We live in the information age. Even when it comes to educating and raising children, there is more information than ever, especially since there was none before, or at least it did not come from outside the home. A few decades ago, the first books were published with tips to educate and raise children, and now it is not only paper publications, but online media and social networks that disseminate information, so much, that many people wonder if it's not too much.
In fact, people who have more information are usually told something like this: "I think you read too much internet" or "you read too many books", and behind it is the booklet that says "there was not much information before and here we are". Hence the question: How should our ancestors survive without all the information about parenting we have now?
When wisdom jumped from home to the expert
It will be a century, popular wisdom, information, the secret to raise and educate a son, who for millennia has been transferred from fathers to sons, from mothers to daughters, was gradually disappearing from the houses to end up in the mouth of the experts. Gradually, the professionals took control of the situation, gained knowledge and became the reliable source of information for mothers and fathers. And I do not say reliable because the information was valid, that I do not know (and I do not think so), but because they were the people they trusted, above the advice that grandmothers or grandparents could give, in a situation that even now still existing.
Science and custom were added to reason and reason, and now we live in a historical moment in which the evidence is above all. If studies say that this it's the best it will be this what we should do. If the studies say in a few years that the best is this other, we must modify the action plan and advise parents this other.
And so, without relying on what our mothers and fathers say, that we consider them from another era when nothing was known about what is known now, many parents act on the basis of all current information, that which comes from experts, until we find someone who says he hears, that he didn't know so much before and the children grew the same. And that before our parents let us cry and nothing happened, that before they hit us and here we are, they punished us and we don't have a trauma and they did so many things to us that are now unthinkable, that anyone would think we should have extinguished. Come on, let's see how our ancestors did without much book ...
Every day we get a little closer to the truth
Of course, studies are changing, and sometimes they say one thing and years later they say another. But not all. There are many who do not vary substantially because they are already very close to absolute truth. Others change, because societies also change, and the results vary over time, depending on what is studied. And others can never change, because they could be done in the past but now can no longer be done in the present, for ethical and moral reasons (you cannot do studies to see how it is safer for babies to sleep, for example, if one of the methods under study could put a baby's life at risk).
The more we investigate, the closer we are to know what the truth is about a specific fact, so although not everything we do with children has to be scientifically proven as the best, it is worth knowing because it can be a very orientation valid.
No need to cause trauma to know what is wrong
"Well, they did it to me and I don't have any trauma," many say. And it is true. But that does not make it a good method. Many of us were beaten at school and we don't say we have a trauma, but now no parent would like a teacher to turn his son's face for not being attentive in class, right? In fact, it is a crime. Imagine
"Well, we have not gone so bad," say some who should not watch the news every day to realize that the world they live in is full of corruption, lies, abuse, violence, misunderstanding, lack of empathy, lack of solidarity, selfishness, rudeness ... Yes, there are also good people, but you must be so busy trying to be happy that You don't have time to try to change a world that is going to shit at times. If that is to conclude that "we have not gone so badly," I do not want to know what would have happened if "we had gone wrong."
Stay with this phrase: "Your dream as a child was to be happy when you grow up ... have you already achieved it?" Because many of us are older, and hey, the happy thing still doesn't seem to be within our reach. Partially happy yes, of course: we have children, who are the most beautiful in the world and we get a huge smile; we have a home to live in; some of us have even work ... but we go to the top of responsibilities and worries, of bills and expenses, without free time and fighting every day not for that happiness, but for finishing the day having done everything; and so day after day.
And instead of modifying this operation and eliminating the sources of stress, everyone to take vitamins, "I'm tired", coffees "that if not, I don't raise my head" and watch TV for a while "to get away from my own life ". How are we going to be happy? Moreover, how are we going to be, if our children are going to end up like us? How can we not be worried, if they will end up being part of this absurd society?
Of course, information is needed
Well that: of course information is needed. So that fathers and mothers at least let's know how to help them be better people. They may end up like us, disgusted with the functioning of this society ... but who knows, even if they are more than us, they are capable of bring about the social change that we are not able to make, that we are allowing our lives and our rights to be stolen and we still bow our heads and vote again.
Because raising following our instincts sounds very nice, but often those instincts are contaminated from our childhood and from what we have "blown up" as spectators of raising others: that instinct that leads you to yell at a child, to slap him and show him who's boss, which is not such, but a learning that is already part of you. You were not born that way, but now you are.
That's what the information is for. To bring new arguments and reasons where the heart does not reach. If I hear him cry and my body does not flinch, if I don't suffer when I hear it, something broke inside me many years ago. Maybe if I know he is suffering, I will start wanting to do something for my baby. Because if I do nothing and on top of that I think nothing is wrong, I will only be transmitting the same "virus" that affected me years ago, and that made me insensitive to the demands of a baby. And so, my son, will grow up an adult also insensitive to the cry of the most needy.
So I have no idea how they could do it centuries and millennia to survive without the information we have today, but I do know that today, if we didn't have it, we would be an even more unfortunate society than we are. And I don't feel like it, I have children.
Photos | iStock
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