My experience as a psychotherapist tells me that many of the problems (neuroses, deficiencies, dysfunctionalities, existential conflicts) of people are associated with deficiencies installed in the context of the home, which in many cases are a consequence of the inadequate exercise of the role of father or mother. Dysfunctional households (fathers and mothers) generate dysfunctional people (children).
Family life leaves its mark indelible in the life and essence of every individual. Health and functionality or insanity and dysfunctionality, productive and effective performance or not, have to do with what has been lived and learned in the family laboratory; with the kind of influence Mom and Dad had on their kids.
Index
- The role of parents in education
- Educator role
- Parents educate through modeling
- Parents educate through organized contexts at home
- Parents educate through contact
The role of parents in education.
Parents, because they are the origin and source of life for their children, generate a
This action is defining in the first seven years of life of the children, for two reasons:
- Children are, in their earliest stages of life, sheer need. Their primary orientation is driven by their most basic needs like the need for security. If mom or dad impose a toxic, emasculating, and negative interaction, the child will "adapt" to mom and dad's dictates and styles, and will sacrifice their needs and more personal experiences, to alienate mom and dad, and thus not lose the security that they represent, even if that represents denying their own needs her.
- In the first seven years of a human being's life, the most basic and fundamental traits of the individual's character and personality are forged.
Educating role.
Parents are the educators par excellence of the children.
Parents educate through instruction, modeling, contacts made, bonds built, and organized contexts. In these functions, mom and dad are indispensable. The extended family, the church and the school are collaborators. These institutions can do their best, but they will never do it with mom and dad's considerations (love, dedication, devotion, commitment and responsibility).
The role of educating children is indeclinable, non-transferable and non-delegable. It cannot be outsourced; It is too big for the housemaid, close relatives, neighbors, the state, the media, and teachers.
The education that parents need to impart to their children, it is not an academic education (although it is not excluded from the role), but an education for life and successful performance. Educating is more than imparting academic content; to educate is to form competencies for life. Training is, as Manuel Barroso puts it: "Taking out of the organic and emotional interiority of the child, the person who is contained.
For that mission only the home context is effective, because only it is capable of providing the links, relationships, models and contexts necessary for the development and family, emotional and spiritual growth of children. Life skills are learned in that laboratory called family.
Only parents guarantee the learning of emotional and communication skills, behavioral, family, and organizational skills that make people competent for fine art to live.
Parents educate through modeling.
Parents educate through example, in deeds, actions and attitudes. They form by modeling life competencies through the lifestyle they project, the habits they exhibit, the behaviors they express, and the bonds they build.
Children learn primarily by imitation, observing (seeing, hearing and feeling) the parents. A good part of children's learning comes from their imitation of the attitudes and behaviors of their parents. In those early years, mom and dad are the role models children aspire to be. Mom and Dad are not just role models but their children's heroes.
How sad that in the absence of mom and dad, children have to turn to other heroes, such as rock singers or actors / actresses, whose lives are not always an example worth following!
Parents educate through organized contexts at home.
It is the parents' responsibility to create the environment - structure - in which they remain orOrganized ties and relationships. Parents need to define the frames of reference that regulate interactions at home. This structure includes the system of values, principles and beliefs. It also requires the investment of abundant and quality family time and requires the construction of a beautiful culture (the spirit of the family, the climate or atmosphere of the home, its character, the depth and the quality and maturity of the relations). All these elements provide the fundamental structure for a healthy growth of the children.
There is a saying pray "Structure models behavior." Parents need to create the structure (values, maps, norms, traditions, customs, bonds, habits, etc.) that model and regulate - educate and train - the attitudes and behaviors of family members, which shape the experience of being family. The context is a shaper of beliefs, maps, attitudes and behaviors.
Parents have the responsibility to provide their children with a organization for life, which includes personal definitions (where do I come from?, where do I belong?, who am I?), the development of awareness of their own needs, the assumption of responsibility for their life and their actions, the reference maps for action congruent.
Parents need to organize a context (time, space, norms, values, opportunities, limits, etc.) that directs and of meaning and significance to the experience of being a family, a fundamental factor for the development and healthy growth of children. children. Organizing is, in the words of Manuel Barroso: “Giving direction and meaning to the experience of being a family, so that each one has a way of thinking, feeling, relating, seeing things, analyzing events, setting priorities, solving problems, to communicate, to plan, to make decisions, to assume leadership, to negotiate, to be creative, using resources and alternatives; looking for meaning to what happens ”.
Parents educate through contact.
Parents are creators of life. With life goes the energy, appreciation and self-esteem of the child for himself. The father to fulfill his role as educator - trainer needs to be present, make contact with the children, be part of the plot and their experience.
His presence is not a nominal presence, but active, close and committed. It is a presence that forges bonds, bonds and intimacy in relationships. It is a presence that translates into quality time and space. There are parents who remain and gravitate at home as "good providers", but their presence is not felt, it is not noticed through shared experiences, or the appropriate word in times of difficulty and confusion, or the comforting embrace when needs to. Presence leaves an indelible mark on the children's experience… on their memories and memories… on their personality.
The presence of parents needs to be felt through type of ties and relationships that are forged in the parent-child relationship. That presence needs to be translated into actions and attitudes that communicate the experience of being and belonging to a family. That presence is the hands that touch and caress, the lips that kiss, the arms that embrace, the available ears that listen, the lips that inform, advise and affirm with words.
Parents they do not educate through master classes and thanks to the use of technological means. They educate through contact: presence, communication, connection. Contact is the foundation of all experience and learning. It is not possible to educate with absence or remote control, but through effective contact. You cannot, for example, teach love without closeness, or security and self-confidence through an absent life.
Contact is also a way of modeling for interpersonal relationships. The way in which mom and dad make contact with their children is a modeling that they will internalize as maps of contact and relationship. If the contact is distant and impersonal, or close and intimate, that will be the pattern that the child will learn and install. That will be the form and style that he or she will learn to bond with.
The contact is essential and irreplaceable as a training system. In the words of Manuel Barroso: “A child needs contact as he needs food to grow and live. If he has it, his eyes will shine, his skin will have a brighter color, his body will move and he will have flexibility, life; it will grow healthy and with less accident. A relationship without contacts is a relationship without life, which leaves emptiness of the soul, without energy, with expressions of sadness and boredom that the child will seek to replace with problems, meals, and a thousand occurrences, seeking to be taken in account". And the aforementioned author adds. ”The absence of a father or a mother is something more than a loss or separation. It is a void of the soul. A significant loss of all the contacts a child needs. The tragedy of abandonment lies in the destruction of references and in the loss of contacts, which are what favor the learning of skills ”.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to The roles of parents, we recommend that you enter our category of Social psychology.
Bibliography
- Barroso Manuel, Ser familia, Editorial Galac, 2006.
- Kliksberg Bernardo, Interview by Norma Domínguez, May 2006
- Notes and notes Diploma in Body Psychotherapy, Fundasoma, 2012.
