The Minister of Education, Social Policy and Sports, Mercedes Cabrera, made a press conference yesterday on the occasion of the celebration of International Children's Day and as a presentation of the announcement "Your hands are to protect" that I wanted to summarize by agreeing with she.
"Cheek, scourge, scream are ineffective ways of educating", commented the minister. Such aggressions are a manifestation of "intelligence failure" as violence is contrary to education and there is no acceptable minimum of it.
Cabrera has also commented that physical punishment is a "violation of the rights of the child" and one "Unacceptable double standards: what we would never do to an adult should never consider doing to a child."
Speaking of the role of parents has commented that "We must have authority over our children, we must obviously take care of them, and there are much better ways of doing so than resorting to what would be a manifestation of failure of coexistence, or of reason or dialogue." Given the concern about the lack of rules and obligations in adults, he commented that they should learn what they are but "They must do so by their own conviction and critical form, not as a result of imposition by other means."
These statements arrive as a real explosion (or bomb) at the moment when the lack of values of adolescents and the lack of limits of children are being criticizedAnd, honestly, I don't want to take any reason away from either.
Children are born with the "formatted hard disk", that is, they are a blank sheet that they come to learn from us and although it may seem a lie, they are totally willing to do so. They expect us to teach them how to live and hope to learn it based on their abilities.
The problem comes when we want them to understand something that they are not trained, by age and by rational ability, to understand.
"It is that until I give a cheek does not understand" is a phrase that is in the mouth of many parents, however it is not true. Children learn by the mechanism cause effect that when they make A (for example touching a plug) they receive a slap on the hand that hurts (B). This way when they make A arrives B. Since they don't want B to arrive, they stop doing A. Have they understood the danger of touching the plug? No, they have understood that if they touch him, mom or dad arrives and they hit him.
Children do not have the reasoning capacity that adults do. That is why it is the adult who has to adapt to the capacity of the children and not vice versa. I will tell you that this is dangerous, I will stage the fright that hit me when I touch it, I will cover or remove everything that I would prefer not to touch and distract you with something else when I see you want to touch it, for some examples. One day, when I am able to understand my words, you will know the danger of doing what I have always told you that it is better not to do, and you will not have to hit him.
Faced with these statements, several criticisms have appeared with a similar concern: "So you have to let them do what they want?" Well no, of course not. In society and in every house there are rules that children should know, but please, not based on physical aggressions. The letter with blood enters It has long since ceased to be a morally acceptable saying.
This is a topic that goes a long way. To much. I do not want to extend more so I finish with two ideas that the Minister has commented:
- Physical punishment is a failure of intelligence: as I have already told you, we must show that we are adults and rational and intelligent people and work a little by alternative methods. Children learn many things by imitation. It makes no sense to try to teach a child who should not hit another by hitting him.
- What we would not do to adults should not be done to children: Formerly it was socially accepted to hit women. If he needed a correction because he did not understand the needs of the husband, it was well seen to provide it, as it was "the way he understood" what was expected of her. Today, luckily, this is unthinkable. However in children it is accepted. We cannot fill our mouths with criticism of abusers when we ourselves are violating the integrity of our children.
Whenever a child's integrity is violated, the child ceases to be a bit like he is to be a little more what his parents want him to be.
