A psychologist reveals what children really need, regardless of their age or the type of education they receive.
When it comes to education, parents are spoiled for choice. Everyone has their own parental approach, whether it be benevolent, a little more authoritarian or on the contrary permissive, based on the Montessori method… Whatever the pedagogy adopted, each parent does their best to meet the needs of their child. But what children really need would be much simpler to apply than what we tend to do, according to a psychologist.
For Dr. Becky, a psychologist at Good Inside, most parents tend to seek solutions to certain situations. When a toddler gets angry because he can’t finish his puzzle, for example, we are all tempted to give him the missing piece, or at least show him how to do it to help him solve the problem. The same goes for reading, when our child stumbles over words and we finish the sentences for him. Generally speaking, children get easily upset when they can’t do things (make their toy work, or finish a construction set, etc.).
According to the expert, a child is not specifically looking for the solution, but for the support of their parents. In short, they need empathy, and above all to be heard and understood. In the case of the puzzle, “they expect you to tell them: “yes, this is a difficult puzzle!”, and not: “I will add the puzzle piece for you”. A technique that according to her would be valid at all ages. “Our children, like us, are looking for our support. Not our solutions. When they benefit from our support, guess what? They are very good at finding solutions by themselves”, she concludes.