Let's start at the beginning. If we wish raise our children without whipping, without shouting and without punishment we must analyze the way in which we were educated and open the heart to the inner child to recover the feelings and thoughts we had then.
We, as children, suffer if they hit us, even if it was a scourge. Of course we suffer. When they belittled us or imposed obedience without explanation, we suffered. We suffer when, taken to a situation incompatible with the natural needs of children, we "misbehave" and get a shout or a fish for it. We suffer because no child deserves to be treated less respectfully than an adult, their rights are the same and they, if no one deprives them of that idea, are convinced of it.
Have we assumed that our parents were wrong when they used whipping and shouting consciously or for lack of resources? It is not a simple step but it is indispensable, if we consider that the child we were deserved that treatment then we are condemned to repeat it with our children. But if we are able to assume that this is not the way we want our children to grow and we have decided to use tools such as empathy and respect We are on track.
There are tools that can allow us to control ourselves When the child has us overwhelmed and we feel a rage that ascends through the throat, it fills our heads with intense beats and makes us explode. We are responsible for our lack of self-control, not the child, because precisely they do not act to make us angry in emotionally healthy relationships.
Children are children, adults have different needs, rhythms and normal reactions in them. And they want to be loved, cared for, heard and taken care of by us. The situations that they live can cause them to act in an annoying and even morally or dangerously incorrect way, but our primary function is not the punitive one, but the educational one, and above all, we are responsible for achieving naturally adequate environments and environments for them.
When a father or mother feels that rising anger they discharge frustration and intense anger in the child, they can notice that internal violence that only calms down when the child surrenders and cries. The hand does not escape to give a scourge full of love and tenderness, escapes enraged and fed up. Too. If not, we would not lose control.
I wonder sometimes if we are avenging the pain of our inner child in the child and only feel satiated when we see him crying as we cried?
We will return to this question in following topics, because this anger that is triggered when we are overwhelmed and takes the reins of our actions can tame it, control it and look for life strategies and even tricks to keep it controlled.
But first I want to analyze a little better the fundamental cause why parents begin to use the scourge: the tantrums. Children of approximately two or three years, like our little one from the supermarket example, have tantrums.
These are not a resource to claim what they ask for at that time, the bauble or the arms. The trigger can be anything, that he wants to drink in another child's glass, that he doesn't like the snack we have given him, that we have removed the cap from the bottle when they wanted to remove it, or just that we don't remember the letter of a song I have lived all these situations with my son or with my friends' children, and the real reason for the tantrum was never that.
A child with a tantrum asks for a very important thing, indispensable for him, something that we have not been able to give him when necessary: attention. The discomfort is so great that it explodes in an earthquake of unleashed emotions, and usually it is also mixed with a physical need that we, the adults responsible for their well-being, have not foreseen: hunger, sleep, exhaustion, thirst ...
When a little boy has a tantrum, what he needs is love. The reason is the least, the tantrum demands our conscious attention, focused, open and without judgment. The tantrum asks for love and we must know how to give it the way the child needs: with a hug, with arms, with closeness or sometimes with the presence but without even touching or looking. Once the tantrum passes and the child, late a minute or ten, has removed all the emotional charge, adrenaline and accumulated tension, will be ready to receive all the pampering that we may not have given him before.
Arriving here it no longer seems so impossible to learn to breed whipping and without losing self control. We will see, as I have promised you, many prevention strategies that will help us manage our negative emotions better and offer our children more empathic education.
