Permissiveness is humiliating for parents
"Permissiveness is humiliating for parents." With this clear phrase, the educational psychologist Robert J. Mackenzie gives his opinion on the way many parents today have to educate their children. Do we know how to set limits?
It seems that today there is no lack of news that makes clear a new scenario in the education of children: children who mistreat their parents, who face teachers and, in short, believe they do not have any limits.
It should be noted that these behaviors are not due solely to the permissiveness of parents, since the experts also point to inadvisable models that children follow through television and video games, or the family environment in which they have grown, among other circumstances. But still, we can not deny that children need clear rules and firm limits since they are very small.
Why do we have to put limits on children?
It may be that to many parents the fact of putting limits on children sounds like something authoritarian or severe, but nothing is further from reality. Children need limits to be able to socially coexist and have appropriate relationships with their peers.
Society is full of rules and regulations, so they must know how to live with them. They need to know what they can and can not do, and why. But we can not let society teach it to them, but it is convenient that those limits be marked with love and patience, from the family that will be, in turn, a good role model.
Ideas to transmit limits to children effectively
To transmit the limits effectively, it is necessary for the parents to:
- Information about the limit or norm: we must transmit the norm and explain the importance of it to the children so that they know it and, as far as possible, they understand it.
- Requirement: Once transmitted, it is necessary to demand compliance. They must execute it and carry it out until it is automated.
- Conviction: we must have clear the limit to demand, without hesitation, so that the children also appreciate the importance of it. This conviction on the part of the parents will give the children security.
- Agreement between both parents: father and mother we must demand in the same line. There can be no contradictions because the limit will not be reached if there are conflicting criteria.
- Proof: once a limit is established, it must always be demanded, without exception, until it becomes internalized by the children.
- Sweetie: the demand must always be accompanied by affection. We have to make the children feel confident that they will be able to carry out the norm and, in turn, help them to achieve it. You always have to be "there" to give them security. The demand must not be at odds with affection. We must make them see that they are being asked and demanded because they are loved and because they believe that it is the best for them.
Why does permissiveness harm children?
A child needs an adult to lead him and in that guide a transmission and requirement of limits is necessary. You can not leave a child who chooses his own way by not confronting him, or by avoiding telling him a NO. The child does not have the maturity or enough criteria to choose well. By natural tendency, he will choose the most comfortable roads, which do not have to be the best for him, but if he does not have someone who, with maturity and affection, tells him where he should go, he will react as he sees fit.
In addition, within parenting styles, being too permissive with children often leads to insecure children and this is one of the consequences of the lack of limits in children. The limits give a lot of security. They may like you more or less, but they know what they should or should not do, and they also know what they must do to have the approval of their parents and society. On the contrary, when a child is allowed to do what he wants he does not always know what to do and does not feel the approval of his parents, because everything is allowed.
Conchita Requero
Advice: María Campo Martínez. Director of Educational Centers Kimba
