A few weeks ago José Antonio Marina, philosopher, writer and teacher was interviewed by the publicist Risto Mejide and talked about motivation, limits, punishments and cheeks. In one of the passages of the interview, just the one you have in the video that you can see below, focus on the cheek and comment how much we have spent to criminalize the cheeks to the point that it seems that now, to give them, one has Than go to the dungeon.
The interviewee then says that "cheeks must be given in an environment of love", and then I remain thoughtful and ask myself: Do you talk about children or women?
I know they talk about children. I know that when you see the fragment of the interview you will know that they talk about children. But please, as is usually done to be clear about how far we are going from violent and disrespectful, do not think of children, think of women. In women, or in elderly people with dementia, or even in animals. Think of any of those people and hit the "Play" again. You will see how the meaning of the interview takes on a terrible meaning.
"It hasn't traumatized me"
It seems that things are considered good or bad according to the footprint they leave. If something that a mother or father does traumatizes a child, it is wrong. If you don't traumatize it, it's well done. Following this rule of three, there are many things we can do to our children, horrible, without being traumatized.
For example, since children barely remember anything we do to them when they are babies, we can let them cry 24 hours a day, we can yell at them, hit them and we can even spit them out if we feel like it. Then, at 2 or 3 years we start taking care of them a little better and ready. If they will be very balanced as adults, I do not know, I have my doubts, but surely you ask them if they have any trauma and they will tell you no. In fact, they won't even know what the question is about.
Isn't the argument absurd? For they mention it very seriously and convinced that there they have the crux of the matter, the key, when it turns out that they are measuring the right and the wrong with a wrong rod. Not for not traumatizing a child giving him a cheek is fine.
Paste in an environment of love?
Of course, because if you hit in an environment where there is no love, it is not going anymore, ending the child, with his childhood, growing with a family that doesn't love him and that also hits him. If there is love, then one of lime and one of sand, the thing is more balanced and the child ends up being a more or less normal adult. He may have his insecurities, his problems of self-esteem, but nothing that differentiates him too much from the rest of the population, mostly the same or more unhappy. If you even grow up thinking that hitting children, but with love, it's fine! And he will defend his parents because he deserved it and they loved him a lot.
He deserved it
And then I think of women victims of the violence of their partners and how many come to justify bruises and injuries saying that "I deserved it" and I get bad. Come on, I watch the video thinking about women and abusers and I want to tell them four things. I guess because I watch the video thinking about children and I feel equally bad.
But that is the difference, that I feel bad thinking about children, but not many people. Not even they, interviewer and interviewee feel bad, that they are defending punishments and cheeks when there are many more imaginative and loving ways to educate.
Limits?
Of course, it is one of the only meaningful things he has said. A child cannot be educated in permissiveness, as it is a mistake as serious as educating him in authoritarianism. A child must have limits in the same way that we have his parents and every person who lives in this world. Limits you have to know, for not calling them rules or codes of behavior. Those who tell you when you can make noise and when not, when you can run and when not, where you can play and where not, etc.
But man, to explain them, inform them and help them comply to put them in a shoehorn, through punishments and cheeks there is a stretch. And that I realize this, that I am not a philosopher, writer or teacher but a simple nurse father of three children, has a crime, as they say in my town.
Enough of justifying violence against children. And no, I don't talk about a beating, I talk about cheeks and punishments. I talk about what they say in the video. I talk about all that, if we did it to an animal they would throw us out, all that, if we did it to our partners, they would denounce us. That is what I am talking about.
Video | Four
Photo | Thinkstock
In Babies and more | Hit the children with a cheek on time? Even dogs do not look good, a cheek in time ?, Violence negatively affects the brain of children, When I see a father hit his son, what should I do? (I)
