To raise without limits?
These are difficult times for parents. The old parenting formulas from our grandparents look obsolete. Leading the children in the long process of becoming people has become a serious problem. The reality is too complex. But if you gave the step, if we already brought the children to the world, there is no other way, we must act.
About parenting we can speak from many perspectives. From the field of specialties, the academic world, the experts. Or from the view of a lifetime, from the day-to-day experience with our children or our grandchildren. I think both perspectives are valid. From the two there are things to say.
I am going to comment on my point of view as a grandfather, on what I am observing in the upbringing of my granddaughters and the little friends they hang out with.
I have noticed so much in the parents of the little friends as in my children, I will not deny it, that little importance is given to the issue of limits. It seems that there is not enough conviction that the child has to set standards.
The rules are not optional in parenting. Human beings are born to a world governed by a set of norms and behaviors accepted in a consensual way in order to live civilized. Each one of us moves within the limits that make possible the coexistence with the other, it cannot be otherwise. If there are no limits, we enter the realm of anarchy, of every man for himself.
The child when is born knows nothing about that, the way to learn the rules is through learning. It is the parents who have the responsibility to teach him/her, especially when they are little.
If something characterizes our time is relativism, it has been shouted to the four winds that reality is the measure of each person, what each one thinks and point, the old saying that each head is a world has spread in all the sectors of society. Of course, they are respectable and legitimate ways of thinking, but they entail a series of risks, especially when they touch on aspects such as raising children.
One of the beliefs that has spread the most, in the midst of this epochal climate, is that the child must live in a world of pure pleasure, pure playful experience. According to this, the child's will must not be contradicted, it must be left to him to learn little by little, without pressure, at his own pace. The parents believe that to oppose the child's will is to subject him to abuse, or worse, to create a trauma. They believe that by flexibilizing perseverance and discipline they are protecting the child. For me, they are making a serious mistake.
No process of maturation of the child will automatically bring the learning of the rules and limits for coexistence. There are experiences of children raised without human contact and their behavior does not enable them to live in society. They had no one to teach them to live civilized.
When the child does not have precise limits, he develops an arrogant and self-centered mentality, which is not conducive to healthy relations of coexistence. They are children who have a hard time sharing because in their heads the idea that the world is him/her and the others instead of his alone has not formed yet. They are being raised for isolation and loneliness.
Much I tell my children to stop foolishness. The child should not think that the world is just pleasure and play. Children should also know that there is sacrifice, discipline, perseverance, pain and suffering, because all of that is part of life, they are not inventions of some twisted mind.
In all of our walk through life we will get with the good things, with the regular and the bad things. Since we are little we have to learn to deal with that, it is part of what it would be to learn emotional intelligence.
So do not be afraid: correct your children, teach them discipline, teach them perseverance and dedication. Most likely, they will be thanked as adults.
Thanks for your time.
