I'm still looking for ways to explain how we can reconcile parenting with respect and empathy with the need to accept, agree, explain and even impose certain limits.
He said that the limits are respect, understood not as something unilateral, from the father to the son, from the adult to the child, but as a general formula in which to develop as people and establish relationships with others.
It is not easy to reconfigure our vision and our automatic reactions, especially if we have been educated with "tools" such as humiliations, comparisons, punishments, shouts, cheeks, teasing or expletives when there was a conflict or a clash between our wishes or children's needs and those of the adult who took care of us. It is scary to go over and fall in repeating the same schemes, but it is also scary not knowing how to educate and guide children. So we must first be clear about something like the nature of the limits.
The word limit
It is a word that, from an empathic upbringing, seems to produce some fear, since it is feared that limiting is controlling freedom and creative impulses, imposing our whims or norms above the natural needs of the little ones, damaging them in their capacity of self-regulation and learning.
From an authoritarian and adult-centered upbringing it does not produce rejection because it is considered that the limit is decided by the adult with their backs even to the evolutionary needs of children, because educating is shaping according to what is expected in society and it is not trusted that the Child is able to discover for himself what is suitable, because adequate is identified with good.
But the words are alive and their meaning can be very different depending on who pronounces them. Even, escaping from a dichotomy between ways of seeing education confronted or opposed, we can simply approach the word limit with confidence and let him explain what it really means.
1. m. Real or imaginary line that separates two lands, two countries, two territories. 2. m. End, term U in apposition in cases such as limit dimensions, limit situation. 3. m. Extreme that comes a certain time. The limit of this period is immovable. 4. m. Extreme that can reach the physical and the mood. He reached the limit of his forces. 5m. Mat. In an infinite sequence of magnitudes, fixed magnitude to which the terms of the sequence are increasingly approaching.
Then, of course, we can look for other words to better explain reality, if limit did not please us at all.
I like it, it is natural and it is a bit countercurrent to use it, because for me, the limit is not something external imposed by others, but it is the safe, real or emotional enclosure that, as caregivers and educators, we provide to the child who can develop autonomously in freedom inside, protected in his experimentation but without harming or harming anyone.
Negative feelings and aggressiveness
As the baby becomes a child, his behavior will not always respond to the real, authentic need, but many times we will have to be able to read, so to speak, that he hides in the emotional manifestations or in your desires.
The first thing we will ask ourselves is if aggressiveness is something natural or learned. Many parents, even those who treat their children with maximum delicacy, find that their child expresses their emotions explosively and can even do so aggressively.
In the environment, school or television there are reasons for concern. Other adults or other children may have attitudes that our child copies or receives that are not entirely desirable and reproduced at home. Also, let's not forget, the child is not yet able to understand and channel their negative feelings.
Anger, envy, jealousy and anger are natural feelings. We cannot deny them, nor is it safe to repress them, but if we have, and that does not only refer to children, we know them, identify them and manage to channel them in ways that do not harm us or others.
However, at mark the limits of the expression of negative feelingsWe have to avoid blaming the child, labeling his behavior by making him think that it is bad for feeling, denying his feelings or even avoiding any expression of anger, since that can also be counterproductive when repressed in excess. The right way would be to offer you resources to understand how you feel and the reasons for it, verbalize your emotions and let the negative energy express itself in a non-aggressive way.
There is no universal recipe, since we are all different. There are children who soon achieve a verbal ability that will help them a lot to understand what is happening and very empathic children who naturally connect with others and with themselves. But this is not always that way.
A little two year old can be saturated with emotions and experiences that cause him worry and a nervous state that makes them explode with a tantrum: something that has happened in school, discovering that he does not want another to touch his toys, the arrival of the little brother or an angry conversation of his relatives are reasons So I'm scared
Although tantrums are somewhat predictable if we take children to their own physical or emotional endurance, they are also a normal form of personality evolution. When they happen, ensuring the safety of the child and others, we can do nothing but remain available and present, without getting angry, hoping that the child is ready to regain ownership of his emotionality.
And from here we reach one of the unquestionable limits: it is not allowed to harm or hit anyone. This norm of behavior must be indicated in a firm and consistent manner at all times. When a baby hurts us when breastfeeding or if we throw a toy, holding it, we have to explain that it hurts and cannot be done. Of course, we must ourselves and the environment, be consistent, and never use physical punishment, because hitting is a bad thing in itself, that no one, adult or child, has the right to do. We should even control the contents of stories and movies, so as not to anticipate the exposure to violent behaviors before the child is prepared to rationalize them and consider them an unacceptable mode of behavior.
Although we are not sure how much our child understands what we say, we must explain, firmly and gently, that you can't hurt others, neither to the parents either. And it is that setting limits to the child begins fundamentally with what the parents say but above all we do. That is why it is so important to hold the hand even for a slight scourge and stop, holding your hand, any blow you try, the little one, to give us. Children learn by example as well as by word.
Apart from this immovable limit, which is that of not harm others physically, we are going to find other ways in which we have to set limits: to play, to exploration, to the tone of words and their content, to behavior in society. We will see in following topics how to address them within the necessary freedom of development of children and their natural discovery of limits.
