My experience as a psychotherapist tells me that many of people’s problems (neuroses, deficiencies, dysfunctions, existential conflicts) 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 homes (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 dysfunction, productive and effective performance or not, have to do with what was experienced and learned in the family laboratory; with the kind of influence that mom and dad had on their children.
The role of parents in education
Parents, being the origin and source of life for their children, generate a decisive and unique influence. On the other hand, because parents are the main actors (sculptors, trainers, molders) in the process of education and training of their children, they powerfully influence the type of map, learning and personality that their children install.
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, pure necessity. Their primary orientation is driven by their most basic needs such as the need for security. If mom or dad impose a toxic, castrating and negative interaction, the child will “adapt” to mom and dad’s dictates and styles, and will sacrifice their most personal needs and experiences, to alienate mom and dad, and thus not lose the security that these represent, even if that means denying your own needs.
- 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.
Educator role
Parents are educators par excellence of children.
Parents educate through instruction, modeling, contacts made, bonds built, and organized contexts. In these functions, dad and mom are essential. The extended family, church, and school are collaborators. These institutions can do their best, but they will never do it with the considerations of mom and dad (love, dedication, devotion, commitment and responsibility).
The role of educating children is non-declinable, non-transferable and non-delegable. It cannot occur in outsourcing; It is too big for the domestic, for close relatives, for neighbors, for the state, for the media and for teachers.
The education that parents need to give to their childrenit 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 teaching academic content; To educate is to form skills for life. Training is, as Manuel Barroso puts it: “To take 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 the children. Life skills are learned in that laboratory called family.
Only parents guarantee the learning of emotional, communication, behavioral, family and organizational skills that make people competent for the delicate art of living.
Parents educate through modeling
Parents educate through example, in facts, actions and attitudes. They train by modeling life skills 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. Much of children’s learning comes from their imitation of their parents’ attitudes and behaviors. In those first years, dad and mom are the models that children aspire to be like. Dad and mom are not only models but also 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 worthy of following!
Parents educate through organized contexts at home
It is the parents’ responsibility to create the environment – structure – in which they remain ororganized links 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 investing 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 quality and maturity of the relationships). All these elements provide the fundamental structure for the healthy growth of children.
There is a saying that goes “structure models behavior.” Parents need to create the structure (values, maps, norms, traditions, customs, bonds, habits, etc.) that model and regulate – educate and form – the attitudes and behaviors of family members, which shape the family. experience of being family. The context is a modeler of beliefs, maps, attitudes and behaviors.
Parents have the responsibility to provide their children with organization for life, which includes personal definitions (where do I come from? Where do I belong? Who am I?), the development of awareness of one’s needs, the assumption of responsibility for one’s life and actions, reference maps for consistent action.
Parents need to organize a context (time, space, norms, values, opportunities, limits, etc.) that directs and gives meaning to the experience of being a family, a fundamental factor for the healthy development and growth of 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, establishing priorities. , to solve problems, to communicate, to plan, to make decisions, to assume leadership, to negotiate, to be creative, using resources and alternatives; “searching for meaning in what happens.”
Parents educate through contact
Parents are creators of life. With life comes the child’s energy, appreciation and self-esteem for himself. To fulfill his role as educator-trainer, the father needs to be present, make contact with his 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, links and intimacy in relationships. It is a presence that translates into quality time and space. There are parents who persist and gravitate in the home as “good providers”, but their presence is not felt, it is not noticed through shared experiences, or the opportune word in moments of difficulty and confusion, or the consoling hug when it is needed. . Presence leaves an indelible mark on the children’s experience…on their memories and memories…on their personality.
The presence of the parents needs to be felt through the type of links and relationships that are forged in the father-son 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 hug, 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 basis of all experience and learning. Education cannot be done absently or remotely, but rather through effective contact. You cannot, for example, teach love without closeness, nor security and self-confidence through an absent life.
Contact is also a form of modeling for interpersonal relationships. The way mom and dad make contact with their children is a model that they will internalize as contact and relationship maps. 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 way and the style in which he or she will learn to bond.
The contact is essential and irreplaceable as a training system. In the words of Manuel Barroso: “A child needs contact like 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 have flexibility, life; He will grow up healthy and with fewer accidents. A relationship without contacts is a relationship without life, which leaves voids 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 into account.” And the aforementioned author adds: “The absence of a father or 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 the loss of contacts, which are what favor the learning of skills.”
This article is merely informative, at 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.
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Bibliography
- Barroso Manuel, Being family, Editorial Galac, 2006.
- Kliksberg Bernardo, Interview by Norma Domínguez, May 2006
- Notes and notes Diploma in Body Psychotherapy, Fundasoma, 2012.