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Education is tailor-made!
“Our two princesses, Adèle and Léonie, have such different characters that their father and I had to adapt. Even if our educational values did not change, with the eldest, our rather calm and docile model little girl, everything went smoothly. While with Léonie, our bitch, rather rebellious and angry, we had to learn to negotiate and manage the “no’s” repeatedly without letting go! »Mélissa and Thibault are like all parents, anxious to give the best possible education to their children while ensuring their personal development. As the psychoanalyst Dina Karoubi-Pecon underlines: “To educate well, it is to transmit the fundamental rules of respect for others and for oneself by knowing how to adapt the prohibitions and the universal law to the particularity of each child. The message is the same, but the way you say it takes into account the little person you have in front of you. It’s like when we travel abroad, we say hello to people because we are polite, but in the language of the country if we want to be understood. “
A delicate mix of constraints and listening
The best way to understand how a toddler works is to watch their reactions when explained to them what is expected of them. According to the shrink: “You don’t have to read a thesis on education or follow educational models to the letter, daily observation of a child with whom we live allows to know him and to accompany him. Of course, the rules build up over the months, and a toddler can’t be ‘perfect’ all the way. Parents must prioritize and not be too demanding, because education is not training, but a delicate mixture of constraints and listening. When they ask questions, children expect clear answers. Everyone has their own way of learning : some need to be shown how to do it, others want to do everything on their own; some groped forward, while others waited until they had mastered their skills to get started.
Accept it as it is
Just as a child’s physique is unique, so are their psyches, sensitivity and emotions, and for them to be happy they need their parents to accept them as they are. As the psychoanalyst explains: “Two people who have a child will give birth to a third person, from both but unique. The child is not a copy of his parents, he cannot be as they ideally want him to be. The child is a subject, he is himself! »Respecting his relational style, his character, his temperament, is the key to a successful education. A character is a set of peculiarities, tastes, attitudes, which are usual and that those around them spot. Be careful, a character can move! Lise, for example, saw Mathéo transform in a few months: “Mathéo was very shy. At nursery school, the teacher told us about his difficulty in making friends, in participating … On the advice of a friend, we enrolled him in a acting class and he changed. Little by little, it came out of its shell! This is why it is so important not to put definitive labels on them.
Don’t compare it to others
Each child has skills, strengths and weaknesses, an attraction for a particular school subject, a marked taste for physical activities. It is pointless and hurtful to compare him to others … We were all annoyed by sentences like: “Look at your brother, he can do it and he is smaller than you!” ” Each child develops at his own pace. To judge the development of a child, specialists have established averages that define a standard, an ideal development, but never particular. Finding that your child is just below or above the curves does not mean that he is late or that he is a genius. The average ages of acquisitions, highlighted by developmental psychologists and pediatricians are real indicators, but not absolute ones.
However, that does not mean that the benchmarks of normal child development are useless. If a child does not eat alone at 5 years old, there is a problem. In the same way that you no longer wipe the buttocks of a 3-year-old child, if you want to be respectful of their bodily privacy!
As we can see, educating a child requires the ability to putting oneself in question, to adapt to his evolution, to find the best way to be understood by him, to listen to him, to encourage him, to support him, to protect him, to offer him essential learning to his future adult life feeling good about himself. This is the richness of the job of parents! the