Respecting the child also means teaching him the rules of common living, helping him to understand and internalize them. The psychoanalyst explains it to us
An exasperated mother writes that every evening go to bed becomes a battle with tears and screams, because the 2 -year -old daughter never wants to stop playing. It falls asleep only when it collapses exhausted.
Another no longer knows what to do with the 4 -year -old son: in the house he opposes each rule, while outside he knows how to be well polite. It seems that it only disobeys the parents only. A teacher asks for suggestions to tame three children who do not accept any discipline and prevent activities in the classroom.
A pediatrician is irritated with the parents who cannot give medicine to the child “because he doesn’t want it”.
All these problems are variations on the theme: What can facilitate (and what can hinder) the internalization of the rules in children?
Already from newborn children are thirsty to know the laws of the physical, relational and social world. In our culture, the conception of the child has progressively made its way as a subject to be known and always respected, from the first moments of life. It is a good thing, which deeply improved the parents-child relationship.
However, respecting the child does not mean submitting to him, nor depleted him with the teaching and transmission of the rules necessary for civil life. It is not enough to sanction and enforce the rules, letting external conditioning remain. They must be learned and internalized, so that the child learns to get by.
How to teach compliance with the rules?
In moments of “vigilant watter”, newborns already observe everything that happens around them, to understand how the world works. Day after day, with growth, this type of observations becomes increasingly dense and systematic towards the whole world: physical, vegetable and animal, but – above all – human. This network of integrated acquisitions is essential to structure and consolidate learning on “how to do …”: to obtain desirable things; to eliminate unpleasant things; to get in touch with others, or to interrupt him without serious consequences on the relationship; to master the events; to acquire power in relationships; to manage internal conflicts; not to be overwhelmed; to make peace; to console themselves; And so on, for any real or hypothetical situation.
This is the first and fundamental way through which children know and internalize the social norms of the culture in which they were born. The rules thus learned will be experienced as natural, obvious, basic, universal, absolute.
A long time later, in a long process that often starts from adolescence, the ex-child will be able to see that those rules are not so natural, universal and absolute, but which are related to the culture in which it was born and has been trained.
However, it will be able to recognize its practical social value, as rules necessary for civil life and for a sociality based on mutual recognition, on equity, justice, solidarity, efficiency and adequacy. Unfortunately, The desirable discovery that all the rules, even the most fundamental or wonderful, are relative and therefore fragile and therefore precious will not be reached by everyone, nor always, nor for all the rules. Thus, fundamental rules can be violated because they are misunderstood in the fragility of the foundation that makes them precious.
The learning of the “How to do to …” is activated on every occasion in which something new is expected; But the more you are the smaller, the stronger and the more systematic both the activation and the internalization of the rules will be.
Behaviors as questions
In that assiduous, systematic, huge learning process, the child is experiencing both physical reality, and the attitudes and responses of the adults, assuming provocative attitudes to cause clarifying responses, both physical and verbal and behavioral responses.
For example, while making the gesture of beating the hammer on the table or when it makes a whim, look at the adults present, to see what they think and what they do, that is, to learn what is recommended, what is allowed and what is forbidden.
We must grasp those provocative gestures: that is the moment when the child asks that he be taught a rule. Squeezing it and that’s it it means losing a precious opportunity.
It is a cognitive moment that will remain forever as a basis for each subsequent executive moment of adhesion or rebellion to the rules. These tests, which the child systematically does, are equivalent to questions, such as: “What consequences I have to expect when …”; “What if…”; “How I have to do for …”; “How to …”; “What happens if I don’t do this?” …
We adults should not misunderstand the meaning of question that certain behaviors can have. Each question must be answered.
An example
A 2 and a half year old boy wants to be taken in his arms. The father says to him: “Walk a little more: we are almost there.” The child, looking at him of underwriter, whimper: “I have badly in my feet”, and the dad, taking him in his arms: “You are tired of walking, but you don’t hurt to the feet. It is advisable not to lies, if not the others don’t believe you anymore even when you tell the truth. ” The child remains thoughtful. Then, to itself: self:
“I don’t do it anymore.” An important thing happened for that child: in the climate of good relationship with dad (for him the highest expert in life), he was able to recognize a fundamental rule for human relationships and internalize it.
At this point it is easy to identify the main factors that facilitate the internalization of the rules: our respectful behavior towards them; the clarification on the sensation and comprehensibility of the rules we put; Our consistency in proposing the rules and in the expulsion of respect. But more important than all are Our willingness to assume the role of authority that establishes and transmits the rules; and the balance between the rigor of the rules and intelligence of forgiveness, always united to a realistic encouragement.
In essence, to facilitate the internalization and the structuring of ethical attitudes (individual, relational and social), first of all we must have internalized them. Few things are disadvantaged like hypocrisy and fiction. To reveal the ideological falsifications, Marx said: “Look at what they do, not what they say.” Children look, without the need for philosophical exhortations. It is first of all a cognitive process.
