Could you please tell me where I need to go? That depends on where you want to go, answered the cat. I don’t care too much where…said Alicia. In that case, it doesn’t matter where you go, interrupted the cat (Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol).

Knowing where we want to go is the first step we have to take to start walking and reach our destination. I love the month of January because it is a time when we all get excited about the new year, we set goals and we propose to make certain changes in our lives. We usually say when I have (money, health, free time…) I will do this or that and I will be happier. But it is just the opposite that we have to consider the phrase, to desire something is to transform oneself to attract achievement, says the writer Raimón Samsó. Therefore, we would have to ask ourselves, what do I have to do to be the person who gets to have what I want.

I encourage you to ask yourself: What do I have to do to be the father or mother that will lead me to have the family I want? What values ​​do I want to transmit to my children?

In an increasingly interconnected world with a multitude of contradictory information and fashions about how children should be raised and educated, parents feel increasingly insecure and fearful, which leads us to continually ask ourselves if each action or decision related to their future is the correct one or not. We are afraid to say “no” because they may be traumatized or suffer, afraid that they will make a mistake, that they will not be happy,… . Terms such as helicopter parents (those who fly over their children solving their problems, attentive to their every movement and needs), tiger mothers (focused on excellence in academic results and excessively perfectionist), jellyfish mothers (excessively permissive who do not set limits and leave decision-making to their children),… highlight that hyper-parenting, as Eva Millet calls it, is an educational trend of this century characterized by the overprotection of children and the resolution of their problems. problems, with the belief that children must be given all kinds of opportunities to succeed in life. However, as the author says, overprotecting is unprotecting, if we solve everything for our children, we are telling them “you can’t do it without me, you are not capable.” This reduces their autonomy and makes them fragile and with little tolerance for frustration.

And what can we parents do then? From my point of view, never lose common sense, relax, enjoy parenthood understanding that there will be better days and other horrible ones, as in everything, love them very much without losing authority, accompany them in their frustration not avoid it, trust them, assign them responsibilities, and when you find yourself in a situation in which you don’t know what to do, remember again the values ​​that you want to transmit to them. Any unnecessary help is an obstacle to development, said María Montessori. Training autonomous children is essential for them to become independent adults.