When you have children, it is common to talk with other parents of the children, about how they are, about the last deal they have done to you and even how we have solved it. They are conversations in which I usually enter with lead feet because most parents are surprised when I tell them that “I have never hit them” and they are even more surprised when I affirm that “I am that I have never punished them”.
Some get defensive, as if I wanted to tell them that I am a good father and they are bad parents and others, after a while of thinking, quickly clarify their strangeness with a lucidity rash that makes them say: “Of course, there is nothing more to see, they are so good that you have not needed.
Then I wonder: Don't they punish them because they behave well or behave well because they don't punish them?
For most people, as I say, it is a matter of luck. I do not hit them or punish them (I do not say that I do not shout at them because more than once they have made me lose my temper, which are children, after all) because, they say, they have not given me reason for it. That is, if they had my children, they would not give educational cheeks either and would not punish them, something that I do not believe, but that leaves them alone and in peace with themselves.
However, if I had your children, because the equation is very simple, that of not correcting with the hand and not punishing would be my downfall, because they have had the bad luck of having incorrigible children that deserve more drastic measures than dialogue.
But my children are not so good ...
So I think that my children are not as good as they are painted by me, because they sometimes bundle me sometimes, why not tell, and I am wrong in my thinking because they are neither good nor bad, they are children, like yours. Then I correct myself and I say to myself: "but your children are not so different from mine", and in that thought I am satisfied and I continue working because I think that if I treated my children like others treat their children, they would be just as mischievous (bad) as those of others.
To give an example (of so many that I could put), this summer, on the beach, Aran, 3, thought on several occasions that going to the beach entrance was fun. Instead of going to the sea, he was going in the opposite direction, as if he were going home, running for Dad to follow him.
This scene surely sounds like more than one for having lived it or for having seen a father or mother running behind the child that is leaving you. You start walking thinking that he will return, then you see that he walks away and you start running, you call him, you shout, “come back!”, You remember that in that area, in the darkness of the night, youth do what they want and more and your son running barefoot. You run more, you call him and the boy who ignores.
At that point you reach it and explain why you do not want me to go there, the danger, the risk of stepping on glass or knowing what and that "we are all on the shore, do not go alone." But children, children are, and often repeat. It's so fun to see Dad sweat behind you, so tempting, that "I'm going to try again to see what happens."
He runs away and dad back again, to run. Then some parents would run, they would catch it, slap in the ass or pull the arm and "let's go p'allá you have me fed up", for the shore by the bad ones and "that you know that you have run out of ice cream". But I'm not like that, I don't like to fix things like that and while I run like a fool behind my son, burning my soles, I think that I'm doing exactly what you want me to do.
I get close enough to talk to him, I explain the risk of going there again and I remind him that we are on the shore and, when he almost starts running again waiting for me to go back I tell him, so calm, that I already I don't play anymore: "Well, Aran, I'm tired and I'm burning, I'm going to the shore", and I turn to do what I said.
I do not say that by doing this all the children will do like him, but he at that point realizes that dad's running game behind him has stopped making fun of him. It turns, He comes with me and gets by my side. I shake hands and together we reach the shore.
This is not a technique. I am not saying that when a child escapes you do like me, I just explain it because at that moment, at those moments, there are many ways to act. I always choose the second one and, as you know I always choose the second one, I suppose you give up making me angry: “two don't fight if one doesn't want to,” my mother always said, because I won't feel provoked, my son, because I don't want to piss me off As you can see I don't follow the game, stop playing.
Don't they punish them because they behave well or behave well because they don't punish them?
The question has a trap. In fact it is only a play on words, because "they behave well because I don't punish them" may be true, but it can also be very false if we talk about permissive parents who don't punish, but neither correct nor educate.
Not to punish children is just a detail within an educational style you choose, a style that we could call as educate calmly, with patience, with dialogue, to put some name. It is also often called democratic education, because children are given voice and often vote.
I don't know, the name is indifferent to me. The important thing is to know that you can treat a child just as you treat adults, with the same respect, counting on them, listening to their words without saying nonsense like "now we speak adults, children are silent", but explaining that if they see that two people are talking it is better to wait until they finish talking, not talking about them in their presence as if they weren't (we don't do it with adults, why with children?) and ultimately making them partakers of life in society, but explaining that, just as they like to be well treated, others like the same thing and that In the same way that people have to respect them, they must do so with the rest.
Reasons to punish them I have had a lot (according to the usual criteria) because, as I said, they are children and not robots. Now, between Miriam and I we have been weathering sometimes with greater success and sometimes with less (usually when you are justly patient), observing that, as they have grown, the behavior has been polishing, as who watered every day a dry tree and realizes, over the years, that it is now a tree full of leaves that grows healthy and determined.
In short, in the eyes of the people my children are very good, almost model. In my eyes they are normal children, because at home they make their own when they want, that when they are on the street they know how to behave and live in society, respecting others. The other parents praise them: "what luck, how nice they are ...", but I don't see that I have to show off children, because his way of being is what I would expect from all children and from every person.
It is as if someone told me "hey, your child does not spit, does not hit, does not scream, nor does it rip toys from others!" I would answer: "Sure, why would a child do something like that?" Well, the same thing: why would a child not be like that?
