We continue today with the second part of Babies' interview and more to the psychologist Teresa García, specialist in compassionate communication and education without punishment. In the first part we talk about punishments and their risks. We will delve now into the difference between punishment and natural consequence, in the reasons why parents and teachers use punishment and in the healthiest and most effective alternatives such as communication, play, motivation and mutual understanding of people's needs.
What does a boy or a girl feel when he is punished?
It's hard to know what another person feels. But conjectures can be made. When I am doing the workshops, a question I almost always ask is: while you were a teenager did you trust your parents? And the majority answer is no. And besides that he is not usually motivated in fear of being punished if they know what he has been doing. Sometimes those punishments were called "consequences."
There are precisely those who say that applying natural consequences is not punishing ...
Indeed, natural consequences are not punishments.
For example, if your child goes to school and forgets to take his book, a natural consequence is that he will not be able to use it. And that he will have to sharpen his ingenuity to get to read what he had to read, asking a classmate or talking to the teacher. Now, that the father put him as punishment, or the teacher, how to do twice as many exercises, that is not a consequence, is punishment. And the adult is convinced that it is a consequence, but the child knows perfectly well that it is a punishment.
But those adults were children, and they received that treatment or similar, why do they repeat it?
It is what they know in most cases. And they have a mission and a responsibility with their sons and daughters. They want to do their best, and apply what they know. There is also a psychoanalytic theory, which says that there is a compulsion to repeat what you experienced in childhood. Thus, a chain of nonsense is perpetuated, leading to very different results from those initially proposed by adults. That is why I work a lot with adults, on the one hand, healing childhood wounds, if any, and on the other by providing them with tools that guide them in relationships with people who are few years old.
Do you consider obedience undesirable?
It depends on what objective you want to achieve. If you want your son, your daughter to have self-discipline, and you foster obedience, then you will not reach your goal, because obedience is very different from self-discipline.
What is the difference between them?
The self-disciplined is responsible for their actions. The obedient no. That is why fathers and mothers are continually repeating to their children what they have to do.
How to change inappropriate behavior then if you are not getting obedience?
For precisely allowing, where possible, the child to experience the natural consequences of his actions. And talking a lot with them. Even the little ones, benefit from our conversations, if we turn them into stories and games.
What do you do when they misbehave?
The first thing would be to know who decides what it is to "misbehave." In my opinion my daughter misbehaves when she screams while I talk on the phone. But in his opinion, I probably misbehave, for leaving her alone and bored while talking on the phone.
So there is no misbehaving?
Yes, it exists, but each person decides what it is for them to misbehave. Children also decide, even if we don't give them the opportunity to express it.
As you speak, the behavior that the adult considers inappropriate for the child may be completely appropriate?
That's. That is why I talk about communication, everything a person does, even if he is not speaking, communicates "something".
Is there not then inappropriate behavior?
For there to be inappropriate behavior, someone has to judge it and condemn it to that category. I consider it more effective to ask what the child is communicating to me while acting in this way?
But, Teresa, that changes the rules of the game ...
Yes, because now each person is responsible for what they need. When the needs of several people are compatible, the relationship between them is harmonious, when they are incompatible, the relationship is complicated. Knowing this, and finding a way to make the needs compatible, the punishment and the prize lose all their meaning.
What would you say to a mother who wants to know what her child is communicating with her behavior?
I would tell him to ask a lot of curiosity questions and listen to him. And there the most important thing is that when you listen you have your "empty mind", because if you are going to confirm what you think is the answer, you will not listen to your son.
Does this work with aggressive or dangerous behaviors?
A mother whose son was in college, away from home, began to do the workshops conducted by Adele Faber and E. Mazlish. He talked with the son by phone every two or three days. So he decided to try the curiosity questions and listen to it. His son was at that time 17 years old. He discovered that the boy was beginning to use drugs, entering a somewhat "dangerous" "land." But his son was far away, so the only tool he had was listening, and questions. He avoided the trials as much as he could. And in a few months, his son had changed completely, he was no longer taking drugs. I would say that if a tool can achieve such a great result, it works with dangerous behaviors.
