Even the most experienced parents tend to make mistakes in their relationship with their children, and this can affect their academic performance as well. Psychologist Mihai Copăceanu warns that education is not done with threats and punishments.
Illustrative image. PHOTO: Unsplash
Many times, in an attempt to motivate children and show firmness in relation to them, some parents go overboard, and this can have harmful effects including at school, says psychologist Mihai Copăceanu.
He also gave some examples of how some adults do nothing but make the little ones hate school and prevent them from adapting to the challenges ahead. In a post on Facebook, the well-known psychologist lists some of the common errors, especially when the summer vacation is coming to an end, and parents want to hold them accountable.
“No encouragement, no warning”
“”I’ll let you see that school is starting! We’ll talk again!” This is what children hear every day of the summer, and more often and more strongly now in the last days of vacation. It’s not an encouragement, it’s not a warning, it sounds like a threat and often continues with other threats, related to school, responsibility, average, learning, what you will end up with in life. In young children, this thing induces a fear of school, a real school phobia, and I mean from those little ones who advance to the preparatory class, “that’s it, you’re not in kindergarten anymore, you have to study at school, we’re not playing anymore” , so that you have the impression that on the first day of school the teacher stands with a machine gun at the entrance to the classroom and aims at the little beings”begins Copăceanu.
Such behavior of adults, who are not aware of the fact that they are exaggerating out of the desire to make the little ones responsible, often ends up having the exact opposite effect. Mihai Copăceanu goes even further and makes a controversial statement, namely that it is not okay to tell children to put in effort and work to get better school results.
“If we think carefully we can go further down, to the kindergarten children who end up in the “big group”… And we can continue the story up to the 1st grade, which is the most serious and severe of all so far. So, “you must learn the letters, do the multiplication and division table and speak English and German very well and if possible Spanish, go to sports and personal development”. What? Mommy! The threat continues in the 2nd grade. “I understand that you were in first grade, that you only took FB but you didn’t work hard enough”. Personally, the association between “school” and “work” irritates me. Why does school mean that the student must make an effort? To work? Or even further “as daddy goes to work, let’s have money for food (and toys) and you have to study at school, work”. How? We have evaluations for the 2nd grade, as well as for the 4th grade and the 6th grade“, writes the psychologist.
I saw him light up in the face”
In the opinion of Mihai Copăceanu, the greatest fear of school is felt by children starting the 5th grade. And this could be avoided, he says. “Ever since the end of the 4th grade, they are threatened to meet dragons, demanding, serious teachers, a Taliban leader, she is no longer the lady who loves you and gives you grades out of love. I once jokingly told a kid that 5th grade was the easiest. And I saw his face lit up, I saw how he insisted on knowing the truth, if I’m serious, because everyone around him from the lady, the mother, the father, the sister, the good, the good, the bush, they all said that class V is the hardest… Even summer wasn’t summer anymore…”adds the psychologist.
Also, Mihai Copăceanu believes that parents who insist on their children to learn more starting from the 7th grade, in order to “catch” a good place at high school, are wrong. Another statement that might seem risky to many.
“Cleaving the 7th grade doesn’t escape the terror, because from now on some parents are thinking and already planning intense meditations, that it’s too late for the 8th grade, you won’t find free places with those good and well-loved teachers, and your colleagues take forward The 8th is a disaster. It’s the end of the world. Apocalypse. It’s terrible. You have no life left! You have maximum stress and a dose of daily threats! The 9th kind…Threats with “don’t make fun of me”… and the 11th and of course the 12th…“, he adds.
More ways to look at things
Education is not done with fear of consequences, with threats, with punishments, states the psychologist.
“Just imagine for a few moments what a child can feel who has been told from kindergarten how hard school is and that his duty is to work, to learn that otherwise he will not achieve anything in life, that he has nothing to eat, etc. and it is said year after year and summer after summer and day after day… What will he understand from this school? And let’s not forget that the same message… is heard by the same children from the ladies and gentlemen on the first day of school, from the conductor and the conductor…. “Hey, kids, you’ve passed the 8th grade… a difficult exam awaits you on which your future depends». Sir, it’s September 9th…the first day of school and we’re already facing the threat of the exam! Let’s somehow change this sick perspective! Children need encouragement, support, inspiration and motivation, curiosity and delight, joys (and failures, because that’s how it is in life), but attitude matters, it really does!”, concluded the psychologist Mihai Copăceanu.
However, there are other opinions among experts, even if in general they all agree that parents must show tact in their relationship with children and not end up stressing them and causing them phobias. However, other psychologists talk about the fact that children need to be held responsible and taught from an early age that they need to get involved in order to achieve good learning results.
