The leadership and authority of parents in the family

THINKSTOCK

Authority is one of the fundamental notions of the family; understands the superiority of parents over children in order to raise them. When parents are not able to maintain authority, or renounce it for a questionable respect for the freedom of their children, they can hardly aspire to be leaders before them, simply because the same parents are mutilating themselves.

You could say that authority is the strong arm of leadership. In addition, and paradoxically, they may be endangering the correct use that children make of their freedom, since they place them at the mercy of tyrants such as fashion, comfort, sensuality, "coleguillas" ... Leonard Sax, in his book The collapse of authority, highlights the great change that has taken place in the world educational culture with the transfer of authority from parents to children.


Some, interested in spreading adulterated concepts of freedom, have tried to caricature the idea of ​​authority by associating it with images of coercion, repression, intolerance ... However, by force of coercion, no real authority is reached; it falls more in authoritarianism and that has little to do with the correct use of authority. Paradoxically, who loves the authentic, freedom values ​​the legitimate authority.

If a home were left without authority, inertia would lead to chaos and children would tend towards the minimum effort. To master this situation, parents must put order and unity, making it very clear to each of their children what orders they have to undertake, establishing priorities and accustoming each one to render accounts of the task entrusted.


Why does the authority have such a bad press?

In my opinion, because it is a value that recognizes the superiority of one being over others and that is intolerable in an egalitarian society. The authority recognizes that there is a dominator and a dominated, an oppressor and many oppressed! ... and so we could continue to get rid of the argument, because that is the only way to explain the bad press of authority: with demagogy.

Another demagogic line is "not to attempt against the fundamental rights of children". Repressing, harassing, forcing, traumatizing * It seems as if "authority" and "atomic bomb" were sister cousins.

And then there are those who join the car for convenience and invent a nice theory to justify their pedagogical negligence. "We want our children to make their own decisions, we do not want to impose our perspective". Well, deep down you are already making a decision, imposing the existential perspective that is hidden behind it *


This crisis of authority is one more manifestation of the hegemonic culture that we have had to live. Once again, behind the mask of the incombustible myth of progress hides the deep boredom of those who do not have certain hopes. And, without them, whether we want to or not, there is no novelty, no progress, much less happiness.

Heavy fathers and machacones

There are parents who for six or eight years repeat several times a day that they will take some kind of measure on their child or something similar but it never happens. There comes a moment when hollow phrases are lost in a vacuum and become familiar jokes.

In general, we are in favor of positive attention, but in order to reach a positive state, the limits must first be clearly defined. With continuous threats, concessions to affective blackmail, negotiations to the bottom, disproportionate corrections and hasty decisions, it is impossible to establish limits and, therefore, it is an inadequate starting point to consider an effective positive education procedure.

Instead of threatening with different and tainted punishments, we recommend establishing a plan clearly, communicating it to the family and executing it with rigor.

The more children know that their parents have become blunt, the less they will have to make use of their forcefulness.

Luis Manuel Martínez, Doctor in Pedagogy

Advice: Cristina Gil Gil, teacher and author of the book The teacher responds Advice for educational concerns of parents.

More information in the book The collapse of authority, from the author Leonard Sax. Ed. Word.

Video: The Authority of Scripture in Marriage and Family Life - Kimberly Hahn - Deep in History


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