Many of the experiences that we share today with our sons and daughters are related to the urgency When faced with tasks such as completing homework and attending extracurricular activities on time, the opportunities that arise to communicate with our children leave little room for improvisation and spontaneity. Mothers and fathers end up becoming supervisors of their tasks and interacting with them through requests, prohibitions or threats, through a type of communication based, above all, in action: “You have to do…”, “Don’t do this other thing…”, “If you do that…” This type of communication leaves little room for sharing experiences with children that can help and guide them in understanding their fears, doubts, and conflicts.
Often, We tend to offer them closed answers When we see them facing difficult situations. Again, "You have to do this...or that," we feel frustrated as parents when we realize that's not what they end up doing. We can feel the distance from our children as an obstacle that's difficult to overcome.
Sometimes we try to get closer to their emotional world, but we usually do it without taking into account the ambivalence of affections, how these can be contradictory; the same person or situation awakens in us curiosity or tenderness, and fear or rejection at the same time.
We are faced with the fact that emotions are not pure, and just as a happy situation can make us cry, fear or anxiety can also lead us to provoke comical situations with which to try to calm ourselves, to feel less scared. We find that There is no univocal, causal relationship between an emotion and a response or action and this depends, in most cases, on the unique emotional framework that each person builds throughout their life.
When we try to communicate with our sons and daughters following “emotional labels” from which predetermined instructions are derived, and not from their own experiences, we are acting the same as when we explain a language or mathematics concept to them. We are offering them cognitive categories to try to modify their emotional states. In fact, this way of approaching the understanding emotions It is more typical of the adult world that of childhood and adolescence, and distances them, and us as adults, from the needs of their emotional development.
For this reason, and taking into account that the relationship with sons and daughters is built from affections and shared experiences, the Municipal Social Services Center will have available during the next months of May and June of group spaces where mothers, fathers and children can explore the feelings, expectations and experiences from which they build their relationship.
To facilitate communication and shared experiences between parents and children, we will use play, spontaneous movement, fantastic stories and drawing to help us understand the needs, difficulties, and possibilities that our relationship with our sons and daughters offers us.
The work sessions will take place on Mondays and Tuesdays in the afternoons of May and June and will be led by a psychology professional.
For more information on how to participate in these weekly meeting spaces, you can call the Municipal Social Services Center (968 773 009) and ask for the psychologist responsible for the meeting spaces between parents and children..