“Bad Child.”

As I travel around the world, in most countries, I notice a very warm attitude towards children, especially in Europe and Southeast Asia. There, children are praised, admired, and adored. But only among us, the Kazakhs, there is a strange tradition of demonstratively scolding someone else’s child, calling them “zhamań bala” (bad child) or using other offensive words. It’s clear that this is done to ward off the evil eye: a person says “bad child” to prevent envious glances and curses. From a materialistic point of view, this seems amusing to me. If this tradition were true, then in all the countries where children are praised and adored, all the little ones should have long since fallen ill and died. But, of course, this doesn’t happen. Because no evil eye can harm a child’s health. What can harm them is poor sanitation. Yet, Kazakhs stubbornly continue to spit and scold children. I sincerely hope that this tradition will eventually die out with the advancement of our education system.