There is things that, for your sake, we cannot afford to tell our children, and surely one has ever missed you. Words have a much deeper and more intense power than we think. Words, when they come from dad or mom, can have an incalculable impact on children.
Yes, it is very possible that some of the things I tell you below have come out of your mouth. But calm down, you are not the worst father or the worst mother in the universe because of it. The key is that you begin to be aware of when and how you say certain things, that you "catch yourself" in those moments and rectify. Little by little you will change that tendency until you get to the point of controlling yourself before saying anything like that. It costs work, but it is worth it.
And the words have a huge, gigantic power, both to emotional level as of cognitive development itself of the kids. A study conducted in collaboration between Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, determined that exposure to aggressive and abusive language causes alterations in the development and appearance of psychiatric symptoms in the future.
Be careful with what you say: we will try to avoid, as far as possible, things like ...
It may seem obvious to you, but ... have you never missed a "don't go silly" or something? It may not be of the utmost importance to you, that it is even an expression made, but for your little one it is something else.
Silly, awkward ... Eye with the labels we put without realizing it. You cannot imagine that of adults who in consultation, when we treat mood disorders, have internalized and megabought messages that their parents sent to them as children. What we receive from our parents, the messages, the keys, the rules, we internalize in an amazingly strong way, and on many occasions we activate them in adult life, when they neither make sense nor are adaptive.
Children are children and do not have the capacity to process and understand the nuances with which we say it, they cannot separate our punctual anger from the global opinion we have of them, they do not have maturity or capacity to understand reality: that we are being unfair in saying that (because we are being, right?).
With these words we are transmitting a total and absolute contempt for his feelings. Keep in mind that what may seem like a trifle to you may be a world; What for you is just a toy that has been left behind for them is their treasure, their possession, something they wanted and that has disappeared.
Children are learning to know and manage their emotions and our role is to accompany and guide them in that learning, not ridicule them or make them feel bad precisely because they feel bad. Can you imagine that one day when you are especially sad about something that happened to you, your partner or your best friend comes and tells you to stop feeling bad because it is not so bad, that you are an exaggerated? Well, that.
What we surely say with the best of intentions, perhaps to strengthen their self-esteem or to feel valued, has precisely the opposite effect in the medium and long term: they internalize the label so that they understand that they must meet that expectation and can never fail (As I said before, they do manage in absolute terms).
The result is that we can meet children who avoid certain "complex" activities so as not to run the risk of, I insist, fail. They are children who end up creating a zone of reduced comfort, who are afraid to experiment ... And if there is something that children learn it is testing, so they are missing something important.
Let's talk clearly: this is a full-fledged blackmail. And yes, it is something that escapes parents every two times (if this is not your case, congratulations on your work), especially when we begin to be somewhat overcome by the situation.
The problem is that they learn that we can modify the behavior of others through coercion, they extract that the ultimatum is a legitimate way to request changes in the behavior of others.
In addition, if you threaten something (something that we already know that is not productive) and then we do not comply, the result will be just the opposite of what you expect: the little one will understand that “you bark a lot, but you bite a little”. That is to say, It is neither a good strategy for the development of the child nor will it help you in the medium term to get it to pay attention to you. And I say in the medium term because it is true that the first times it may be that, in fear of your threat being fulfilled, I will obey you. But I insist: do you really think it's a good educational method?
These terms are really, and we treat this in consultation, cognitive distortions, thinking biases, because they are not real, because there is nothing that always happens or never happens, and less in the behavior of children.
We treat these biases as filters that we put to our thoughts And, believe me, they only serve to harm us. You'll understand quickly: how do you feel if you think your partner NEVER does anything for you? Wrong, right? The key is that if we stop to think the truth is that it does do things, then ... it is never. But if we have said that the emotional impact has never been taken. It is understood?
In the case of children it is also given that with these absolutes we label and condition them: when a child hears a “You never pay attention” on the one hand he has just undervalued his efforts, all those times in which he has paid attention. On the other hand, he begins to forge a label: my parents say I don't obey, then… I must be a “bad boy”. As you can imagine the consequences of this are not positive.
For them, especially at certain ages such as 3 or 4 years, the world does separate into absolutes: either you are good or you are bad, or you are handsome or you are ugly ... So you will "buy" your comment without questioning , they will literally think that they never do such a thing or that they are always such another. Careful with this.
Children are slowly learning to manage their emotions, creating rules and ideas about the world around them, and our words they contribute greatly to that development. Moreover, all this ends up modulating your self-esteem. That's why dad, mom, try to pay attention to what you say (and of course how you say it), what for you may be an unimportant comment may leave a mark on your child; put a mark ... make it a good one, don't you think?
Photos | iStockphoto.com
In Babies and more: How to teach your child to be optimistic, 15 positive phrases to tell your children that they will strengthen their self-esteem
