate them, you must stop. If an adult child asks you for money, this request is unfounded. When it comes to a student, a disabled adult son or daughter for health reasons, parents provide a certain necessary minimum, but not a new iPhone or a trip to Ibiza.
• 6. Live your own interesting life and enjoy it. Realize that parenting is only part of your life. Then your children will be able to understand this; such a discovery may be unpleasant for them, but it is necessary. And help them separate.