And with the aggressive?
In one of the workshops of Marshall Rosemberg, a psychologist author of "non-violent communication," a woman who used assertive communication tools in an extreme situation attended. She worked at a center that picked up addicted people and helped them detoxify. One night a drug addict entered, with a razor in his hand and threatened to put the razor on his neck. The woman got. talking to the boy for 30 minutes, which would eventually allow him to call an ambulance and to be taken to another center. I clarify that the boy didn't even scratch him. When Marshall heard his story, he asked him what he was doing in the workshop, because it was evident that he was perfectly handling communication. To which she responded, that the following week she had a tremendous discussion with her mother.
But, although this gives us an idea that communication does work in dangerous situations, then why did the woman then argue with her mother?
In my opinion, and in my experience what I have found are cystic emotions. If your mother (anyone close), has done something that hurts you, and you have not been able to heal him, that emotion prevents you from thinking enough to speak assertively. In those cases I recommend healing the emotion, because it also affects relationships with other people, and with children.
From what age should we require children to eat, sleep, dress or collect their toys alone?
In my opinion, compassionate speech avoids words like demanding and duty. Each child will do those activities and many more only, when prepared. That question usually hides the prejudice that children are lazy people who don't want to collaborate at home or learn. And the truth is that children, while they are young, are never idle. If a baby is observed learning to walk, learning to speak. If mom is scrubbing the dishes or floors, the kids are willing to help. Another thing is that her help the mother see her as going slower while doing homework. So try to avoid being accompanied by it. What usually results in the fact that after a while they are not interested in that task and in others.
Nor should we demand that they do their homework?
Another "obligation", another requirement. When I work with teachers and we come to this topic, I again observe a certain ignorance.
When a child wants to learn it is practically impossible to prevent him from learning. It is easier to generate in the child the desire to learn.
Then homework will have no reason to be. There it shows again the "culture" of "children are lazy and do not want to learn" so you have to force them.
When children take their homework off and take a long time, what do you recommend to parents?
If a child gets confused when he is learning, he is obviously bored. So the recommendation is to make the task fun. Then he will do it happy and fast.
Cabbages usually do not do fun homework, and also require that their students carry homework done. Sometimes, parents are overwhelmed because the tasks are excessive and do not leave children free time. What would you recommend?
Learn effective communication tools and go talk to the teacher, especially when statistics say that the more homework in Primary, the worse the results in Secondary. And that the duties in Secondary, improve very little, and not always, the results in university courses.
What do you think about punishing children without homework?
That the teacher who does it probably does not have adequate training in punishment. Because school is not a controlled environment. And he also doesn't know the intensity that the punishment has to have so that it has the effect he hopes to achieve: that he does his homework. Therefore, as for the teacher, it will have very limited results, with a very high risk that the child will be even more determined not to study that subject. And that in some cases, that punishment gets out of hand and produces almost irreversible damage. It would be much more effective than the subject he teaches to make it fun, and then the boys and girls will do their homework with pleasure.
Almost irreversible?
I know a case, in which the teacher insisted that a student be left without a yard because he did not do his homework, so the yard time forced him to do his homework. The boy insisted on not doing what the teacher wanted. This is how the whole elementary school happened (he had the same teacher at that stage). The boy took such an aversion to books, that he still reads fatal today. And he's 30 years old, so I'm talking about a relatively close time. I know it is an extreme case, but if you insist on punishing, and that is the only way ... these cases can happen and in fact they happen. Children learn everything, practically everything, playing.
In this second part of the interview with the psychologist Teresa García, deepening punishments and consequences, we have reached an issue that I think deserves more depth: education and school. In the third part of this interview we will talk about this.
