What Is Learned Gently, Is Remembered With Love

Educating with gentleness is offering upbringing with “heart”, there where we guide our children through patience and respect, there where needs are attended, without haste, without pause, but step by step and hand in hand .

As curious as it may seem today, there are many fathers, mothers and even teachers who continue to approach education under the classic behavioral strategies of reinforcement and punishment. It is taken for granted that the little ones are that kind of blank slate where knowledge must be forcibly introduced because children, of course, “know nothing.

Now, instead of understanding education from this perspective, we should see it more as an awakening. It is opening one’s eyes to life and the world, and such an event must be experienced through curiosity, affection and that authentic respect for the child where each internalized learning can be remembered and applied thanks to love.

We have all heard and even lived in our own skin that questionable advice that “the letter with blood enters” , and although we cannot put aside the always important culture of effort, what is not pedagogical or justifiable is to focus on the culture of sacrifice, there where to remove the magic of a child’s childhood, there where to guide him only through punishments and rewards.

Learning gently, believe it or not, is the key to success, because raising with tenderness, guiding with affection is respecting children so that their awakening to life is something intense, effective and happy.

Education in gentleness is guiding through Emotional Intelligence

Nowadays, there are many education professionals who promote this awakening, this change of focus in the classroom where Emotional Intelligence can be applied on a daily basis. Factors such as promoting positive values, positive reinforcement over negative ones, or prioritizing cooperative activities over competitiveness, is what little by little can give great results.

If in nursery schools, colleges and institutes an attempt is already being made to promote this approach, it is necessary that at home we are also in tune with this proposal. In fact, we are sure that many of our moms and dads who follow us every day will be applying many of those key concepts that Emotional Intelligence proposes to us, there where softness in the treatment and in affective and comprehensive parental closeness, are the strategies more effective when raising a boy or a girl.

To do this, and to reflect a little more on the subject, we suggest you delve into these dimensions that will undoubtedly be of great help:

The child is not a blank sheet

It is necessary that we dismantle the classic approaches on the development and the way of learning of a child to be more effective at the time of raising and educating. Our little ones are not “blank sheets”. If so, they would all be the same and behave the same way in childhood.

• C omo mother or father and know that your baby or your child 2.3 or 6 years has its own character, a way of behaving, reacting to things, to learn or interact with you.

• Only when we understand what they are like, what emotions inhabit them the most, or how they best relate to things and to us, can we successfully educate them.
• That journey, the one of upbringing and education, can only be carried out successfully through gentleness and that patient attitude that understands and intuits. Because children are not empty chests, they are not hollow boxes, they are full of dreams, conflicting emotions, anxieties and also fears.

Our task is then to get to know all those inner worlds to help them and enhance their maximum abilities, their maximum capabilities.

What is gentle nurturing?

• Educating gently is educating with patience and without haste.
• It is knowing the needs of our children.
• It is making use of positive reinforcement, it is being his close guide when he makes a mistake or does something wrong, it is knowing how to tell him “I am here, with you, I know you can do things much better and I am going to help you.”

• To educate gently is not to raise with shouts, it is not to compare our children with others, or to speak in front of them as if they were not there while we comment on their defects, their hobbies, their mistakes or their limitations …
• To be a father or a mother who educates in gentleness is to be someone who is very clear about what he wants for his son: someone does not want perfect children, nor the most handsome son, nor the most intelligent. What you want above all is for you to be a HAPPY person.

To conclude, never forget in your day to day with your little treasures these three words: softness, patience and closeness. They will be your great allies.

Images courtesy of Komako Sakai