03/23/2024 – 11:24
From the moment fathers and mothers receive the news of a child's arrival, challenges and choices alternate in each new stage of childhood until adulthood. According to the positive parenting strategy, all the interaction, practice and knowledge that occurs throughout this relationship between parents and children will be defining in the future of this developing person.
Last Thursday (21), positive parenting and the right to play became law and a tool to be adopted, including in public policy, to combat domestic and family violence against children and adolescents. The measure was sanctioned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and published in the Official Diary of the Union.
Strategy
Related news:
The psychologist specializing in child development, Elisa Altafim, explains that the strategy was based on scientific studies that proved the impact of positive or negative actions on child development in adult life. In other words, when parental practices in the relationship with the child are positive for their development, the child has a greater chance of having a healthy adult life than otherwise.
“When children experience adverse situations such as physical punishment, they may develop problems such as cancer, obesity, cognitive difficulties, depression and anxiety in the future, for example.”
Based on this understanding, photographer and university professor Lourenço Cardoso decided at a young age that he would plan fatherhood and act in the most positive way possible for the development and training of his children. An anthropologist by training, he built knowledge on the subject and debated with his partner, Nara Fagundes, how they would care for and educate children. “I decided that I would give up my desires in favor of their education,” she recalls.
The couple had two children, João Moreno, now 12 years old, and Lia, eight years old, who, according to Lourenço, are educated with a lot of dialogue, behavior management that leads to reflection and free from punishment. “In João’s early childhood he had a more difficult phase when we had to resort to the corner of our thoughts, but we always had a frank and rational relationship, in which I explained clearly, with robust vocabulary, and without childishizing the explanation. With Lia, it wasn’t even necessary,” he explains.
For Lourenço, recognizing children as human beings capable of understanding and participating in frank dialogue allows them to position themselves in the world, but it is also a phase that needs stimuli such as that guaranteed by the right to play.
“Childhood needs to be recognized as a process of formation and taking away a child’s right to play is taking away an important part of this formation, in which they place themselves in a creative process that allows self-knowledge, allows them to build themselves”, he says .
This autonomy to develop, supported by appropriate supports, such as protection and security that keeps them free from violence, such as physical punishment, for example, means that the child has positive development factors. And it is these factors that the new law proposes to be used as a tool in public policies.
According to Elisa, who is one of the authors of the booklet Comprehensive Care and Positive Parenting in Early Childhoodproduced by the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), unlike Lourenço, many parents are unable to break the “intergenerational cycle of violence”, which is established when several generations perpetuate physical punishment, for example.
For her, the new law, in addition to emphasizing the need to strengthen positive parenting, also encourages the creation of structured programs by municipalities, states and the Union, enabling coordination with existing social assistance and health networks. “The public environment can offer programs to report negative practices that still occur with children and training in educational strategies that do not involve violence, without blaming families and with opportunities to reflect on how they were cared for and educated, for example” , he concludes.
#Find #positive #parenting #contributes #childs #development