A topic in which I'm very interested and busy currently is children education. I'm reading now "Be happy, my son" from Eçami Tiba, a reknown psiquiatrician in Brazil with many books published, among others this one.
First of all, I would like to give an advice to parents in general. They should take the time to read a bit, as they do when the woman is pregnant or when they are getting a baby. At this stage people are normally insecure about the maternity and how to deal with a little human-being who is not able to communicate cleary. When children grow they learn talking, which facilitates communication, however, not rarely, many problems can arise during the childhood or adolescence, which could probably be easier to handle if parents would be more informed about how to face and behave in front of such problems. That's why Içami indicates that parents should keep reading during childhood and adolescence of their children.
Now, from what I'm reading I understand that we have to be aware that we should educate our children in two different aspects, which are: 1- Educate to develop good values such as respect, honesty, goodness, etc. and 2- Educate to develop strong character, meaning children should be prepared for life.
We can raise children to have good values but errors in education can have the consequence to make them become fagile emotionally. I agree!!! In my opinion, good values are more easy to obtain, if they are practiced at home. Children grow taking the example of the parents first, assuming for themselves some values for life. What they see at home is the main example to them. External influence also determine some attitudes, but I'm convinced that a healthy familiar living together is much stronger than anything outside.
Strong characters on the other hand are built when a child understands their limits and is motivated to execute what they are supposed and able to execute, such as homeworks, certain household, limited discipline, responsibility! etc.
It is also partially on the hand of the parents to prepare their child to be able to resolve problems, giving them the tools so that THEY find out how to best solve something: fixing things they broke, finishing homework, etc. Parents should not solve every problem for them when the child is able to solve them on their own.
Another very important point is that "little children like to help as a natural instinct". So parents need to identify when they are offering help. We need to be able to put ourselves in the child's place to identify it. Based on their current capacity, what seems to us that they are messing things, this is in reality their sense of offering help. As an example of what happened with me: I was hanging clothes and Athina was taking off the clothes I'd just hang and gave it back to me... Well, I could have said: Athina, go playing that mom is working here and you are distubing. In this specific case, according to her capacity, this way was her way of offering me help. She was giving to me the cloth to hang, although it was already in the right place. The point is that she didn't understand that YET. I can imagine this as a typical situation that, if you show gratefulness to the child, you are developing in it a sense of feeling helpful and avoiding in the future to grow a lazy child. If you repeatedily repress them, they can get more and more frustrated and fragile, not really knowing in what they can be useful for.
Well, children need to feel secure at home, they need love and directions, and more important, they need limits, limits to know in future that life is not an eternal fairytale, where everything we want is reacheable. But we should set limits to make them know that we are responsible for our achievements in future and that things are not falling from heaven, but what we achieve is a result of our own perseverance. Sometimes it can appear to us as a difficult work to face, but one thing is right, once we set limits we need to be consequent - naturally children will get used to it.
What I write here is my poing of view, my understanding of what I'm currently reading and from my own meandering experience with my doughter. I'm not perfect, probably I should be doing something differently, but I try my best, I'm getting informed, and everything I'm doing now is for love. Who loves cares. Everything has only one target: my doughter to be happy and happier.
Many kisses to all,
Andréa
