So I have read the whole original article, and there are many comments to say about it.
First, and perhaps that's one of the main difference between psychologist and family life educators - but we don't exactly use the same techniques nor come from the same background.
Psychologists concentrate on pathology and mental disease and they learn in depth as they go through 8-12 years of studies to get to the point where they start to have clinical patients.
Family Life Educators, on the other hand, go through approximately 3 years of studies and learn about development, neurobiology and social work, but we don't look at the "pathology" or mental illness problem. We intervene on family dynamics and we are trained to recognize patterns in advance and work on
prevention. We are trained to intervene
before the situation becomes critical, so increase the parent-child relationship or restore it.
More importantly, what matters is that we are trained to build and animate group workshops in which we draw from the
parent's experiences. Everybody learns together, in a work group, share their examples, and apply what they learned. I don't tell parent's what the negative effects of spanking are: instead, I ask them to think about it and it is the parents who find the answers. Each passing week, my groups try what they have learned in their family and the next week, they report their successes and learn together from these shared experiences.
So it is VERY practical. My knowledge comes from my studies, yes, but MOSTLY from real practical life-experiences from people just like you, parents, and their answers are surprisingly consistent with my studies.
So let me tell you, as a family life educator (and not as a psychologist), how I read this article.
The point of the article is <U>
not</U> that parents should sometime be hated by their children so that they would learn how this feels.. if this is what you got of this article, <U>
you have missed the point completely</U>.
This is not about "perfect" parents - as I said, perfection is simply not possible when when you try to be. And in this case, these parents were not perfect:
they were FAKE. They are fake because they are not respecting themselves. They are centered on the child exclusively, rather than centered on a balanced, respectful win-win relationship.
They are ignoring their own needs.
In terms of professional jargon, these kids were raised in a "Laissez-faire" parenting style: they had everything they wanted, every-time, they never learned to struggle for what they really wanted. They never developed their autonomy, because everything has always been easy for them.
This is not perfect parenting, even if such thing was possible!
You will never ever see me promote this kind of parental behavior. A parent's job is to teach children to become autonomous, well adjusted, empowered individuals who developed
internal motivation, and the drive to seek their goals and work for it. These kids never needed internal motivation, so now they are at a loss when they are adults. But this is not because their parents had a good relationship with them! It's fantastic that they had a strong and trusting relationship with their parents. What is bad is that
they learned that they are worth being respected and listened, but they never learned that they also have to respect and listen to others around them.
Not using spanking (or any punishment) has therefore NOTHING to do with not holding them accountable for their acts and letting them do as they please.
In the thread "alternatives to spanking" I am offering some suggestions as to how a parent can use reparation and empowerment to help their children grow and to handle misbehavior, without using punishment. The children in this article never were raised with such tools. They were offered everything they wanted, and the "solution" was always found and made easy by mom or dad. This is the very opposite of what I suggest: I suggest that
children should be empowered to find their own solutions in order to repair what they caused and gain or regain the respect from people around them.
In one word: the best parenting is happening when we use parenting practices that favor a strong relationship and increase the quality of the parent-child attachment link. But in no way does that mean that your child life has to be as easy as possible.
The human brain learns by experience. To learn to walk, you need to learn to fall. But you will learn to walk faster and better if you have a loving parent, rather than a distant or cold one, to encourage you to stand up and try again when you fall - not to prevent you from falling. That's how it works.
I hope the distinction was made clear.
If I can answer any question, please let me know
Nicolas, Family Life Educator
