After talking a few days ago about the role of some fathers and mothers as spokespersons for children today I want to go a little further, talking about those parents who, acting as spokespersons or simply talking about the topic of children, very typical issue when it is father, they just explaining things about them in their presence.
Again, and as I did in the previous entry, the error depends on the age of the child. Having a baby in his arms and talking about him, how he sleeps, how he eats, the things he does and all these things that we like so much to explain is something of the most normal thing in the world. However, when the child is already able to understand what we say and even able to explain himself, it is disrespectful to talk about them being presentprecisely as if they were not.
It is clear that it is not done with bad intention, they are dialogues that parents have always had with other people when their children were babies and simply continue doing the same, explaining how they sleep, how they eat, how they behave, things they say, things what do they do ... and we add our opinion to all of this.
If they are present they can hear in a moment a brief assessment by us, with opinions that perhaps we have never expressed directly: "It is very bug", "at night do not see the ones that bind me", "is this way or that" and according to what we say about them we can be reinforcing behaviors. I imagine that you will have read or heard on more than one occasion that it is not advisable to label children, that we can never say of our son that he is a bug, bad or trasto, precisely because when he hears it from our mouth they end up reaffirming his behavior "I am a thing, I'm bad, I have to behave that way. " And if we fall into the game, with the other adult, to go explaining his cries, to see which child has made her fatter, I don't even tell you, because it might seem that we are explaining the achievements and trophies of our children.
Perhaps, on the contrary, let's talk well about our son. This can be beneficial if our son is certainly a little "perlilla", that is, problematic in some sense. Hearing us talk to other people about how affectionate he may be or that he seemed to have had problems with others before, but now he has calmed down and is already able to be with other children without harming them (even though it is not quite true) It can help you see what we value most in a child's attitudeWhat do we expect from him and what makes us happy.
But what I just said is an educational strategy, a resource to use at specific times, knowing that in reality it is disrespectful to talk about them in their presence because, in a way, we are telling things about his intimacy, his way of being and acting, and we do it precisely when he is present and when he could count it equally, being he more able than we to decide how far to count.
In other words, imagine that an adult would ask us something and that our son would answer by telling more than we would like to tell, you know: "What is my father doing? Well, here you are, complaining lately about some wrinkles that have come out, complaining because he gets older and those things ... at work, since you ask, he should not do very well, because he is always complaining about how plasta his boss is, who has him bitter while his partner at work, who arrived later than him, seems to be better seen ... by the way, who are you? " It is not correct to act as a spokesperson, as we said the other day, and it is not correct to speak of children as if they were not in front, because It is a way to belittle them, of leaving them aside, of not giving value to their presence. In the same way that we don't talk to other people about someone who is present ("Hello? I'm still here!"), We shouldn't do it with our children, because even if they don't tell us, nobody likes to seem invisible.
