According to Greek mythology, King Pygmalion was unable to find the perfect woman. For this reason, he insisted on molding the sculpture of a beautiful young woman whom he called Galatea and with whom he fell in love.
The gods granted his wish to turn that statue into reality with a kiss from the monarch. The way in which Pygmalion admired Galatea turned her into a woman convinced of her greatness
Rosenthal experiment and the value of expectations
In 1966, psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson set out to carry out an experiment at the school that Lenore directed at that time (California, USA).
The study in question wanted to reveal whether the belief system of teachers regarding their students could exert a change in the results of the children’s evaluations
To do this, they were given a supposed intelligence test from the prestigious Harvard University, which in reality did not measure this aspect, but that is what the center’s teaching staff was made to believe.
At the end of the course, the children with high scores on said test obtained better academic results in relation to the rest of the students.
The conclusion reached by the researchers was that The expectations that teachers had had influenced their way of treating, educating and evaluating students
As parents we have a great responsibility in how we shape self-esteem and certain aspects of the personality of our children
Over the years, greater weight has been given to the belief system and social interactions of our environment versus biological determinism to explain how a person is the way they are.
It is because of that We must enhance the skills and outstanding facts of our children and motivate them when they do something that can be improved
Our moral obligation is to give them the support and sustenance they need so that they can trust themselves, freeing themselves from the fear of failure. If we want them to have a strong and positive inner voice when they reach adulthood, the first step is for their parents’ voice to be encouraging and not blaming.
The self-fulfilling prophecy
A few years ago, a famous brand of soft drinks and isotonic drinks launched a campaign with enormous social success.
In it he tried to explain, in a brilliant way, that If you tell a child that he is worthless or that he is going to fall, that child will end up falling On the contrary, if you encourage him, express your trust in him and let him know that if he falls down you will help him get up, his behavior will change radically.
As the great psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé would say, the recorder of childhood significantly influences adults If in that recorder, which exerts a lot of influence in the first years of our lives, we have introduced continuous statements of discredit, self-esteem will be diminished and this will make the person believe that they are not capable of achieving what others can.
This is what is called the Golem effect, this being an incomplete figure and full of interior shadows. If, on the other hand, your recorder is full of positive messages, your performance and self-esteem will be positively conditioned, becoming the Galatea phenomenon, which we have already referred to at the beginning of the article.
As an example, if the reader is a parent like me, this will automatically be reflected. If you tell your child: “You dropped everything, don’t pick it up because you’re going to throw it away…” chances are he’ll end up throwing it away. Throughout my experience I have met people who They remembered those small details as something traumatic and they have conditioned their behavior in life by fulfilling the prophecy that was repeated to them as children.
Let’s make the prophecies we generate in our children positive and we will change not only our beliefs about their abilities, but also their own. Only in this way will we build strong and solid scaffolding inside that will make them more confident in themselves when we are no longer there to help them.
