We teach our children, parents and teachers many things. We accompany them in learning many everyday things, dressing, eating at the table, tying their shoelaces, combing their hair or brushing their teeth. We will teach them math, reading, the human body, the life of animals, the organization of human society and all the knowledge that will be necessary. But sometimes we don't realize how important it is a subject that remains pending, your emotions.
The emotions in the little boy
The little boy discovers his own self. He is astonished and scared to be separated from his parents, entering a new and fascinating world. He is assaulted by emotions that sometimes find it difficult to identify and manage properly: love, anger, anger, jealousy, anger, the desire to have ...
They may feel lost in this area of intense passions and emotions and parents can, by our own lack of emotional education and fatigue or lack of time, be unable to guide them to recognize them and give them positive expression. In large part, educating on emotions is an enormous exercise of self-knowledge and control for ourselves.
Tantrums, hitting another person when anger overflows, facing in the simplest situations, interacting with siblings and friends, all this is a field in which we are primarily parents, first of all, who have the Responsibility to take care of them and give them tools to achieve relationships with others in a respectful, empathetic and happy way.
The history of soy sauce
I tell you several examples so that you better understand what I want to say and what is the result of intense work over the years. Last night, picking up dinner, I dropped the pots in the kitchen. He carried it all loaded on a tray and the bottle of soy sauce tipped over, staining the freshly scrubbed floor. My son came running from the bed, we had already had dinner lying down.
I was angry. The girl who helps us at home had just arrived yesterday and everything was very clean. I recognized how angry I was and tried hard, instead of screaming at him for not offering to help me, the reasons for my anger. I had not measured my ability well and had not asked for help before getting up with the tray, because I did not want him to get out of bed and come to the kitchen that was freezing in pajamas. I should have told him to come or have taken two trips.
Recognizing that I was angry helped me control that feeling, give it a channel, give it a name and redirect it not to an explosion, but to solve the mess with a smile and learn from what happened.
My son apologized for not realizing he needed help and offered to help me clean up running. I apologized for the fright he had taken and for not asking him to accompany me or not realizing that I needed his help.
The responsibility over one's life
Another example happened a few days ago. A friend of my son was invited to a birthday, pajama party included. She is a quiet girl, very studious, the first of the class, childish for her age, but entering preadolescence and wanting to decide for herself. He gets along well with classmates and plays at recesses, but he doesn't have that soul friend that girls need.
His mother was sure he would not have a good time, yes, but the talks of classmates and older sisters would not have fun. She let him go at the insistence of her daughter, valuing that learning was more important and that she talked with her and trusted her advice than the discomfort that would happen.
When he returned home the next morning he told him that nothing had happened, but that nothing good, then I explain the reason, which is weighty and explains well how emotional education has positive effects.
The girl told him that he should have forbidden her to go if she was sure it would not be fun. His mother explained to him that he had valued what was a trustworthy house and would be safe, nothing bad would happen to him apart from discovering that wanting to be part of a group and doing what everyone does is not always the best option, but above all he wanted that the girl knew that she respected her and understood that her life was hers and she couldn't let him learn by herself.
Negative emotions
And now I tell you the birthday conflict, which is why our friend arrived so upset. In his class there are few girls, seven, while boys are many more. They have a new partner that no one appreciates, she is a little girl attended at home and who tries to get attention by lying and putting them against each other. She doesn't like it very much either, but she accepts it and above all, although it puts limits on friendship, she doesn't harass or offend her. All the class girls were invited to the party except this one, which already, even defending as I argue that the children are not forced to invite who they do not like, was already a contempt. But the thing was more serious.
It turns out that the birthday girls turned on the computer and called the uninvited girl with a program of those that allows you to talk and see with the camera. The poor naive connected and they were making fun of her because she was the only one who was not in the group and at the party, humiliating her. And our friend skipped tears at what I can only describe as harassment.
Thinking about how bad the other girl had felt was stronger than her. He wrote that same afternoon telling him that he did not support what had happened and that he was very sorry, even if they were not great friends. He knew how to identify the injustice, his shame for not having faced a situation that seemed evil, the penalty for the other person.
With these examples and others that I will add I will explain how important it is to give our children a Emotional education and a solid human formation, not only in content, but also in moral values, self-confidence and management of their negative emotions.
