What has been most important in raising your children?
Knowing what I know about children’s brains, giving them a safe environment where they can grow without fear. And I made sure they were raised without screens.
Because?
Because neurological studies say that the important thing is to spend time in real life and talk a lot.
Love without overprotection.
That is, you need to spend quality time with them. Children who grow up in safe, adult environments have more self-esteem and confidence. At a university in Japan they have done a study on overprotection.
And what are the conclusions?
Today’s children are overprotected and develop less some brain structures that have to do with solving problems, making good decisions, feeling confident in themselves… It’s not overprotection that they need.
What do they need?
What your brain needs is balance, you can feel loved and not overprotected, have limits and at the same time autonomy, and have your own rules and will.
…
When you let him do everything he wants he has anxiety problems, and when you don’t let him do anything he grows up with a lot of anxiety and difficulty making decisions.
And they reach preadolescence.
Yes, at 9 or 10 years old. At that stage, it’s as if they grow thorns, they are more rude to their parents, and it has to do with the change from childhood to adolescence, which scares them.
Do they want to remain children but not?
It is typical to find the 11- or 12-year-old boy who is already beginning pubertal development and at the same time sleeps with the stuffed animal.
How can we help them?
Giving them the space but at the same time the security that they can return to us.
Give them rope.
In pre-adolescence it is a bit of a rope. In adolescence it is rope, rope and rope, and resistance and calmness and waiting, and trying not to break the rope without renouncing the rules and limits.
Triple salt mortal.
In adolescence, their attention is focused on friends, on the group, on WhatsApp, and on sexual relations.
Parents hate us a little.
They hate us a lot, but it’s their job. It is essential that they make this separation from their parents in order to be independent and autonomous because in life they have to take risks and make decisions.
Give me keys to deal with them.
You need to leave them a lot of space. The teenager wants to be in his world, in his room, and we must understand that it is part of his process. And there will be conflicts, they are part of the hormonal changes and the separation process, but they lack self-control.
Respect their space.
Yes, knock on the door of your room before entering. 90% of teenage aggression towards parents takes place in their room when they feel cornered.
“Close the door” is a recurring phrase.
You have to find the right moments to talk, to connect. But the rules are still necessary, they are not adults yet. You need to help them make good decisions.
How does watching pornography affect them?
Consumption is huge and there is a lot of inequality in the roles they see in porn.
Masculinity grows among them.
At the age of 10, they already see porn and it will still take them a while to have sex, but this leaves an imprint on them, an idea of ??how relations should be: a genital act. They see things so harsh that they desensitize them.
Has marijuana become normalized?
They start consuming at 14, 15 and 16 years old. We have to work hard as a society so that they understand that leeks are not harmless.
What kind of adults will they become?
Dopamine and serotonin go hand in hand. Now teenagers are hooked on dopamine, the hormone of anticipation of reward, they consume pornography, content on social networks all the time, clothes… They are trapped in novelty and stimuli. When dopamine increases, serotonin decreases, which is the hormone of self-satisfaction.
And then?
I feel empty, irritable, anxious, apathetic and less able to connect with others. We have a spike in anxiety among teenagers.
What do you think about them being able to change gender at 16 without their parents’ permission?
Adolescence is a time to experiment, to change your mind. It’s important to give them time to explore, but they shouldn’t make this decision at 16. We are seeing many cases of regret after irreversible sex changes.
