Guide for moms and dads in trouble: a key book to educate at home

Miguel Angel Rizaldos Lamoca He has been working in the field of psychotherapy for almost three decades and helping fathers and mothers to improve the quality of life of their young children. But this clinical psychologist residing in Aranjuez is not limited to serving families; In addition, he works as a disseminator, explaining in a clear and simple way what the science of human behavior tells us.

Recently, moreover, Miguel Ángel Rizaldos has published his book Guide for moms and dads in distress, a work with which he seeks to inform fathers, mothers and educators about all the keys to the psychological well-being of children, their learning needs, and how it is possible to raise children effectively and without compromising one's health wear.

Guide for moms and dads in distress, by Miguel Ángel Rizaldos: the keys to raising and educating

We talked with Miguel Ángel Rizaldos to explain the main ideas behind the creation of this interesting book.

How did you come up with the idea to write? Guide for moms and dads in distress?

Since 2011 I have been writing on my own blog. In it there are articles on education guidelines for children, and these articles have always served me as a reinforcement of what I work on in consultation with parents and children.

In this way I wanted to continue with this work, and the book aims to be a road map to find the best paths of education for our little ones, both for fathers, mothers and educators. Everything from a simple, easy and practical language. My 28 years of experience as a psychologist and 16 as a father are combined in the book.

I address all the aspects that may concern parents and those that are most current. Thus, the topics that I deal with are as important and basic as attachment, responsibility, the need to set limits, communication between parents and children, the fear, emotion regulation, social skills and assertiveness, bullying, tantrums, child self-esteem, coping with stress and anxiety, adolescence, divorce, ADHD, and homework, handling new technologies such as tablets, smartphones, Internet use and networks social.

In the final part of the book I leave a few chapters to focus on the self-care of fathers and mothers, and I give those basic tools that they have to have and put into practice to feel good and take care. In short, we transmit what we do, not what we say to do. If you don't take care of yourself as a father, mother or educator, you won't take good care of yourself.

In various parts of the book you refer to the importance of reinforcing children's self-esteem. What common mistakes do you think fathers and mothers tend to fall into when trying to give little ones a positive image of themselves?

I think the fundamental problem today is that mothers and fathers overprotect our children excessively. This means that we do not generate trust in them, since we do not show confidence that they are capable of taking responsibility. This causes minors to have low self-esteem, since they do not trust themselves because their parents have not trusted them.

In accordance with this, I believe that having a positive image of themselves depends on being able to face situations and not being the parents who solve them. Having the willingness to face difficulties by oneself will increase self-concept, and this increases security.

You also talk about how problematic the old habit of putting mandatory tasks as homework during the school vacation period, in a systematic way, is. Do you get the feeling that it's taken for granted that making children work hard to learn something is always a good thing?

From psychology we know that learning is fundamentally experiential, not informative. This means that learning is not just receiving information, it is fundamentally experiencing what you learn.

On many occasions it takes will and effort to learn. But on the other hand we know that both children and adults learn in a much easier and faster way when we feel emotionally good, when we have fun. Thus, there is a learning technique called "gamification", which is learning through play; Better results are achieved with this technique.

One of the aspects discussed in the book is the importance of working on skills social skills of children, and that is why you give advice for educating the little ones in this kind of skills. Do you think that a good part of the conflicts between parents and children appear due to failures in communication derived from the neglect of this type of education?

I consider that social skills are basic requirements to be able to better relate to others. They are so important to our well-being that they should be implemented from our earliest childhood.

Unfortunately, there is no culture or knowledge of what these basic relationship and communication skills with others are. This lack causes people to have many problems in interrelations with others, and therefore also between parents and children.

We know from psychology that social incompetence makes people distance themselves from well-being. Fathers, mothers and educators are role models and we transmit what we do. For this reason, if we are skilled at a social level, we will transmit these skills to our minors.

Sometimes we talk about how prone to tantrums children are, but it is also true that at other times they may have trouble expressing what they think and feel. For this reason, in one of the chapters of the book you talk about how to teach sons and daughters to adopt an assertive communication style. When raising children who are in the infancy stage, how can you help the little ones to achieve a balance without falling into the purely capricious attitude or the repression of everything that experience?

As is obvious, there is no exact or magical formula to get what you want in front of others. The assertiveness you mention is a complex social skill, but its use guarantees us a better balance between getting what we want and respecting the rights of others.

Basically, and for us to understand each other, assertive behavior is made up of three elements; empathize with the other, make the other empathize with us and, finally, reach an agreed alternative solution, where everyone wins and everyone loses.

In the book you dedicate the final chapters to giving advice for fathers and mothers to take care of their psychological well-being. Do you think that today there is a tendency to think that moms and dads should accept all the effort involved in raising children without investing time in looking after their own health?

Yes that's how it is. It is very common in my office to find fathers and mothers who forget their needs and interests to attend solely and exclusively to their children. This is not beneficial for your children's education because, as I said before, people who don't take care of themselves can't take care of themselves well.

On the other hand, I also reiterate that we transmit what we do, if we as a father or mother do not take care of ourselves, our children will not take care of themselves tomorrow. Therefore, I recommend to mothers and fathers that they take care of themselves as they take care of who they love the most.

Being a father or mother should not mean ceasing to have needs or interests. Seeing to cover your needs and interests as a father or mother should not be considered selfish, it should be considered healthy, for you and your children.

Sometimes, the parenting and education task carried out by mothers and fathers requires support beyond the school environment. What are the signs that it would be good to take a young son or daughter to the psychologist?

I always insist both for adults and for children and young people that to go to the psychologist you don't have to be bad but want to be better. Psychologists not only work with people with psychopathology problems, we also intervene when they do not have a pathology psychology need the strategies and tools that from psychology we know that generate well-being and that make us face the upset better.

In children it is not frequent that they express their discomfort. They feel that they are wrong and do not know what is happening to them, and therefore parents must be able to identify the signs that something is wrong.

Usually these "clues" are alterations in their daily behavior. If we see that our son is having a bad time, that he is suffering, that he is not happy and does not enjoy his day to day, even going as far as not wanting to leave the house or be with other people, the ideal is to ask for help soon. This will make it easier to begin to provide them with tools to better deal with their discomfort.