“Quiet, I will tie you to the shoes, you don’t know yet, and I will bathe you, I will dress you up, I will wash your teeth and take you to school; and you will sleep like every night in my bed so as not to nightmares.” Talking like this to an 8-10 year-old is not such an extraordinary case. In addition, it will bring you only a snack in which you like to go to school to find the child, because otherwise you can get angry, and if you want to go to the park, even if it rains, you will.

As a child, we've all fallen from the bicycle at some point, and after we saw that we had a pebble wound on our knee, we got up and we kept on a bike. Today, a large number of parents will approach the newly fallen child with distress and will give excessive importance to the wound they have suffered. Because times have changed. Many parents fear authoritarian attitudes, which often received this model from their parents and want to compensate for it with the next generation, offering immense affection, but a misunderstood affection. This is explained by Iñigo Ochoa de Alda, psychologist, professor and father of Alavés. Ochoa de Alda is also a child therapist with problems.

It tells us about parents who cannot accept the least suffering of their children. Against phrases such as “let him cry, it is good” of an era, they bring the pain of the child ill, because they understand that the child lives with anguish and not as a learning process, “but if you do not let him suffer and feel frustration, you do not let him learn for himself to face pessimistic situations”. Ochoa de Alda admits that in the age of emotional intelligence, books and the bustle and bustle of information, psychologists and educators can be part of their responsibilities. The pressure experienced by mother and father is great, the fear of what others think and being bad parents, because now everyone seems to know or should know about education and psychology: “We parents continuously doubt whether what we do is enough, before they took the quietest things, but today we demand a lot from ourselves and that sometimes does not let us see that giving everything is not being a good father. If at any given moment the child falls off the bicycle and runs to seek it, distressed, nothing happens, it does not mean that we protect too much, the problem is that when these behaviors become fixed, as an example”.

In poorly adapted couples, the care they do not offer to their partner is sometimes directed at the child, or over-protected to compensate for the lack of time spent on their child for the work. “That’s often seen in eating habits: I’m little with the child, I don’t want to spend the time I’m struggling to eat well, we’ll have dinner on the pizza and it’s there, and I’ll pick up your room myself, so I don’t fight it.” The child will take advantage of the situation because he realizes that when the father and mother become angry they become nervous, or sad, and playing thus he can “tyrannize” the parents.

Mimar the child vs. overprotect

Although it's not worth it, when we give the child what he wants and more, we're pampering him, for example, when he gets a lot of presents at Olentzero, but it's a conscious process. Overprotection is a deeper problem, since the father acts as if the child is part of him, is not able to discern, and if the child suffers, the father suffers. So, it will not let you try new things, if you can suffer, and you will not bike it because you can fall, you will not put it in the pool because you can swallow water, you will not bring it to the snow because you can catch the cold… “It creates a dangerous affective bond because you unconsciously tell the child: what hurts me, I will be fine if you are well. Unconsciously, the father or mother may use their child to give the child the missing well-being,” the psychologist explains.

Where's the limit? When and how much do we have to let the child suffer? Ochoa de Alda has stated that the key is in common sense and in the middle term of the word. That is, the authoritarian model, once more extended, is based on many controls and few affections, and excessive protection is based on many controls and affections, so the most appropriate would be to channel control and affection to the extent, give instructions to the child with affection. When the child falls from the bicycle, the father can come to help him, but get closer and give importance to the event, so that the child knows that, although he cries, what has happened to him is not serious. And if you cry, leaving half an hour alone in a cry is not the solution. In the words of the psychologist, “what happens is that we all see that the authoritarian model is wrong, but the evil of overprotecting is not so clear, because it seems that loving too much is not bad. And then, when the child explodes in adolescence, the parents are surprised, ‘but how can you complain about everything I have given you, all I have done for you?’ Yes, the father has given the child everything he needs and prevented him from adopting habits of autonomy.

Professor Iñaki Garijo explains that it is a reality he sees every day among students. Garijo has been a professor for over 25 years and works at the Axular Ikastola in Donostia, with children between 11 and 12 years old. It distinguishes two types of students among whom it is perceived that they are excessively protected. On the one hand, there are those who think that they can do whatever they like, because they know that their activities are going to be supported by their parents, they are very proud of their students and teachers. “For example, there was a conflict recently between two students, one of them showed a very arrogant attitude when we picked them up, and that child’s father went to see the other, caught him by his neck and threatened him. That cannot be allowed, and furthermore, even if you don’t realize, that father is throwing stones at himself, because his son is always in a fight and is normal, because he sees that his father protects him.”

To other children, Garijo sees them as inhibited, accustomed to their parents doing everything, they have a very marked path and lack autonomy. “They are related to fear, they stay apart, in silence, on a second level, and do not participate in teamwork or leave the exercises to do it at home, where their parents help them. They don’t have an aggressive attitude, but when we talk to their parents we realize that they have another face at home, which are more tyrant than at school.”

