The debate on the effect of cell phones, the poor school results in the latest PISA report, the warning about early access to porn, the rates of poor mental health… Fathers and mothers today live in an infinite loop of worries and doubts about education of creatures. New technologies, the pace of life and our society have added a few obstacles to the daily marathon at home.

Alberto Soler and Concepción Roger, psychologists, have just published The Great Parenting Guide (Paidós), a leading manual that reviews basic advice on a wide range of topics, from nutrition to tantrums, including screens, co-responsibility or cyberbullying. Soler, who has a community of almost 360,000 followers on Instagram and is one of the best-known parenting disseminators in Spain, is the one who attends La Vanguardia.

How do you evaluate the results of the latest PISA report?

The collapse in PISA results must make us reflect, without a doubt. I don’t think it is due to a single reason, but we must keep in mind that these results are influenced by the educational policies that were taken during the covid pandemic. In any case, I think it requires reflection on how we are approaching education. It is worth asking whether some of the innovations introduced in recent decades (for example, the digitalization of classrooms) are helping to improve students’ skills or rather the opposite.

Do we have a society of overprotected children and adolescents, who do not value effort?

There is a lot of talk about overprotection, but it is always to blame the family, “how bad this family is doing, their son is becoming useless.” I think that each family does as well as it is capable of within a difficult and somewhat hostile context towards parenting. The working hours, the salaries, the difficulties of conciliation make it very complicated for us. Each family tries to survive the best way they can.

In order not to overprotect, what do you think are the keys?

It depends on the age. With babies and very young children it is impossible to overprotect, we must meet all their needs. At later ages, their autonomy must be encouraged, not doing tasks for them that they can do alone. But there must previously be teaching, learning, tutoring; Sometimes to avoid overprotection we end up throwing our children to the lions.

For example, now that we are in the midst of a social debate on the subject, would giving a cell phone to 10 or 12-year-olds be throwing it to the lions?

Giving a 10 or 12 year old child his own cell phone seems like total, absolute negligence to me, like the top of a pine tree, without any palliative. Allowing him to use it with family supervision, with limits and teaching him, seems like part of education to me. But giving a cell phone to a 10 or 12 year old child, with access to networks, is a very negligent act and should not be the responsibility of each family.

So, do you think the use of cell phones should be prohibited up to a certain age?

It’s just as negligent as giving car keys to a 10-year-old child. What happens is that we have laws that prevent us from giving responsibility to the family. With networks and new technologies we have not yet reached that legislation and it is necessary, without absolutely any doubt. We have done it with traffic, with tobacco, with alcohol, with gambling…

What would be the appropriate age for access? The psychologist Francisco Villar talks about 18 years…

It wouldn’t seem outrageous to me to have a line in his name. There should be a very clear gradation depending on what age, what use can be made, what platform can be accessed. There’s no way a 14-year-old child has an Instagram profile!

What do minors who have this access risk?

We see the increase in suicidal behavior among adolescents, problems with eating behavior, self-esteem, sexual violence… Access to pornographic content is closely related to uncontrolled access from a very early age to inappropriate content. Furthermore, there is a great attention deficit in children, young people and adults. We have less and less tolerance for long texts: those of us who generate content increasingly have to simplify more and more. The networks are progressively dumbing us down.

What would be a good limit on screen use?

I recommend avoiding screens until at least 4 years old, they are like candy for the brain, they are delicious, they are good, but they are totally unnecessary, they do not nourish. Having a 2 or 3 year old child exposed to screens is damaging the family climate on a daily basis if we want to set limits. If we don’t want to set limits, we are creating other problems.

Mobile phones and tablets will reach the hands of many children and teenagers this Christmas, a time when some homes experience truly crazy things: parents, grandparents, uncles give gifts… How do you recommend managing the gift fever?

There is no appropriate number of gifts, each family is different. But generally in our society we have more problems with being overweight than with malnutrition and we have more difficulties with excess gifts than with a lack of toys. To manage it, there are recommendations such as the rule of four gifts. I advise limiting them, at most, to one gift for each house where they are going to receive something.

It is also a time for family reunions. In the book and on his networks he talks about the great inconvenience of forcing boys and girls to express affection. “Aunt has come to see us, give her a kiss!” A big mistake?

Forcing people to be nice and to kiss and hug is fatal. We must be taught to be pleasant, correct and polite, but there are many ways to show education and courtesy that do not involve forced gestures of affection, because these are counterproductive. You are giving the wrong message to the little one that if someone wants a kiss she has to give it to them. And from there we can escalate to other more problematic situations; Kisses have to be earned, they don’t have to be stolen.

In their guide they deal with current topics, following the PISA report, such as homework… Homework yes or homework no?

Homework should not be sent routinely or systematically, but only punctually, to those students who need it. They generate more problems than they solve, because they end up contributing to widening the differences between students from more and less well-off families. Families with more resources are going to provide better homework attention to their children than families with fewer resources, and that increases a gap that goes directly against the objectives of public school, which is integration and social advancement. . There are also studies that show that homework does not provide an advantage to the most capable students, but it hinders the performance of the least able students, because it causes greater stress for them.

They propose educating without punishment… How is it done?

From a conceptual point of view we can say that it is impossible to educate without rewards or punishments because anything that happens after a behavior ends up acting as a reinforcer or as a punishment for that behavior. What we have to avoid at all costs is an education based on blackmail and threats, because in the end it is counterproductive. It is escaping the sticks or looking for the carrots.

We talk about natural, attachment, or respectful parenting. Is traditional parenting not natural, is it not respectful?

I don’t know who distributes the cards of what respectful parenting is, they are labels that I don’t like at all. I am often associated with that type of education or upbringing, but I have never used it to refer to myself because I do not feel comfortable with that, even though I share most of the postulates of the people who defend that. The point is that we have to raise children with the maximum possible respect, but also with the maximum possible respect for mothers and families. Families are judged a lot based on the decisions they make, without understanding what makes them reach those decisions. Saying that a family does not raise with attachment is very harsh.

There are more and more children diagnosed with ADHD, and there is no shortage of comments about how “they are very active”, or that “they have no limits” and the diagnosis is an “excuse”…

There is absolutely no doubt on a scientific level that ADHD exists. Another thing is that it is a disorder that is over-diagnosed. That is to say, there are many girls and boys who have a misdiagnosis, and are receiving medication when they do not really meet the criteria or do not have true ADHD. It has nothing to do with the fact that you have not been educated with limits, what happens is that the diagnosis is difficult, it involves many hours and weeks of careful evaluation.

Food is also a prominent topic in his book. In some school cafeterias and homes, eating is still forced… What do you think about this?

In our social context, fortunately, we do not have problems with child malnutrition. The food preferences of boys and girls vary greatly depending on their age; they all go through times when the only thing they would eat would be nuggets and macaroni with tomato. But it goes from there. Then you see teenagers going to Indian, Japanese, Pakistani restaurants and eating super exotic things. There is nothing better to generate an aversion to a food than forcing you to eat that food. If we do not have evidence that there is a risk of malnutrition in our child, let us base nutrition on a balanced diet.

To address what worries each family member, he recommends holding meetings at home… Why and how should they be planned?

They are meetings in which all family members express themselves. They can be done in a structured way or not. The important thing is that there is good family communication, that we turn off the television, that we listen to how different people’s days have been, that we can make plans together for the next day, for the weekend, that we share our worries, our concerns. , our hopes, our fears, that we can speak and be heard.