Identification and expression of emotions area

Emotion literacy is one of the fundamental tasks for  parents, as emotions are a key component of raising children, helping them develop emotional intelligence.

Emotions underlie all behaviors, and are related to thoughts and ideas. And that’s why it is important to learn to grasp emotional language, to know emotions, how they are expressed.

Managing emotions is not always easy, and it is also often related to the emotional education received from one’s parents. Therefore, it is important for parents to be aware of their emotional world.

This concept calls into question different components, including, knowledge of emotions, their facial and behavioral correlates, ability to recognize the emotions of others and to regulate one’s own emotions and their expression.

Training daily in this area means improving his ability to read and understand his children’s emotional state, deciphering emotional intensities, improving his ability to distinguish between different emotions, Increasing his emotional vocabulary by describing and classifying emotions, improving his ability to tune and channel.

When it is done, we can actually do it all the time. By becoming aware of how we handle emotions. In observing others, particularly those around us.

 

Family Rules Area

This area has to do with aspects of family rules and the management of discipline and what are the rules, explicit and implicit, that apply in our family. Or that we grew up with.

Discipline has to do with understanding the rules (of home, school and community) and understanding what happens when the rules are broken; it has to do with learning to be responsible.

Discipline has to do with teaching and learning and can be acted out in many different ways. As parents we discipline our children when they are able to understand what we wish to teach them, so that they will learn how to discipline themselves. We will need to use fewer and fewer limits as our children know how to make responsible decisions for themselves. Discipline should not be harsh or unfair. It should be positive and used to encourage good behavior as well as to stop behavior you do not want your child to do. Discipline is given with rules followed by consequences.

One of the basic functions of a parent is precisely the normative function of giving limits, a frame of reference within which to act. From birth, children need “limits” to be “contained.”

Imagine a child who has a strong exploratory drive, especially when he begins to understand how his body’s motor skills “work.” He needs rules and limits, otherwise we risk losing him home, having broken cups and glasses in no time (because it’s too good to hear that after I throw the coffee cup on the floor it follows makes a big noise and that it was me who did it!!).

Limits, and rules are essentially related to reducing potential risks and dangers to children, also responding to the need for safety and control that parents have especially with the arrival of their first child!

So is living within a consistent environment, where words and behaviors have a sense of consistency.

One of the basic goals of family rules is to “prevent” us from committing something wrong, unwelcome, not accepted.

This area also has to do with family expectations. If there are clear and shared rules, I know what to expect from each other.

Important to emphasize a positive aspect of discipline: the promotion of children’s autonomy. What is autonomy to you? What do you expect from an autonomous person? Answering these questions will most likely bring back to your mind the concepts of ability and competence to give yourself rules, abide by norms. Responsibility.

It is also about the ability to take care of one’s body, things, and family routines.

Often many of the rules we follow in our families, we learned in turn from the families in which we grew up. In a couple, then, it’s about bringing together two worlds of rules handed down from different families, and they don’t always coincide. And it is important to dialogue about them, to find compromises, to revise one’s positions. But it is important not to take it for granted.

That’s the way it is in this family! This is often what a child hears from a parent at the culmination of an argument or quarrel that is precisely about following a rule. Only often this rule has not been talked about!

The child is not able to differentiate right from wrong, and above all, his world is an emotional world, especially in the beginning. The reason, the logical brain, will develop only later.

So the function of family rules is also crucial in pointing the direction in which to go, both for children and parents.

Because of the rules also, and the ways in which people choose to share them, to accept them, to deal with them whenever they are not followed, it is an important opportunity for the family to grow.

Also to develop empathy. Think about the consequences of an act on the other person: reflecting on the consequences, and putting oneself in the other person’s shoes, will help the child, but also the adult, to train empathy.

To develop this area of family skills, it is also important to reckon with all the others, particularly the autobiographical reframing of parents.

 

Sufficiently good relationships Area

Every family is a microsystem that lives in relation to other systems. It itself is made up of subjects in continuous relationship that constitute the environment of the children!

What relationships are we talking about? The relationship between parents, the relationship between parent and child, between siblings.

And then there are the relationships with grandparents, with the babysitter, with the world of more or less close relatives. Relationships with friends, with co-workers, with schoolmates and their parents. With the school system, institutions and other educational agencies.

In “The Relational Mind,” Siegel specifies that the brain develops through relationships.

The “goodness” of relationships can be referred to the concept of attachment as theorized by Bowlby and to Winnicott’s sufficiently good mother theory. The good mother is not the one who is “perfect” but the one who manages the relationship with mastery up to detachment, presenting it to the child in such a natural way that it is even reassuring. In this direction, a relationship is good enough when it provides the space for autonomy so that the child can experience something different from the mother (or father), with the security of always being able to return to her/him and be lovingly welcomed by her/him again and again.

Of course, this also applies to the father. And also for the educational figures of reference.

Sufficiently good, let’s not forget: not perfect, not the best possible, the most good, but good enough!

Today often more than relationships and ties are denoted by connections, more superficial, less “binding.”

Yet, the family needs a “solid and secure foundation” on which to build and grow.

One of the qualitative elements of relationship is communication.

How one communicates is a fundamental aspect of the relationship. Again it is related to all areas of family skills.

 

Educational awareness

Becoming a parent and being a parent represents a unique opportunity to develop new competencies. In general, competence represents the ability to combine knowledge, skills and abilities (personal, social, etc.) and use them in every experiential axis of life.

Competence is also the result of experience. That is why it is also the result of the children we have been. Of the educational models we received, of the parents we had.

One of the tasks required of the parent, inherent in becoming a parent, is to choose an educational model.

Becoming and being a parent is a natural fact, but the educational model is often linked to other aspects, cultural, traditional, of social customs.

What kind of parent do I want to be? How do I intend to educate, what strategies do I possess to contribute to my child’s growth?

Answering these questions means constructing (and co-constructing in the case of a couple) an educational model.

Notably, however, in most cases, two people become parents. And in parenting, the stories and experiences of multiple people are involved.

Let us never forget that we are the fruit of our history, and therefore of our experiences. And fortunately this means that if we become aware of this, we are not necessarily “determined” forever.