The professor's fault

Iñaki Garijo is clear that if the father is not involved, the school can do little in the education of children. “We usually meet with parents in an incident, we tell them that the child has no respect, that he has participated in a fight… and some understand it, put measures, but others do not want to see the problems and tell you that this is not the case, that it is not true. I see them dazzled and if parents don’t want to see them… The school takes its own measurements, from emotional intelligence we work self-esteem and other things, but the best is coordination between school and parents.”

Precisely, according to Iñigo Ochoa de Alda, it is common for parents who have children who are too protected to blame the teacher when something happens, because they do not believe that the child can depart from the attitudes they expect from him. “Often, teachers have to perform roles that have not been fulfilled at home: to say no to the child, not give him everything he wants and at the time he wants … and some parents do not understand it, it seems to him that the teacher is not fair, that it is too hard, that he has mania to the child, and I mean children 4-5 years old.” These kinds of mothers and fathers are often very critical of other people, because they want to protect the child from the sufferer. But it is confusing for the child, because he does not know what is good in the attitudes he receives from adults, and this promotes the behaviors of young children, the whims, the outbreaks…

Adolescence, too late to solve the problem?

The behaviors exposed so far can result in not discriminating what is right and what is wrong, in not learning to face negative situations, in not developing resources for social relations, in not knowing to receive a no and not having the capacity to frustrate, in not walking the path of maturity and autonomy, in not promoting creativity and initiative, in not developing timid, timid, weak and undecided attitudes ... Others will think that it's their problem, that they don't adapt well to their environment, and they will close themselves, without establishing relationships. This can lead to drugs, not suffering and not thinking about it, or especially among girls, having an imbalance with food.” The psychologist has added that these attitudes, which develop in the child personality, are more dangerous in adolescence.

All adolescents have the need to differentiate themselves from their parents and every teenager will complain about them, get angry with them, but if parents stay firm and know how to be flexible and negotiate at the same time, the young man who accepts the frustration will adapt more easily. On the contrary, anyone who is accustomed to all rights and has no responsibility will continue to blackmail and demand: “There are 17-year-olds who never put the table at home, who do not make the bed, who raise the room or drop trash, who, although they behave badly, receive the pay every week, and let do everything that they want generates a false democracy: the teenager believes he has the right to everything, which is free, but misinterprets the idea of freedom. How can we set a timetable, a set of rules, for a 17-year-old who has not set limits and has always had everything he has been asked for? As a result of its excessive protection, it has not developed resources to negotiate, communicate properly and complain, and its response is aggression. What was a child's helmet, in adolescence is an insult, and if you haven't managed to hold the child's helmet, how can you stop the adolescent's aggression?" says the psychologist.

According to a study presented in February by a team from the University of Deusto, seven out of every hundred Basque youth aged 14 and 18 have confessed to having ever beaten their parents and 2.5% claim to have beaten their father and mother three to five times in the last year. According to the researchers, the profile that has grown the most after these adolescents in recent years is that of
a young man who has had neither limits nor negativas.Ochoa of Alda has referred to another research published in 2007 in Gipuzkoa along with other psychotherapists. Analyzing the relationship of young people between 12 and 18 years of age with their parents, those who were more aggressive with their parents repeated the following: “They give me disgust, shame.” Because parents who overprotect are great in childhood, but they become embarrassing in adolescence when needs are other, and the threat of a parent who has no authority for their child, like calling the Ertzaines, is ridiculous.

Does it become an irreversible problem at some point? The psychologist tells us that she has had very hard cases before her and that as the parents get involved in the therapy, there is a greater chance of solving the situation. It is assigned a mediating role to recover the coexistence, on the one hand, for the young person to feel independent and autonomous, but do things that demonstrate that he is autonomous and independent, and on the other hand, for the parents to understand that the child has the capacity to be autonomous and recover the lost authority. However, when there is violence, special centers, drug use, imbalances with food, Ochoa de Alda says that the reasons for malnutrition are in the background to address priority problems. “When you see the behavior of the adolescent child, yes, it is then when the parents realize, and tell me, ‘Iñigo, because we have given him everything when he was a child’, but until then they did not realize it, because when he is a child he is a pampered child, or too child, or weird… They make excuses.”

Importance and size of the problem

The psychologist has given us a negative and optimistic view. What worries parents who want to send their children to a center and take away their head breaker: “In adolescence, we all test with parents to show how much I own and, when they govern me, I learn that they respect me but that I am subject to rules. If my parents give up immediately, the message they convey to me is yes, that I own; if my parents who are above me cannot rule me, who will be able to do it?”

On the contrary, he stressed that the general reality is good, as according to the data collected in the study, almost 60% of the boys and girls valued positively the relationship with their fathers and mothers; that is, they affirmed that they received control and affection in a balanced way, “and when a young man feels that you want him, but at the same time you fascinated him a little, you are doing well as a father”. The second largest group was young people who felt excessively protected (28%) and the lowest percentage of authoritarian models and relationships without control or affection.

Iñaki Garijo, from his experience, sees competitiveness as the main scourge. According to the professor, boys and girls receive this from society and their parents, they are given great importance to the results, rather than to other values. “I would say that before things were done with another calm, now the children are very programmed and sometimes it’s the way to have the children parked.” But that's a topic for another report.