The family is the fundamental cell of a society, it is the set of individuals that form a home, where not all of them are necessarily unique by blood ties but by affection and love.
Within the family, the first ethical values that will serve as foundations for the development of society are cultivated.
According to psychologist Omm Blanco, today’s family has lost many of its functionsassuring that one of the most important causes of the loss of love in life is the feeling of not being loved.
On this occasion, together with the expert, we will address the importance of the family and its functions in society for the promotion of values.
What is the family?
It is the initial and comprehensive ecosystem where personality is forged and the ability to relate healthily or not is acquired.
What role does the family have in the education of the children?
Rather than role as role or function, we should speak of systemic ontology. The family is the extension of the internal forum of the person and as such it is the space where we learn to be people and to choose according to what has been transmitted to us and what we are acquiring abroad. Where we learn to exercise freedom, rights, duties. It is teaching to live. Not in a bubble, but in reality.
How to be a good father or mother? In the field of interpersonal communication.
There is no model of paternity or maternity, that is advertising and media emotional manipulation. Being a father is teaching our children to be better than us and educating them for the world they are going to live in, not the world we came from. Obviously rescuing everything that can serve them in the future.
How to get children to want to talk to parents?
Creating a relationship of trust from the beginning, not judging them, but teaching with our actions what we want from them and letting them be, is a balance that is achieved over time, there is no formula. In some families, a strategy or idea works that in others does not.
There is a stage in which we cannot be friends with our children, since they do not know how to make proper use of their freedom, reason and external realities. At this point in their development, we cannot be their compadres or their bffs, but rather parents. After that phase, then let them learn from their choices and create spaces or rather take advantage of opportunities for dialogue.
Listen to them, walk around, ask them questions and share experiences of our mistakes and successes, be the first to bring them up on important issues and explain according to their age and ability.
We cannot forget to also ask for their forgiveness when we have exceeded or made a mistake and not give them anything they have not deserved.
Could you tell us some keys for the education of children in the family?
- · Understand that they are different people from us, with different expectations, not clones.
- · Listen to them and have fun together.
- · Explain to them the reason for the punishments and rules inside and outside the home.
- · Live each stage with them and not make comparisons between them or to the outside.
- · Avoid pigeonholing them in child-adolescent profiles that saturate networks and sources of information.
- · Allow them to express themselves and help them to do so with respect and appropriately.
- · Educate by example.
What should children do for the family?
Responsibilities are changing and adjusting in their own development, I consider it essential that they should NOT RETRIBUTE in a mandatory way anything that we have done for them. If they feel loved and grateful, they are born to do everything for their family.
Why is it important to emphasize sexual and reproductive education in the family environment?
So that they know how to understand and value themselves in an integral way. The body is the means with which we learn and apprehend the existence outside of us, it is a universe in constant exchange with another universe.
It is mandatory that we educate so that they know that it is theirs, how it works, why and what to do in different cases, not only in the order of sexual health, but also sports, emotional health, food, fun, in short, everything for which we need our body.
Why is it important that there is communication and participation of parents with their children in sexual and reproductive education?
Parents are in charge of teaching them to take care of themselves fully. The biopsychosocial consequences of untimely sexual practice are there. You have to make them aware of that reality. Sexual reproduction is not only a physical dimension, but also a psycho-affective one, therefore, the consequences are too.
What strategies could parents use so that their children open up to them and share uncertainties and perceptions?
The parents begin to place the subject and the concerns, always according to their level of maturity and development, it can be through a movie, a joke, a video or a TV series… concerns always arise and they have them, the parents always start the dialogue it is more comfortable for them.
The link must be created, we cannot wait for pre-adolescence to dialogue with them. When this occurs, issues and concerns arise almost spontaneously and always with one of the parents or family members.
How do I want to communicate clearly, not hurtful or threatening?
Without judging and if you do not have the strategies, seeking psychological help, since this assistance does not subtract but adds. Discuss it between both parents or with someone you trust before raising it and remember that we were adolescents and children… starting from there is a good start.
What are the keys to good communication between parents and children?
Somehow they are present in the previous responses, the basics of listening without judging and pausing before getting upset. Not since romanticism, it is normal for misunderstandings and discussions to exist and happen, but to seek or learn to choose the right moment and even the right place.
Would it be important to schedule daily talks between parents and children?
You don’t have to invent the chemical formula of warm water. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, on the way home, on the way to the ballet or to the institute, after the ball game, when I finish watching a series on TV… the rest is a straitjacket and it’s heavy.
