From the ideal son to the real, how will it be and how do we want it to be?
Sometimes, we make our own pink novels about the lives of our children ... a pressure that can be counterproductive to their personality. A child needs, in a certain way, to become an "object" of his parents' illusions: that gives him security and self-confidence; but we can not go to the opposite extreme. We can not only help children, but we must guide them, offer them a good education and educate them in values, but in the end, they will set their goals themselves.
The true illusion: from the ideal son to the real one
There is a healthy illusion and a healthy optimism. A good education must be careful and preventive ... but open, because the destination is theirs. What we must teach them is to acquire the ability to situate themselves and to choose with maturity.
In people there is a tendency to develop all their potential, what they really have; to satisfy their basic tendencies; to be revalued through learning; to configure your own life. That strength is there, inside our son or daughter, in that girl or boy of ten or twelve years, who seems so charming and affable.
We do not have to artificially dream anything about him. Like the famous classical sculptor Michelangelo who, when asked about his sculptures, replied: "The sculpture is inside the stone, I just have to remove what is left over". Here is our job: to realize that we have something valuable in our hands, a jewel that must be polished, a unique and different personality, promising.
Bases of the children's personality
We can not only help children, but we must guide them, offer them a good education, educate them in values (especially in this stage between seven and twelve years), but in the end, they will set their goals themselves. In these years of maturation you have to help them lay the foundations of their personality. We must educate children who know how to make use of freedom, autonomous children, responsible children ... Thus they will have the necessary baggage to reach "their" ideal.
Being important, rich, popular, attractive is not always possible. Sometimes, it is also not possible to be a normal lawyer, a normal technician, a normal economist. But it is always possible to be a person and live at peace with yourself. Every child, every human being has the ability to be a happy person.
6 tips: establish the balance between the ideal son and the real
1. The excessive illusion comes to produce a great educational disillusionment: when we put unreal expectations, or press too much happens that, being impossible to get so high, we end up disappointed. This negatively affects the self-esteem of the children and the climate of dialogue and family confidence.
2. It is convenient to be realistic.Although the expectations created are part of a normal process and every father has the right to do them, just as natural is the realization that each child is a world and that our illusions do not have to coincide with "his" way.
3. Avoid the temptation to pressure and guide your children according to our dreams. But perhaps we will achieve the opposite effect and a loss of confidence and considerable communication that will soon take its toll on us, in adolescence.
4. Children are not guilty of how they are, and, in general, no one is hard to please. Sometimes, our son does not get to more because nature has not made him too smart; or maybe he has inherited our unfriendly character. You have to avoid any hint, especially those that do not go outside, to blame him.
5. Many children have been told "I love you as long as I do not get disappointed." It is not strange that many children translate it because "my parents only love me because of the grades, my successes, my results".
6. Think what irritates you and make you nervous about our children: Does it bother us that they do not achieve good results? Does it "put us on our nerves" that leave us in a bad place? Let's look back to find out what was the last time we got angry with him and why; The last time we felt cheated with him. So we will have clues to know what really worries us about their future and if our expectations are "fair".
Marisol Nuevo Espín