The Entry Of Children To The School Path. Affections And Challenges Of Fathers And Mothers
With the entry of children into school life, new social and emotional experiences arise in the experience of mothers and fathers that are expressed through new challenges in their parental functions Many times they are experienced with joy and excitement at the beginning of the new family stage and other times, feelings of anguish, frustration and disorientation appear that impact the family organization, personal life and the couple’s life.
It is important to know the particularities of this particular change in the life cycle of each family, in order to understand the characteristics of the new dynamics and thus find new tools for building ties with children.
The educational institution is presented as a new environment that provides boys and girls with encounters with other peers and adults These bonds are constituted differently from family ties, which imprints specific roles and dynamics. At the same time, all these new experiences and social exchanges occur within the framework of the pedagogical processes and the achievement of the learning that the school proposes, processes that are experienced by each person individually.
Although each institution offers certain educational proposals, learning achievements are built through a process that is particular and with different times for each student, thus respecting the idea that not all subjects learn in the same way (Meirieu, 2001 ). Additionally, school knowledge, unlike others that are built throughout life, is of a mandatory and formal nature, and has the particularity of not being able to be covered by the family, so it necessarily arises in the life of each person. child, other facilitating and significant adults, roles usually occupied by referent teachers.
At the same time, The presence of other boys and girls of the same age with some common interests and the exchange of new experiences allows the expansion of the social fabric of the children In this way, each child will establish, in a personal and not always conscious way, comparison processes between those patterns acquired from family ties and those school experiences that gain meaning from the intervention of teaching figures.
The school, which is constituted for the child as a transitional institution between the family and society, is the bearer of its own statements and its certainties as a representative of social demands. Some of these will coincide with the expectations of fathers and mothers and others will imply a need to agree and build new positions in the education and training of children.
From the point of view of mothers and fathers, this often implies new challenges in the exercise of their parental functions and new emotional experiences due to the achievements of the knowledge that the school proposes and the expansion of the social fabric of the children. Processes both related to the effective participation of students and families in an educational institution
In this way, the need for new forms of setting limits, containment and listening appears. Additionally, children require new ways of accompaniment in terms of schoolwork, extra-programmatic activities, promotion of new bonds of friendship, without leaving aside the implications that this entails in the need to reorganize family routines.
This whole new reality usually feels like a challenge to certain statements established until that moment in the family group. Statements of family certainties referring to regulations, ways of relating to others, hygiene habits, eating habits, etc., which Now, with the expansion of the social bonding network, they are contrasted with other statements of certainties that other families built within their ties
Change processes generate disorganization, but they also represent an opportunity for readjustments, updating and new understandings about new situations. Children’s schooling is not only a stage of growth for them as students, but also represents an opportunity to adjust and develop new parenting styles and strengthen the functions of fathers and mothers in the care and education of their children.
The Development of Parental Functions
The family is the first institution to which we belong There we learn our first ways of interacting with others and with the world, as well as our tastes and preferences, and it is the origin of many of the aspects that we later value in adult life.
The school, for its part, is the first non-family institution that marks the beginning of what is known as the path towards exogamy and that therefore requires the adaptation of some of its ways of relating to others and the environment.
The same thing happens in the case of parental functions. On many occasions an overwhelming feeling of difficulty invades, however many times it is not about not being able but rather about the need to perform those same roles differently. These changes will have to do with the always gradual and gradual development of more active listening skills, accompaniment to children, gradually offering spaces for autonomy, and a more differentiated establishment with respect to moments of play and leisure in relation to moments of study and school moments as the child progresses in the academic journey.
On the other hand, Beyond family characteristics, maintaining a minimum daily routine helps not only family organization but also provides children with an environment in which they can anticipate actions and behaviors, an essential factor during growth since it is equivalent to security and the possibility of making mistakes in a safe environment. In conclusion, it is not about abandoning what was established and achieved in the early stages of life, but rather updating them to the new milestones that the life cycle and the family cycle incorporate.
