These days Spanish children are starting and returning to school. In many cities in Spain today classes have started, while in others they will start on Monday. Thousands of 2 and 3 year old children will go to school for the first time in their lives, some happier, some less, some more aware of where they are going, and others totally out of place.
Some will not cry neither now nor any day, others may not have cried today but do so when they see that this going to school is done every day, and others will have cried already today and will continue to do so for weeks. And if you are the father or mother of any of those who cry, or who will cry, you will see yourself doing, most likely, the opposite of what you have done and felt to date: when the first day of school is the first damn day you stop listening to your son and stop listening to you.
What am i talking about? Of me of course
I have three children and the youngest entered the school last year. It was the one that led best and did not generate any internal struggle for that. However, the two elders carried it a little worse. Jon, who is now 10 years old and will start fifth, ran in, jumping for joy, the first day of school. He surprised us because we didn't have them all, even though we had prepared him enough for that day.
However, he came out crying ... and although during a season it was going well, there came a time when every day it got a little worse, and it cost more, one day he even struggled to avoid dressing; and when you did it, you had him naked a few minutes later, refusing to dress again. The day he more or less allowed himself to put on his clothes, he refused to enter the school: he arched, crying, at the door, refusing to enter and taking the strategy of putting the body in mode "I have no muscle tone and the nucleus Earth pulls me to the ground "... you know, when they refuse to take them and it seems that they weigh 30 kilos more.
That was the time when I started (and started) to feel weird, weird, as if reason didn't marry emotion, as if the head told us that this should be so and the heart told us that we were doing something bad, as if we felt the breath of so many people telling us "children have to go to school to learn, it is good for them" and of our entrails will burst a burning flame that says "don't press it, don't leave it alone, don't you see that it doesn't want to come in?", as if we did it because everybody does it, but we felt that we were betraying him and ourselves.
That was how some of the days when it got worse, Miriam took it back home (how can I leave it to you like that?), Against the advice of the teacher who with all her good intention urged her to I left him inside, said goodbye and ran out of there.
Weeks passed, months went by, and little by little things got better… they worked on the subject from school, they helped him feel more secure, confident and a little more loved, and we all breathed a little calmer with those changes.
But with Aran everything was very different
Aran, who is 7 years old and is going to start second, is the one we thought would be better: his brother was already going to school and between going every day to look for him and pick him up, he not only knew the place, but also many children and teachers. ace. In addition, he has always been a very extraverted and independent child, and we believed that we would not have as many problems as with the eldest.
And it happened that we didn't have so many, but that we had many more. The first days, which were barely an hour and a half as an adaptation, more or less stayed well. We parents could go inside and help them to be calmer until we said goodbye and after a while we returned.
After a few days he stayed all morning and afternoon and we began to notice that he was, then at home, more irritable, disrespectful, as angry at the world and making us pay. We told the professor and he told us that in class it was very good, that he did not stand out for any such behavior and that it would be a matter of a few days.
Then the entry with him is over. The teacher told me that I could no longer go in and that Aran had to go in alone because a week had passed, and this only aggravated the problem. Every time I had less intention to enter, each time I complained more at the door, every time I cried more, and every time I grew more inside that feeling that I was acting against my will and my principles, that I wasn't listening and I wasn't listening. But that voice always appeared, fueled by the social pressure of wanting to do the right thing, which seems good to everyone, that told me that "he is a 3-year-old boy, and he has to go to school."
And convinced of this, despite suffering the seven evils inside, he left him every morning as he could. Some days better, some days worse, some days sad and others crying to enter, some days turning fast to not see him suffer, and others looking out the window in the hope of seeing that he immediately calmed down, while the teacher was adding day after day new drawings to prevent that eye contact from the outside.
And every afternoon was worse, every afternoon I was more rebellious, every afternoon he challenged us more, he put us to the test, we looked for the tickles, until we decided to discuss it again with the professor, who told us that he was still well. That it was true that he was having a hard time adapting, but then it was fine there, and that the afternoon at home would be something else.
Of course it wasn't right
We realized that his teacher was not going to help us at all, not because he didn't want to, but because he wasn't getting the diagnosis right. Aran was shouting at us, he no longer knew how, that we should be the same as before: those affectionate, kind and respectful parents who had spent three years with him playing, laughing and having good times that had served as a guide and that they had let him grow and take his own independence based on his desires and abilities.
