This is where I want to focus this week. On the mistake we, as adults, make by thinking that only what works for us should also apply to our children. We are not updating ourselves, at a time when updating is the keyword in many phenomena and devices that condition our behavior. It is also an indispensable need, because we need to understand what is happening and how to cope.
So that we don't have misunderstandings from the beginning. I mean to continue to be curious, to understand the developments that are happening, to strengthen our skills. Not to focus on the appearance that makes us contemporary, but on thought. A prerequisite for this is that we, adults, must continue to learn. To understand ourselves, this applies first and foremost to us as individuals: to ourselves, our relationships, the profession we do and the role we want to play in our lives. And since we are in roles... even more so to that of a parent.
We are often serving as values to our children only what we have known for a long time. But this is not enough. In fact, sometimes it becomes a strong obstacle to the individual development of our children. Let me be a little more specific:
Have you noticed how little children and young people talk to their parents or to adults in general? They don't feel understood, accepted, unjudged... so they choose the simplest path: they talk little, they show little, they tell us what we want to hear... or, the bravest, they end the debate with a "you don't know, you don't understand".
Have you noticed how the best-rated students in our schools often speak or write? Politically correct. They repeat the book or what the teacher said. That's how they deserve the best rating and often the teacher's sympathy. We continue to produce photocopies and are often even proud of this. Not to mention doing homework with ChatGPT, where teachers often rejoice in the "excellence" of the students and do not notice their laughter that they threw it away this time too.
Have you ever thought about what the media offers us? Everything that seems to be produced for entertainment is barely separated from banality. Everything that seems to be produced for education smells a bit "old"...and noise, lots and lots of noise.
Not to return to the most promoted content of social networks: from every side, trumpeting appearances, violence, prejudice, bullying, bitterness... money quickly earned, without much explanation as to how... and means (read rags, rags)... means of getting rich that please the eye, but not the soul or the brain...
It's very easy to say today: this generation doesn't learn, these children are lazy, they don't talk to them, they are not correct, they don't know how to take responsibility, nothing satisfies them...
After each of these statements, we must ask ourselves: what are we doing?
Are we giving them the right examples? Are we trying to understand them, or at least listen to them? Are we encouraging their individuality? Are we creating spaces for them to express themselves without feeling “alienated” by the crowd clamoring for similar models?
Doesn't it seem to you that, on the one hand, the family, on the other, the school, on the other, the media, and on the other, the online world, we are constantly creating template shapes that we desperately want to fit our children into? Well, if our child is a square, maybe we should help him feel and express himself as such, not force him to become a triangle.
And in order to do this, we must first understand ourselves. How is this done? First, by clarifying that with the passage of time we must not only grow older, but also increase our knowledge, combine it with experience, and give the best we can to our successors. This does not mean becoming friends with our children, nor always giving them the right, nor breaking boundaries, nor weakening authority. We must only continue to try to understand ourselves, them, the environment that surrounds us, and convince ourselves that life is more beautiful when you try, and even more rewarding.
