The limits in children. Relationship with their Spiritual and Emotional Maturation - Cerebral by Nancy Ortiz

  • 2013

The children of today

When children are young, they look for ways to say what happens to them with the resources they have. And this way it seems that it had no filter between what is "right or wrong."

I often receive inquiries from parents or educators who are in charge of young children. They share that many children have a marked tendency to hit, bite or react excessively when they do not accept a limit. These questions arise, how do you know what the child really needs? How to know if the child needs a limit or a hug? If you need more attention or less attention? To what extent do they understand what they do? To what extent can I demand them, ask for certain behaviors and answers? To what extent does your emotional - cerebral maturation allow you to understand my requests and be able to make them? To what extent does what you manifest is something of yours or is it something that you may be perceiving from your immediate surroundings or from the collective of a certain place?

Let's start from this idea: Always a child is manifesting something else. In general, when you are overreacting, hit or bite, for example, you are not doing it because you want to be aggressive. He is doing it because that way he achieves something he otherwise does not get. In short, the child is not saying what really happens to him, he is only manifesting how something else can happen to him.

Given this situation, I want to offer today's adult, parent or educator, two ways by which to look for the answers to the previous questions; so that we can accompany, as mature and consciously as possible, the real needs of a small child.

The spiritual development of the little boy

A little boy is like an innocent angel on earth. A being totally delivered, fused with the outside. Spiritually, the little boy does not yet have a filter that allows him to discern between what is his and what is not; or that allows you to let certain things happen and not others. The child is fully delivered, being a unit with everything.

The young child does not know how to distinguish between what he feels and what his parents feel, for example. He not only listens, but feels the emotions and thoughts of his parents. Who is a father can not deny that when he has a bad day, is very tired, badly smoky or irritable, the child is the same way or worse. And one thinks "Just today that I am like this, this child is more demanding than ever", is that the demand is directly related to how I feel!

This is a unique spiritual quality, which is to be united to everything, I think we will never feel it again in such an innocent way. We may reach certain degrees of dedication and fusion with the world, but our life experience will always tend to mark the limit between what is inside us and outside.

But this special and unique delivery can bring the child certain imbalances if the environment is not aware of the experiences and experiences to which the child is exposed.

So, returning to the issue of aggression in young children, in general when a child manifests himself by hitting, biting or "disrespecting, " the first thing that is thought is "what happens to this child?" Or "this child It needs limits. ” But if we are talking about young children, children under 5-6 years old, the first thing to observe, before all the attention and reaction falls on the child, is their environment: in which environment is it growing? What spiritual, emotional, verbal, visual food are you receiving?

I insist, strong experiences go through the little boy as in indigestible waves by his spirit; and not being able to verbalize, order and balance what he lives or feels, he manifests it as he can.

First way to go

So the first way I advise to travel when a young child shows some imbalance is to travel the path of its origin. The first thing is to look for parents: simply checking their own world of feelings and thoughts.

If I am a father, I could start by reviewing “how do I feel?” “Am I angry at something, someone or some situation?”, “How do I feel when I go to work and come back at night? Is there guilt, anger, sadness? ”“ What is happening to me today? ”, “ What relationship can what happens to me or what is happening in the home have to what the child manifests? ”

Then check the day or week I share with the child: “How do I treat this child?” “Do I dedicate quality time, total delivery of my presence at the times I need it? Or am I only with him fully when he catches my attention with his reactions? ” "Am I present?" "I play with him, I read him a story, I caress him, I speak to him, I listen to him with all my Being?" ...

If we find something that we feel may be related to what the child is manifesting and we are dedicated to transforming it, something significant will change. We will begin to solve a mathematical formula that we had no idea how to solve. The child will be relieved, he will not need to draw attention in certain ways because you will give him that same attention before he needs it and ask fervently.

The balance will begin to balance. The relationship will become more fluid, and in simple words, it will be enjoyed more by you and the child.

The emotional development of the young child

The second thing I want to share is what happens with a child under 5-6 years old, which can explain why it hits or can't contain itself and assess whether it is right or wrong. make.

The development of the human nervous system is a process that begins in pregnancy and continues during most of early childhood.

Communication in the brain is carried out by neurons. These are the ones that emit impulses and communicate with each other so that we can perform certain responses or learn certain things.

The neurons are covered by a myelin sheath, a fatty film, which allows the neuronal connections to be effected and potentiated. The smaller the children are, their neurons have less myelin sheathing, which means they cannot control certain reactions.

There is an area of ​​the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible, among other things, for inhibiting or stopping emotional impulses and reflecting before doing or responding. That is, this part of the brain collaborates in the self-control and self-regulation of our emotions.

This part of the brain is the last to achieve maturation; that is, it is the part of the brain that is not yet completely covered with myelin. This results in a small child not being able to inhibit or repress what he feels, he simply responds with an action or a word.

Impulsivity, lack of self-control, lack of an objective, emotional imbalance, are signs of an unripened prefrontal cortex; which characterizes all children up to five years.

That is why a small child cannot contain a cry of pain or stay awake when the dream invades him; or in the face of an annoyance, it simply hits, does not know, nor can physiologically, stop because his brain is not yet mature.

As the neurons of the frontal area are more interconnected, and their neurons are myelinated, their maturation is culminating. This will be seen in everyday life when the child begins to be able to regulate, curb or contain his emotions more healthy and mature.

Second way to go

Knowing that the child can hit, for example, because his brain is not mature to stop his impulse to hit, we must be the adults, who indicate the path that even they do not know. I refer to the need to mark the limit of what is not right or not healthy to do.

We cannot demand of a child the maturity that he does not have, but if we can offer him this maturity we, the adults. It is as if we, his educators, acted for certain years of the child as his part of the matured brain, and indicated how far he can and how far.

In the absence of an internal limit (maturation), the child needs more than ever the external limit (mature and conscious adults). It is necessary for the child to meet someone who points him where, since he still cannot see clearly where it is right or healthier to go.

If we constantly allow a small child to overflow, control all situations, manipulate with tantrums; if we justify his reactions, we give him what he demands because we fear his lack of control, we are not helping his inner structure to mature healthily.

Children need us to mark the way to return to order and tranquility. They need it even if when we mark the limit or the road in some way, they complain, cry more or it seems that everything is worse. Deep inside, they are in need of contention that gives a healthy limit with love, respect and awareness of their internal processes.

We are responsible for containing with words, gestures, hugs, clear, firm and loving containment, their uncontrolled impulses. We are the ones in charge of marking the way to a healthy maturation.

To end

These two paths: one on the gaze of the adult in relation to the spiritual maturation of the child, which is the one that must be first; and the second, which is about the look of the emotional-cerebral maturation of the child, now offers us another place to stop at certain reactions of a child.

But again, we must accompany the child while continuing to do the interior work on ourselves, on what we offer in everyday life.

Let's not forget that for a child, food is not only the nutrients of physical food. They feed on everything around them. Therefore, given a situation that we do not understand, we can start by asking ourselves: What non-physical foods are you receiving from me and the environment?

Author: Nancy Erica Ortiz

Creator of the distance course "Children of Today"

www.caminosalser.com/nancyortiz

The limits in young children. Relationship with their Spiritual and Emotional Maturation - Cerebral (By Nancy Ortiz)

Next Article