Dispute about education: explain or command?

Claude Almos: In Why Love Is Not Enough, I gave one explanation that I think is very important: today people tend to reduce the relationship between parents and children to love alone, without asking about the specifics of parental love. But it is not limited to feelings, it also implies education. And this upbringing, absolutely necessary for building the personality of the child, cannot be done without rigor. And today, that’s exactly what scares me. For two reasons: on the one hand, people confuse strictness with repression, suppression; on the other hand, they misunderstood the thought of Francoise Dolto. Everyone knows the first part of her statement: “A child is a completely separate creature that must be respected”; but there is also the second part: “… this is a being that is being formed, which cannot be formed without education by adults.” It is extremely difficult to combine the position of parental importance and respect for the child. One has to wonder about the very nature of this significance, and here our opinions completely diverge.

Read more:

• “Moms, do you get tired of your children?”

Aldo Nauri: I think that our differences do not concern the nature of the significance of parents, but the ways in which it is implemented in practice.

I do not think so. You and I have a fundamentally different view of the relationship between parents and children, which you define as a hierarchy. This is not true. Yes, of course, parents command, but, in contrast to the dictator, who dictates his own laws, parents only pass on the rules to the child, which they themselves also obey. This is not a hierarchy, but a difference in positions.

Like this? The relationship between parents and children is vertical, and therefore hierarchical. It is precisely because of the misunderstood ideas of Francoise Dolto that we are dealing with the slogan “You have the right to everything.” This places the child in a horizontal relationship with the parents. In my pediatric practice, I constantly see the harm done to children by parenting when caregivers do not know how to say “no”. I think it is impossible for a child to explain everything. It’s much calmer to have a parent who says, “Maybe you don’t like it, but there’s nothing you can do about it.” He does his parenting work. If a parent indulges in explanations, he puts the child in an impossible position. He tells him, “You don’t like my approach, but you must still love me.” Today’s parents are constantly innovating in how to please their children, they always want to seduce them. But seduction is the opposite of education.

K.A.: Seduction is, of course, the opposite of education. But explanations have nothing to do with seduction. As a psychoanalyst, I observe many children who do not have problems associated with some particularly difficult circumstances; they simply lack educational guidelines. Such children recover very quickly: I explain the rules so that the child understands them and so that parents can further enforce these rules from him. For the most part, this is enough. To explain does not mean to apologize or justify.

Just like I have to explain to both parents and the child what the rules are. And I would like to turn to parents in my books to warn them. Because if adults had the determination to get obedience from children, they would not come to us – neither to you, nor to me.

Read more:

• 21 principles of good parenting through the eyes of a child

K.A.: I think that parents should explain to the child the limits of what is permitted. If he jumps out of bed every now and then in the evening, they explain that he needs to sleep, and they need to be without him for a while. They explain it once, twice, maybe a third time. But then they just put him before the fact: “It’s true, and there’s nothing more to argue about!” It’s important to stand your ground, but it’s also important to explain. Because the goal of education is not to make the child obey, obeying the adult. The goal is for him to do the inner work in order to give up the immediate satisfaction of his desires, from the “pleasure principle”, from omnipotence. For this, it is necessary that the parents firmly outline the prohibitions to him, but at the same time give him the opportunity to understand what these prohibitions serve.

A. N .: In my opinion, this only works if the parent is determined, if deep down he feels that his words are absolutely fundamental to the child. At all times, as soon as a child was born, parents became parents. They didn’t wait for Dolto to show up to learn that they should respect their children! But today they are bombarded with a lot of conflicting information. On the one hand, the natural inclination of parents to educate still exists, but so much has already been said about the “king child” that they feel guilty. If you explain to them that educating is normal, everything will work out.

K.A.: We have a fundamental difference in what education should be. Take, for example, a pacifier. You say in your book that parents should, from the age of two, without any explanation, take away a pacifier from a child, a bottle of milk, a toy with which he used to fall asleep. I, too, am depressingly impressed by the sight of four-year-olds with a pacifier in their mouth. But the child can be explained that the pacifier will be taken away from him, because now he is talking, he has the words to say if something is wrong, if he needs to be reassured. When this is explained, then they say “stop” and throw away the pacifier. And here it is absolutely not necessary to arrange a training course for a child for 50 hours!

A. N .: The problem today is just that the parents arrange a training course for 50 hours! And then they believe that if the child understands everything, then he will get rid of the pacifier!

If excesses happen somewhere, this is not a reason to return to what was before! What confuses me in what you said is that confused parents will read your book and begin to literally apply what is written there. When a baby is stopped bottle-feeding – and the initiative in this comes from the mother – he inevitably experiences frustration for some time. But if you explain to him that, losing this pleasure, he will discover the joy of being great, everything will pass! Relying on the love of the mother and her words, the child will overcome this stage. If this is not done, then this will be called abuse of power and violence, which can have dire consequences. Because the task is not only to ensure that the child no longer uses the bottle. The challenge is that he no longer needs it, because he has moved on to something else. Otherwise, he will have a void for the rest of his life that cannot be filled with anything.

Read more:

• Life lessons from our children

A. N .: He will understand perfectly! This is where we completely disagree. You see this child in the light of psychoanalytic concepts, but I see him in everyday life. The adaptability of the child to the conditions created for him, when the parent feels that he is right, is such that words can be dispensed with. The child has an amazing ability to adapt: ​​he will always be able to adapt to the conditions that he was offered and which for him have the meaning of truth, because he does not know others.

K.A.: What you say is terrible, because, based on this, a child can be fed anything! I don’t personally suspect you, Aldo Nauri, that you are going to do this. But I think that in today’s environment the ideas you have expressed can be applied in the worst possible way. It is true that psychologists and psychoanalysts have too often emphasized “talking” to children. But the alternative is not defined as “either ranting or silence.” Refusal to explain is always violence. And that’s not the only violence you’re calling for. For example, forbidding a child to masturbate is also violence. As well as not giving him, as you recommend, information on sexual matters. Every day I have adults in my office who talk about the price they have paid for not being informed about sexuality. It is very important to tell a child: “Do not touch your genitals in public, this is an intimate matter, do it in your room” is very important. But to forbid it is destructive. When you advise this in a book intended for the general public, can you imagine the harm it can cause? It throws people back several centuries.

There is no need to present me as a caricature; in my book I talk about compulsive masturbation. I will answer you in the same way as Francoise Dolto once told me. I spoke to her about the harm that misunderstanding of what she says on the radio does to parents. So she answered: “Dear brother, you have to take risks in something.” I accept this risk. I do not mean to say that my advice will work a miracle, I only want to encourage parents to accept their situation without fear and not to experience constant fear that they may injure their children! When we fearlessly accept our own desire – “Go to your room, I want to sleep” – the child obeys. And when he feels that he is on the same level with an adult, this causes uncertainty. It is in this sense that I speak of hierarchy. Within the family structure, the parent occupies a higher position. It is worth moving away from this awareness, as we fall into “child worship”.

K.A.: The child does not need to be turned into an object of worship or trained. This is a creature that needs to be educated, in the sense that Françoise Dolto gave it, that is, to humanize, humanize. And I hope that what I am talking about will help him avoid visits to a psychoanalyst!

On what do they agree with each other?

• The assimilation of the limits of what is permitted and the rules is necessary for the development of the child.
• Strictness, awareness of one’s parental significance is an integral part of education, “love alone is not enough.”
• Bargaining with a child is detrimental, because it puts him on the same level as his parents.
• Punishment is necessary, but it should not be cruel or humiliating.