Promote the development of a strategic mind in children

Having a strategic mind, that is, acquiring an elastic and adaptive mental attitude towards life, can be a really important weapon: strategic children will become strategic adults, who in turn will teach their children to be strategic, triggering a desirable and continuous virtuous circle in this sense.

The verb educare, from the Latin educere, means “to bring out, to lead”; Contrary to what is commonly thought, education is not teaching, what shapes and molds at will, but it means bringing out the potential of each person, the magic that reigns in each of us. It is therefore not a stretch, a desire to impart a mere notional teaching, or at least it should not be so.

In our best intentions we always find the will to raise calm and strong children, but then the reality of the facts is rather disheartening and tells us about something else. Today, we seem to find ourselves increasingly dealing with insecure, overweight, depressed, anxious children and with adolescents without reference points and assiduous users of psychoactive substances and electronic devices; paradoxically, in a world that truly offers everything, the earth seems to be missing under our feet and this always seems to occur earlier in the years.

The picture looks really gray; therefore, how can we develop a strategic mind in our little ones? How to raise substantially peaceful children? There are no magic recipes, but decades of research have clarified some fundamental points if you want to take the best path for their serenity.

From a strategic point of view, we can essentially classify six family models rather recurrent, which if stiffened over time, appeared to be responsible for problems in the children:

Overprotective family: parents have as their fundamental goal to make the life of their children as simple as possible.
Democratic-permissive family: in this family there is the total absence of hierarchies, children and parents are friends, everyone is on the same level and there are no precise rules to respect.
Sacrificing family: in this case the parents sacrifice themselves in all respects for the "happiness" of their child, they give up their life in order to guarantee the maximum for their children, who for their part find their way smooth and cannot help but take advantage of it.
Intermittent family: ambivalence reigns in this family model, whereby the parental figures sometimes appear reassuring, sometimes cold, sometimes rigid and other times soft, sometimes disqualifying, sometimes enhancing, in a continuous fluctuation of opposite positions.
Delegating family: parents delegate, often for convenience, the education of their children to others who are part of the family (the so-called extended families) and this creates a lot of confusion.
Authoritarian family: the authoritarian parent, who most frequently finds himself in the figure of the father, assumes a harsh and devoid of affection attitude; he dictates the rules without explaining them and expects them to be respected to the letter, otherwise he tends to inflict heavy punishments, even corporal.

Recent studies focus on family models in which authority reigns and on the positive effect it produces. The authoritative parent (and it seems that even one of the two is enough), unlike the other models described above, adopts a communicative and relational style based on what we could call "firm affection", that is, he shows himself loving, welcoming and respectful but extremely firm in the rules and values that are important to him. Respect in these cases is given by knowledge and wisdom, not fear and power.

The authoritative parent is therefore loving and demanding at the same time, exercises a "severe affection", demands a lot but is equally supportive in educating their children. Rules and limits are given, after being explained, and at the same time support and sincere affection are offered. In this way, parents become models to be imitated because they are admired by their children and will constitute something that their children will want to resemble rather than shy away from.

Committing to developing a strategic mind in children means for every educator, in addition to trying to exercise an authoritative style, trying to follow fundamental guidelines and widely shared by experts in the sector:

Try to be "the best" if we want our children to become too: children follow suit more than anything else. They are not so much captured by rational speeches or explanations of facts, but above all by what the reference adults put into practice. In this sense, therefore, our child cannot be expected to avoid smoking if we do it ourselves, to become a passionate reader if he has never seen any books in the house or not to swear if we use them first. Children "breathe" the atmosphere that reigns in the house and this is both positive and, unfortunately, negative.

Praise the commitment more than the dowry: one of the most frequent errors that can be observed in interacting with children is that of placing the accent on the “dowry” that can be observed by the eye of the educator rather than on commitment. But if I as an educator promote the idea that the achievement of results comes through the "genetic endowment" rather than the commitment to the task, I will have failed from the start.
Praise the trial rather than the dowry is of paramount importance precisely because it leads our children to persevere and become resilient in life. Furthermore, we should always learn to practice measured and proportionate praise, so that the child is motivated to always go further and can acquire a good dose of self-motivation. in view of external gratification, it prevents the development of the inner motivation which will then be fundamental in life; In fact, if children must always strive to obtain something (good grades, praise, awards), they will never develop that inner strength that will create a stability independent of what is external and changeable.

