Guide for moms and dads in trouble: a key book to educate at home.

Psychologist Miguel Ángel Rizaldos gives the fundamental ideas for raising and educating.

Miguel Ángel Rizaldos Lamoca has been working for almost three decades in the field of psychotherapy and helping parents improve the quality of life of their young children. But this clinical psychologist based in Aranjuez does not limit himself to assisting families; he also works as a communicator, explaining in a clear and simple way what the science of human behavior tells us.

Recently, moreover, Miguel Ángel Rizaldos has recently published his book Guía para papás y mamás en apuros (Guide for moms and dads in trouble), a work with which he seeks to inform and educate families.a work with which he seeks to inform fathers, mothers and educators about all the keys to the psychological well-being of children, their learning needs, and the way in which it is possible to raise children effectively and without damaging their health.

Guide for moms and dads in troubleby Miguel Ángel Rizaldos: the keys to raise and educate

We talked to Miguel Ángel Rizaldos to explain the main ideas behind the creation of this interesting book.

How did the idea of writing A guide for moms and dads in trouble??

I have been writing my own blog since 2011. In it there are articles about educational guidelines for children, and these articles have always served me as a reinforcement of what I work on in consultation with parents and children.

So I wanted to continue this work, and the book aims to be a roadmap to find the best ways to educate our children for both fathers, mothers and educators. Everything from a simple, easy and practical language. The book combines my 28 years of experience as a psychologist and 16 years as a parent.

I address all the aspects that may concern parents and those that are most topical. Thus, the topics I deal with are as important and basic as attachment, responsibility, the need to set limits, communication between parents and children, fear, emotion regulation, social skills and assertiveness, bullying, temper tantrums, child self-esteem, how to handle stress and anxiety, adolescence, divorce, ADHD, and homework, the management of new technologies such as the tablet, smartphone, Internet use and social networks.

In the final part of the book I leave a few chapters to focus on the self-care of parents, and I give those basic tools that they need to have and put into practice to feel good and take care of themselves. In short, we transmit what we do, not what we say we have to do. If you don't take care of yourself as a parent or educator, you won't take good care of yourself.

In several parts of the book you make reference to the importance of reinforcing children's self-esteem. What common mistakes do you think parents tend to make when trying to give their children a positive self-image?

I think the fundamental problem today is that parents overprotect their children too much. This means that we do not generate confidence in them, since we do not trust that they are capable of taking responsibility. This causes children to have low self-esteem, as they do not trust themselves because their parents have not trusted them.

Accordingly, I believe that having a positive self-image depends on them being able to deal with situations and not being solved by their parents. Having the willingness to face difficulties on one's own will increase one's self-concept, and this increases self-confidence.

You also talk about how problematic the old habit of systematically setting compulsory tasks as homework during the school vacation period is. Do you have the feeling that it is taken for granted that making children strive to learn something is always positive?

From psychology we know that learning is fundamentally experiential, not informational. This means that learning is not just receiving information, it is fundamentally experiencing what you learn.

In many occasions it takes will and effort to be able to learn. But on the other hand we know that both children and adults learn much easier and faster when we feel good emotionally, when we have fun. Thus, there is a learning technique called "gamification", which is learning through play; with this technique better results are achieved.

One of the aspects discussed in the book is the importance of working on children's social skills, and that is why you give advice on how to educate children in this kind of competencies. Do you think that most of the conflicts between parents and children arise from failures in communication derived from the lack of attention to this kind of education?

I believe that social skills are basic requirements to be able to relate better with others. They are so important for our well-being that they should be implemented from our earliest childhood.

Unfortunately, there is neither the culture nor the knowledge of what these basic skills of relating and communicating with others are. This deficiency causes people to have many problems in their interrelations with others, and consequently also between parents and children.

We know from psychology that social incompetence causes people to distance themselves from well-being. Parents and educators are role models and we transmit what we do. Therefore, if we are socially skilled, we will transmit these competencies to our children.

Sometimes we talk about how prone to tantrums children are, but it is also true that at other times they may have problems expressing what they think and feel. That is why, in one of the chapters of the book, you talk about how to teach children to adopt an assertive communication style. When it comes to raising children who are in the infancy stage, how can one help the little ones to achieve a balance without falling into a purely capricious attitude or repression of everything they experience?

As it is obvious, there is no exact or magic formula to get what one wants in front of others. The assertiveness you mention is a complex social skill, but its use guarantees us a better balance between getting what we want and respecting the rights of others.

Basically, and so that we understand each other, assertive behavior is composed of three elements; empathizing with the other, making the other empathize with us and, finally, reaching a consensual alternative solution, where everyone wins and everyone loses.

In the book you dedicate the final chapters to give advice for fathers and mothers to take care of their psychological well-being. Do you think that nowadays there is a tendency to think that moms and dads should accept all the effort involved in raising children without investing time in taking care of their own health?

Yes, that is true. It is very common in my practice to find fathers and mothers who forget about their own needs and interests in order to attend exclusively to their children. This is not beneficial for their children's education because, as I said before, people who do not take care of themselves cannot take good care of themselves.

On the other hand, I also reiterate that we transmit what we do, if we as parents do not take care of ourselves, our children will not take care of themselves tomorrow. Therefore, I recommend fathers and mothers to take care of themselves as they take care of the ones they love the most.

Being a parent should not mean not having needs or interests. Looking out for your own needs and interests as a parent should not be considered selfish, it should be considered healthy, for you and your children.

Sometimes, the task of raising and educating parents requires support beyond the school environment. What are the signs that it would be good to take a young son or daughter to a psychologist?

I always insist for adults as well as for children and young people that to go to a psychologist it is not necessary to be bad but to want to be better. Psychologists not only work with people with psychopathological problems, we also intervene when they do not have a psychological pathology and need the strategies and tools that we know from psychology that generate wellbeing and that make us face the discomfort better.

In children it is not frequent that they express their discomfort. They feel that they are unwell and do not know what is wrong, so parents must be able to identify the signs that something is wrong.

Usually these "clues" are alterations in their daily behavior. If we see that our child is having a bad time, that he is suffering, that he is not happy and does not enjoy his day to day life, even not wanting to leave the house or be with other people, the ideal is to ask for help soon. This way it will be easier to start providing him/her with tools to better cope with his/her discomfort.