Surely you have ever told your children that “don’t yell & rdquor ;, yelling. I’m wrong? She is one of the inconsistencies most common that we mothers and fathers incur, but there are more. However, inconsistency is not something exclusive to parenthood, the human being is incoherent by nature.
According to studies, human beings actually rely on feelings and emotions to make a decision, despite the fact that we later rationalize it in a logical and intellectualized way. We are therefore essentially emotionalwhich makes us incoherent.
The problem is that as the distance between our words and our actions increases, the difficulty to be recognized and understood by others increases, we generate distrust, also in our children. That is why it is convenient to realize our inconsistencies and try to solve them. Only in this way will we be that trustworthy person that our children need, that leader to follow, that Sherpas that takes us to the top of the mountain, and thanks to which we feel safe.
5 inconsistencies in which we mothers and fathers fall
Inconsistencies that our parents did not have, because it was from another era, but that today are trending topic.
Ask them not to display themselves on networks
The other day I witnessed a conversation between a mother and her 12-year-old daughter. They are both people very close to me. The mother reproached her daughter for telling her life through social networks. “All day telling where you are, what you eat, who you are with on Instagram, do you think it is normal to display your life in that way? & rdquor ;. The daughter, suddenly, released a lapidary phrase: “She spoke, the one that exhibited me on Facebook since I was 4 years old & rdquor ;. The mother and I were petrified. The issue stayed there, we do not continue to stick our finger in the wound, but it helped me to reflect: we ask our children to be careful with the image they give on networks, not to upload certain content and, however, we post pictures of them on our networks (note the accent on the word ‘our’) without asking permission practically from the day they are born. A photo of her first tooth, a video of her first steps, a photo of her first swim at the beach…
There is no bad intention behind our actions, but there is inconsistency. What example are we giving? With what face do we ask them later not to narrate their lives on networks, to keep things for themselves if we have been the first to expose them?
Recriminate them that they are “hooked & rdquor; to the mobile
A few years ago, Orange launched a campaign that brought out the colors of mothers and fathers. It is a video in which a mother was seen going to her son’s room, and asking her to turn off her mobile, that she had to sleep and rest to be fine the next day.
Then the mother went to her room, lay down on her bed, and the first thing she did was pick up her tablet. Next to her was her husband, the child’s father, with a cell phone in hand. The boy, who had turned off the mobile heeding the words of his mother, going to the bathroom and passing in front of his parents’ room and seeing the “scene & rdquor ;, shrugged his shoulders.
On many occasions we forget that our children learn from us, which educates more what we do than what we say. Are we being the example they need? How do I relate to the mobile? Am I as hooked as my son? Let’s think about it.
Not understanding the importance they give to the image
Teens and tweens spend a lot of time retouching their photos, putting filters on them to make them look better. Something that adults do not fully understand. But, how many times have we not told them to delete a photo of us because we came out very ugly? The image cult it is something that our children breathe daily in the society in which they have grown up, in the advertisements they see on TV, in the movies they watch, not only on social networks. We, although we do not use filters, we also care about our image, and we let them know it.
The teacher Carmen Guaita, in a presentation at one of our events, made us reflect on this: “What message are we sending to our children when we look in the mirror and complain that we have gained two kilos, lamenting that we see ourselves horrible, while we put belly? & rdquor ;.
Tell them that the mobile keeps them incommunicado
“It makes me want to send him a WhatsApp to tell him to come to dinner, and he is in the same house as me, but he doesn’t pay attention. She only communicates through that device (the mobile) & rdquor ;, a friend told me the other day referring to her son. Often, mothers and fathers, when our children reach adolescence, we complain that they don’t listen to us, they don’t speak to us, in short, that they don’t communicate with us. To this complaint, today is added the complaint of the lack of communication that devices cause between family members. But… What about us adults? How many times have we gone to a restaurant and seen families put their child in front of a tablet with his drawings so that he is calm? And in the car?
More and more covers are being sold to place devices in the back of the car so that children are entertained… The first to introduce devices in the family are adults, we have been building that wall that comes a time that is so high, that it prevents us from looking at each other, talking to each other…
Blaming them for allowing themselves to be influenced by influencers
On networks, our children not only follow friends, relatives or acquaintances, they also follow people they admire (either because they make music they like, because they dress “well”, because they travel the world, because they tell things that they like). they’re funny…). We often tell them that we don’t understand that these people have so much influence on them, that they should have more personality, more critical thinking. “If so-and-so jumps off a bridge, do you jump too?” We often tell them to reflect. But in many houses the “because I say so”ie blind obedience.
It helps us all a lot that our children are obedient, but educating in obedience has consequences, psychologist Alberto Soler always reminds us. “If our children learn to follow the rules out of fear of retaliation, they will only follow them to avoid it, not because they know it is good for them. And the problem is that today your son obeys you, but tomorrow he will have learned to obey, and he will also obey his partner, his friends, his boss, even when he should not do it & rdquor ;. If we want our children not to be so easily influenced, to develop critical thinking, to be able to make their own decisions, we should educate them in responsibility, and not so much in obedience.”