Try to make children autonomous as soon as possible and develop a critical sense in them: The tendency to want to help them almost to avoid any kind of problem is increasingly part of our society and our way of educating them, but if this can be satisfying at first, precisely because we "save" our children from suffering, in the long run it will do nothing but damage them considerably. what we should do goes in the opposite direction, that is, we should create small challenges ourselves every day for our children, which can allow them to improve and put themselves to the test by practicing the art of commitment. We should act as a help to always go a little further, not as a ballast. Fostering their independence also means helping them to develop critical thinking towards reality, that is, independent and autonomous thinking. part preconceptions, clichés and preconceived ideas in favor of curiosity and continuous discovery, thinking that absolute truth is in nobody's possession and that any thought can always be refuted. The development of creativity and intelligence can only take place in the case in which the possibilities of choice are increased and one is able to look at reality from different points of view, not from just one.

Working on our adult expectations: the expectations that a parent (a teacher, a coach etc.) has towards the child can be truly a double-edged sword, because they can help the child to progress but can also dramatically block him. What the adult believes about the child tends to occur, precisely by virtue of the fact that, on the basis of this expectation, a whole series of behaviors are implemented that will only confirm our belief, both in a positive and negative sense. What many parents ignore is that children are extremely sensitive to what mom and dad think of them and what they expect from them.
The abilities or incapacities that the parent attributes to the child end up being assimilated to create an image of himself in that sense, which will stabilize over time. This phenomenon is known, more generally, with the name of “self-fulfilling prophecy” and has really important implications for the growth of our children, which cannot be underestimated.

The right to boredom and free play: Free play is the best gym we can offer our child, it is the most important (free) lesson to learn from. When a child is left free to play, he does the most absurd things, he has fun, experiments with his limits and reworks what he has learned during the day, he learns the basic rules of healthy social interaction. empathy, or what will allow them to put themselves in the other's shoes, and they learn to lose and persevere. In other words, they learn resilience, which is what will later protect them from the negative moments of life.

Practicing the art of restructuring and humor: knowing how to restructure means knowing how to put a new frame on an event, looking at something with different, more positive lenses. Raising children capable of restructuring means preparing a good ground for the development of resilient adults. The use of humor is also the basis of the restructuring process of reality. Laughing about something with our children releases tension, leads to seeing what is negative in a better light and above all exploits the ability of the little ones, lost by most of us adults, to know how to quickly change mood, despite everything. .

Teaching about feelings: If the emotions, all of them, are not experienced, explained, if they are not given a name, the children grow up at the mercy of them and do not learn to understand their moods and transmit them. Failing to recognize their own emotions, our young people will not be able to recognize the emotions of others and develop an empathic attitude.

Teaching gratitude and humility: teaching gratitude and practicing it seems to be something now forgotten. We take it all for granted, as if it were all due to us, and we rarely manage to say thank you for this wonderful gift called life. Trying to make children perceive this kind of attitude towards life will certainly make them more attentive to the little things and the most important values.

Prefer an "indirect therapy" in case of problems / disorders: From a strategic point of view, most of the difficulties / ailments presented by the children can be easily overcome, guiding the parents to intervene in an appropriate way to extinguish these discomforts. Therefore, as a rule, strategic intervention is based on the active role of parental figures in the process of solving and overcoming the problems of the children; in other words, the parents become real "cotherapists" who, supervised by the professional, act effectively and guide the child towards the resolution of the problem presented.

Dr. Francesca Luzzi (Psychotherapist and Official Researcher of the Strategic Therapy Center)

REFERENCES
Luzzi F., The strategic mind. How to make the most of our mental potential to fully enjoy life, 2018, Imprimatur.
Nardone G., Salvini A. (edited by), 2013, International Dictionary of Psychotherapy, Garzanti, Milan.
Nardone G. and the team of the strategic therapy center, 2012, Helping Parents Help Their Children, Life Cycle Problems and Solutions, Ponte alle Grazie, Milan.