Lead, guide or accompany the son on his personal path?
What connection do these concepts have with frustration and how can parents harm children and adolescents with their demands and expectations?
Vicente Rico Ferrer (Valencia, 46 years old), graduated in Dramatic Art, educational
coach
certified by the Spanish Association of Coaching (ASESCO) and trainer in neurolinguistic programming (NLP), started his project Club Educando —an
online community
of free educational courses—to help families with their children and as a response to the school failure that he observed during his 15 years as head of studies in an educational center.
He claims to have been a young man who felt lost and was not a good student.
Next October will see the light of his first book:
Learn how to motivate your child (or student)
.
ASK.
What happens when parents educate their children out of frustration?
ANSWER.
Frustration is closely linked to the creation of expectations that we have generated about our lives and have not been fulfilled, and, logically, about the expectations that we generate in our children's so that they are fulfilled.
In a certain way it is condemning them to make our same mistakes and, generally, forcing them to live something they have not decided.
This frustration in parents can hide behind messages and intentions of good will, behind convictions and perceptions such as wanting the best for them or having or enjoying what one did not have or was not given.
This false perception of doing what is best for them often makes it impossible for us, as parents, to see the reality that we are creating for our children.
If we educate out of frustration, we will deprive them of the power to choose,
More information
From 'helicopter fathers' to 'sandwich mothers': how hypervigilance creates fearful children without autonomy
Q.
How can parents be aware that they are educating their children from that feeling of disappointment and how does it affect them in the short and long term?
R.
Realizing this is a small step, but one without which we will never give a second to change that situation.
In my training I invite parents to focus on this aspect and how it may be affecting the education they are providing, working directly on the concept and process of accompaniment in the education of their children.
We invite you to reflect on the following: are you leading, are you guiding or are you accompanying your child's life?
From the first two positions it is easy for us to find some frustration and, however, from third it is going to be really difficult.
A child's life is led or guided based on one's own experience, knowledge... and these may have allowed you to achieve a good result, but the same does not have to ensure the success of your child.
When working from accompaniment, his experience is the one that leads, you teach him how to decide and he learns and lives with the consequences of his actions.
To stop educating out of frustration, we need to be brave and dare as fathers and mothers to welcome any possible version of our children, even if it comes close to anything we don't like or that we haven't contemplated.
Q.
How can you educate your child in a respectful way?
Leaving him room to be him?
A.
The basis of education must be love.
It is what will give us the strength to overcome that irrational and logical fear that will haunt us when thinking about any facet of them.
Love will allow us to create within ourselves a magnificent vision of their personal triumph and happiness in what they choose and which, surely, we would never have decided for them.
Vicente Rico Ferrer helps families in response to the school failure that he observed during his 15 years as head of studies in an educational center.
Q.
Can the child or adolescent be educated without interfering too much in their decisions, but also setting limits and protecting them?
A.
Actually, they are fully compatible concepts.
Educating consists of setting limits and accompanying our children so that they know how to move between these limits, which are basically the rules of coexistence, respect and productivity necessary to be able to live within a society.
Protecting is teaching them the importance of respecting these limits and accompanying them when the negative consequences of exceeding them arrive.
But the way of passing within those limits is what really makes the difference, because that is where all the interpretations of our children really have a place.
Q.
What would you say is the most complete and respectful way to educate your children?
R.
Accompanying them in their discoveries, in their failures, in their successes, in their learning... By doing so, we are making our experiences available to them, not imposing.
It is one of the most important challenges as parents.
Q.
Can parents educate in an adequate way if they have unresolved emotional issues?
R.
This is one of the main points of difficulty about what is worked on in
coaching.
educational, because normally parents want changes in our children but we are not so willing to change ourselves.
For example, if I am under the emotion of fear, it will be very difficult for me to teach my son to be brave in the face of certain moments.
It is essential to grow as parents to be able to give our children an education adapted to current needs.
As the writer and poet Mario Benedetti said: "When we thought we had all the answers, suddenly all the questions changed."
We are a generation that has discovered that it is no longer worth educating our children in the same way that we were educated as children.
Inherited values are still important, but the way to transmit, use and integrate them into the lives of our children is totally different.
We have to be aware that it is increasingly difficult to work on education with them on a day-to-day basis.
Work, the demands, the rhythm of daily life usually force us to educate our children from time to time and not always in the best way.
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