He only asked us that, every morning before entering and every afternoon after leaving school: "Be yourselves, respect your ideas, respect me again. Why have I suddenly stopped caring you? Why suddenly I no longer accompany you on the road? Why do you leave me alone if I don't want to? " His challenges, his rebelliousness, his punishments (because he was in some way punishing us every afternoon with his bad behavior to get our attention) were not a way to give us back the one that kept us, it was a love test which made us full-fledged: "Show me that you still love me, react, help me to feel good, because I am having a terrible time."
And we decided to listen
The situation reached such a point that we couldn't do more. He was wearing us physically and psychologically and was wearing him. "School is fun, school is good, children go to school to learn a lot of things and be better people," they said. But Aran was no longer the same, he was no longer the cheerful boy of all time. That was no longer my son ... He was a child who made it impossible for us to live together at home in the afternoon, and at the end, at any time of the day.
We had two options: take him out of school, which was what we were about to do, tired of feeling bad and making you feel bad, or looking for an intermediate solution. It sounded the most absurd, how is a father going to ask a son if he wants to go to school every morning? I could imagine the answers myself: "It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, every day I'll tell you no"; "Children have to go to school and period"; "Since when are the children who say what they can and cannot do"; "You are overprotecting it ... you just need to put it in a bubble" and a long etcetera. But we didn't care, we just wanted to get our son and our lives back, we wanted to be able to love him again, and we needed to feel good again with our way of proceeding.
So every time we started asking him if he wanted to go to school, and when he said no, we accepted his answer, we respected her, and did not go to school. That day began a surprising change in him, which was improving with each "no". Again it was heard heard, respected and loved. Again he knew we were there and that we were going to support his decision, whatever it was.
And many days he said he did!
And to our surprise (although we imagined it), many days he answered yes. It is true that we went to school equally because the elder kept going, and maybe that helped a little, but many days he said it. I wanted to go to school, and then I was happy because it was his decision.
Children should decide whether or not to go to school
From that moment on, my vision about school changed completely. From the place to which children have to go yes or yes because it is their obligation, it became, in my mind, the place where children are going to learn because they want to learn. And to want to learn the schools they have to get the children to have a good time, to feel loved and respected, to feel part of the group, to be motivated to go, with the hope of entering and seeing their classmates and Professor ... if they don't get it, everything becomes more difficult, because then it is the place to go again, whether you like it or not.
And they already say that to learn something the first thing is to want to learn itThat is why I had and I am sure that it is the children who should decide whether or not to go to school, at least when they are younger, so that they do not feel that they have lost their guides, their parents, their trusted persons. I always imagine the times when there were no schools, when the oldest of the town gathered the children to teach them things based on their experience, and I do not imagine any children being taken by force before him, but quite the opposite: many children running to listen to what that man with a white beard had to tell, while other children were engaged in other things like playing, running or climbing, because they didn't feel the need to learn yetor curiosity had not yet awakened of knowing all that.
And then I remember the Finnish children, who don't learn to read until they are 7 years old, and I realize that we still have a lot to learn. At 7 years because they wait for them to have hunger for letters. Because by then they have seen lyrics everywhere, in subtitled movies, on posters, in stories, in books, and they realize that they don't know how to decipher them ... and they see that adults do, and older children , and they want to do it too. They want to learn and put your energy and commitment to it. And if anyone is not too curious, they wait at age 8, because age does not matter, but why, No matter what you read, but do it when you want to do it.
That's why it doesn't really matter when they learn, but when they do, it's because they want to learn it. It is the best way to move forward and to want to know a little more every day.
But in Spain it is not set up like this and they make us believe that if they do not learn now they will never do it again, and that motivation matters less than the results. And they make us believe that even when children come crying, it is best for them, because life is that hard and they have to learn that they have obligations ... even though, as I say, learning should never be mandatory.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | Are you overprotective parents? (II), I don't say it, the “bright minds” say it: the educational model is finished, “Dad, I don't want to go to school. I get bored! ”, A book that encourages educational change
