Being a father has allowed me to enter a world of babies, mothers and fathers that I did not completely know (logical, previously I was not interested) and that has allowed me to know many things about parents before being and after being.
There are many people who have seen their lives change and their way of thinking because of "guilt" of having their own baby in their arms. There are many people who tell you that before being a mother or father they thought that children were like this or that way and that they had to be treated like this or that way and that later, when they saw each other on the sidewalk, with their baby hooked on the tit or with the baby sleeping on our chest (we love parents) explain that everything has changed.
I am one of them. I am one of those parents who have a before and after. Today I will explain how is the father that I had to be (to the father that I am more or less you already know him).
My son won't tease me
It is so much the fear that people have for our children to get out of hand, especially having our recent adolescence and having seen as many stories as we have seen, that we end up deciding that we will do everything possible to ensure that our children do not take us hair, what let's not lose control.
Not losing control means controlling, and controlling a lot. Being constant, sharp, not letting go, "this is done well and period", "punished your room" and even, as often said, "a good slap in time prevents many future evils."
All this seemed logical to me and it seemed like a good way to be a father, basically because it was the way I had been a son. I look at the result and I see myself as an honest, honest, humble, correct, educated and respectful person. Seeing all this I thought: I will do the same thing my parents did to get the same result.
The problem is that I forgot to think about all those times when I thought “when I am a father I will not be like that”, “I will do it in another way”,… phrases that are forgotten when they stop controlling you and you begin to assume more responsibilities as a person.
It also seemed good ...
It also seemed normal for a child to cry, so that he would learn that he cannot have everything in life. I met a woman who breastfed her daughter for more than two years and I found it absurd and out of place. The bottle and artificial milk seemed to me the optimal way to feed a baby after 3 or 4 months, because it was what they had explained to me in the race and because it is what my mother did with my little brothers. I read the book of the Estivill method of eating, and I thought it was perfect if “if you don't want it, don't eat it, I'll put it on for dinner, and so on until you eat it”. I liked Supernanny because I taught those rude beings how some children became.
And as I said, the education received in childhood seemed good to me, because the product of all this was me, my person, with all my virtues, many (I think) compared to many other people.
However, when I had a child
However, when I had a son, when I talked about it with Miriam, my wife, when my son was growing up and we were learning, the father who was going to be began to learn many things in life and began to relive childhood, to remember her, through her son's eyes.
I began to remember, I began to feel that I had many positive things as a person, but many negative things, such as lack of self-confidence, a great inability to make decisions, thanks to the fact that no one ever let me take them (the control he was talking about) , such a self-esteem and too much carelessness regarding many matters (because as they had never let me decide, I had never felt responsible for anything ...).
Surely I just described 90% of the population and most will say that he is happy and that he likes to be like that, but I think he could be a better person, more balanced, if he had received a less authoritative education and That's why I decided that all the fear that I had for my children to control me should disappear. He could not live thinking of controlling, limiting or disciplining them under a martial regime. I could not and did not want to, because I would not forgive myself to end up doing everything that I once hated. So I decided to do it in a different way, more respectful, with more love, with more love and spending more time with my children, much more time than my parents dedicated to me.
I have traveled this path and many other fathers and mothers have done it, which have gone from being a traditional father project that continues with the line that their parents marked them to be innovative and closer and affectionate fathers and mothers, more Patient and democratic.
Some have passed three villages and maybe one day we have to talk about it, because I often see parents who at home had no voice or vote as children who now also have no voice or vote as parents. I see children who are not respectful of the people around them in the face of their parents' impassibility, thus educating children just as problematic, or even more so, than those who were excessively controlled and humiliated.
But we will talk about this another day. Today we have to talk about that point of logic, discipline (not authoritarian), affection and dialogue that many parents try to find to ensure that our children are honest, honest, humble, sincere, respectful, educated and correct (as I consider myself thanks to authoritarianism) and also that they are able to think, make decisions, love each other, be able to dialogue from you to you, to maintain their position before others and to argue it and to be able to talk openly about emotions.
Mission Impossible? Yes, no doubt, but nobody can tell us that we don't try. Than nobody ever tell me that I didn't try.
