We publish today the third installment of this interesting interview with psychologist Ramón Soler. Advancing the reflection he proposed yesterday about the reasons why parents hit or abuse their children psychologically or verbally, we will try to elucidate if having received this type of education has left traces in the adults who received it as children and also, and that is essential, learn to understand its effects and change the way we communicate with our own children.
Many people say that they were hit and not traumatized or did not go wrong. That's how it is?
It is curious that many people who defend cheeks say they are not traumatized by them. In my opinion, the mere fact of defending the cheeks already indicates that they are affected by the restrictive education they received.
Although it cannot be generalized, these types of people are usually repressive and repressed, they have an aggressive way of defending their opinions and very little mental flexibility to adapt to the changes. All these characteristics are those observed in children who have been mistreated and, if we also find them in adults who defend the scourges, it will not be difficult to deduce that they are traumatized.
What excuses are usually given to parents who use cheeks and slaps to use them?
The excuses are varied, most of them are due to ignorance of the physical and emotional processes of children. On the other hand, these parents also suffered this kind of restrictive education when they were young and, often unconsciously, seek excuses to convince themselves that it is okay to hit the children.
The most common pretexts are usually that the scourge does not leave emotional traumas, that with children it is not possible to dialogue and only the scourge serves, that “it hurts me more, but I do it for your sake”, which must be prepared for hardness of life and another long list of excuses that only show the closure and the lack of flexibility of parents who fear to look inside and wonder if the education they received from their parents was correct.
Can you talk with a young child or is it sometimes necessary to correct with a cheek to avoid putting yourself in danger or getting out of hand?
Young children can barely speak and we cannot have deep philosophical talks with them, that is clear, but it does not mean that they do not understand what is happening around them. It is more a problem of maturation of your sounding device than of understanding.
From a very young age, they may know that there are things they cannot do because they can be dangerous. There are many ways to warn you of the danger, we can hold or change your place if you are near a hot stove, we can raise the tone of the voice if we are far away and see you in an imminently dangerous situation, but the cheek is never justified. In addition, we can always accompany the above with an explanation, telling you how dangerous it can be to do this or that thing.
Nor should we forget that it must be the parents' task to condition the environment in a way that is safest for their child, neutralizing plugs, blocking stairs or hiding knives. The child gradually understands the concept of danger, so we cannot leave it unattended in its early years.
What happens when a child accustomed to whipping or cakes grows and becomes a teenager?
Lately, television shows proliferate in which conflicting teenagers appear whose parents are unable to handle. Many of them are aggressive and even hit their parents. All (presenters and public) are scandalized and demonized these kids, making them see how violent they are and how their poor parents suffer, whom they present as mere victims of the whole family drama. The objective of the experts is to correct these violent adolescents, but in none of these programs I have seen that they try to find out where this violence comes from by investigating what is happening in the family environment and deepening in the childhood of these children to find out how their children were treated parents. Perhaps they fear facing the reality of childhoods with tremendous emotional deficiencies and, in many cases, physical and psychological abuse.
Violence does not appear spontaneously at 13/14 years. Before that, there is a whole process that begins since the children are very young with verbal aggressions, some scourge or perhaps many, contempt and abandonment. Sometimes, the violence begins even earlier, from the uterine life, in which these people already felt despised, little loved or received the same aggressions to which their mother was subjected. We should not be surprised that these children become the teenagers we renege on those television shows.
How and when can we start communicating with our child?
In reality, we can begin to provide our children with the rudiments of communication since pregnancy. All the stimuli that the uterine baby receives, the mother's voice, music, touch, can help us establish a first dialogue with him. It is impressive to see how the baby reacts differently when something he likes or when something he does not like, when he is relaxed or when he is tense.
Pregnant women can play tapping on the side of the belly and will see that, soon after, their baby moves and responds to those blows. If, then they change sides and again give some gentle strokes, the baby will move again. It has been proven that, right after birth, the baby can distinguish his mother's voice from that of other women and that he reacts differently to words from his native language than to words from other languages. All this indicates that the baby is perfectly equipped to attend to the language. This widespread idea that, until three years old, children do not know anything is totally outdated and is the result of ignorance. The wonderful child psychoanalyst, Francoise Dolto said that "the human being has the same capacity for understanding from the moment of conception until his death."
Although the Civil Code does not accept the slap as an educational or corrective option, there are still many parents and even a judge defends it, why?
We may be surprised that intelligent, educated people who have had to overcome very hard opposition, publicly defend the use of slapping as a means to educate or correct children. We usually associate violence to people of low social class and with little culture, but it has been proven that cheek is present in many families, regardless of their cultural, social or economic level. It may be easier to understand than many judges, doctors, psychiatrists, etc. defend beating children if we think that these people were also children and, in all likelihood, were physically or psychologically abused children. I imagine that, like many others, they also had to sacrifice a part of their freedom and their spontaneity as children to adapt to their parents' restrictions.
Unfortunately, as long as adults do not free themselves from the erroneous ideas they had to assume in their childhood and do not recognize the damage they suffered, they will continue to be conditioned in their work by their shortcomings and will continue to defend the slap as an educational method.
So far we have arrived until today. The issue of child abuse in terms of whipping, shouting, belittling or threats remains an issue for which our society remains unprepared.
Recognize that children deserve the same respect and protection that an adult is complicated because many of today's adults were children who suffered actions that they find it difficult to recognize as negative, and they are condemned to justify and repeat them. We need tools For, once we recognize that a child cannot be harmed just like an adult, we know how to avoid that behavior in ourselves.
We have learned a lot about violence against children thanks to this interview with psychologist Ramón Soler, to whom we thank him for his time and effort, but surely it will not be the last time we talk about these issues with him. We need more tools and many parents need them because they would like to educate their children without whipping or shouting.
