Perfect parents don't exist

Caring education, positive parenting, the search for the model parent. These are new ways to rethink parent-child relationships. But is it too much? Is this a way of provoking the guilt of parents who do not consider themselves perfect?

For the past few years, positive and benevolent education has been on many lips. However, it is difficult for specialists to define it simply. It is talked about in many parenting magazines, it is discussed in an impressive number of blogs and it is discussed in the world of education. The Council of Europe considers this educational technique as the approach that most respects the Rights of the Child. So much the better. But how do these "positive" parents feel who do not necessarily always manage to remain so "positive" when educating their children?

Emmanuelle Opezzo, author of the book Living the Montessori thought at home, writes that "benevolent education is not a method to be applied by parents who would be robots or who should have books on hand for each type of situation encountered withtheir children: it is a way of looking, a philosophy”. It means helping without doing instead, protecting without overprotecting, securing and adapting the environment to make room for autonomy. It means understanding, accompanying, supporting and being attentive to the needs of your child.

“It is absolute hell to have children AND to believe that there are perfect parents. – Marshall Rosenberg

Positive parenting emphasizes non-violent communication and respects the nature of the child, a method of communication developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg. It is therefore difficult to question this method which advocates the best for their child and which asks parents to trust their young people to facilitate communication and harmony within the family.

This is an invitation to happy parenthood“that would always see the glass half full of hot chocolate strewn all over the kitchen floor or penciled walls in indelible pen. Benevolent education uses creativity to improvise solutions to everyday worries: improvise a bath-meal, divert the time to tidy up into play or even organize a mini-court to settle a conflict, for example.

100% positive or 100% invalid?

Always striving to be more than perfect is not he althy. Parents may wonder if they are not more negative, bad or malicious parents if they do not apply positive parenting at all times. “Every time we are lessperfect, we blame ourselves and our children do not benefit from it”, mentions the author of I stop complaining about my children (and my spouse), Florence Leroy.

“Perfect parents have no children. –Isabelle Filliozat

One of the pillars of education is self-kindness. "A child doesn't need perfect parents, he needs parents who are good enough. A child wants to meet not a role in front of him, but a person, a real person, with his emotions and his own needs, his thoughts and his values, his skills and his limits", explains the author Isabelle Filliozat, recognized as one of the leaders of the movement.

By striving to be perfect, the parent can become irritated at not being able to do so and blame it on the difficult child who prevents him from reaching this ideal of perfection. “All mothers are bad mothers…and good mothers. In fact, they would be better mothers if they didn't try so hard to be good and perfect,” concludes the specialist.