SLOW PARENTING - PART 1
Autor: Jairo Cantarelli | Publicado: 2015-04-17T06:04:00-07:00






All who are following me, know that one
of the tools that I advocate for sustainability development is the application
of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences of Howard Gardner. I think that the
efforts and investment that has been made up to date, to "teach"
people to be more sustainable, has not generate sufficient fruit to create some
reversal of expectation. Society of unconscious consumption has spoken much
louder and follows winning this battle quite easily.



For me, only some a new kind of
approach could lead to a significant change in the situation, including a major
investment in the development of the naturalist intelligence of the population,
which people have lost over time. With this intelligence in decreasing level,
much hardly we will make people realize the natural world around them and how
much badly we are caring it.



Although, above, I have referred
only to the naturalist intelligence, I am not saying to work only with it. But
that I consider this intelligence, the most important for the purpose of
sustainability. The other intelligences also need to be addressed, some of them
even for deceleration, those that have been most used and developed in recent times
and taking the human being towards the abyss.



I wrote some things about it in
02 posts in 2012, one in February and one in March, and up today still were
these the tools that I thought viable to be used for a significant change of
course in the subject.

But this week, among these emails
we receive every day, there was one named "slow parenting", which
caught my attention. This matter is not so new, but I had not yet paid any
attention about. And it brought me the knowledge of a new approach to training
and education of infants and children, which could result in more people
connected to the things of the planet and therefore assist in the
sustainability aspects.



But what means "slow
parenting"? In practice, a slowdown in the speed that we imposed in the
creation of our children.



Today, as from birth, the babies
are surrounded by dozens, hundreds of gifts, things which they will never use.
They born under the load of unconscious consumption society. In addition, and
most importante for our discussion, they already have a full schedule to meet,
designed by the anxiety of parents who want to see their children growing and
developing quickly and consistently toward some goal “dreamed” by parents and
which could be not interesting for the children when older. People value much
more the investment for the future, than the enjoyment of the present.



Currently, most parents strive
for children walking earlier, talking earlier and achieve other objectives of
the same nature (or should I say "targets" in a more executive
language?). Techniques to make it happen are available in books, blogs and
sites. I've read about a software which can predict, with some assertiveness,
any sporting talents of children at a young age. If the software sets that a
child, a little more than a baby, have talent and / or fitness for swimming,
for example, the poor little baby will be seen as an Olympic medalist and will
have an exaggerated contact with the water, losing the possibility of using
your time on more enjoyable plays and that it himself could develop. And a lot
of parents, comes to see the realization of this goal of the child as a goal of
life of their own. How much frustration for most (!!!)



I have a son who is athlete, who
always showed great potential, but never reached the levels of results that
apparently his talent could reach. Always I supported him, but never I charged
or pressed for better results. Which could come with its own maturity. I often
asked myself if I should press him a little more, but I always let things hapens
at the speed of his development. On this walk, I saw parents assaulting their
children for not reaching the results that they, the parents, were waiting.
Fortunately, I think I acted correctly and, today, we are all performed. My son
is classified for the Pan Games 2015 in Toronto, a great achievement, and has
good chances to participate in the Olympics Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. I
believe I have here a good example of what we are trying to discuss in this
post. He achieved these goals at their own speed and according its own internal
motivations.



Currently, children attend
regular classes and many additional others, like foreign languages, dance,
sports, gymnastics, drawing, painting, music, circus, cooking, theater and what
more you think. There is an over supply of everything and parents often end up
feeling guilty for not providing additional activities to your children, and
put them in multiple “jobs”. Thus, children are burdened with an agenda imposed
by parents who, in turn, had this agenda imposed by society, by the way of life
(unsustainable) we are living.



Fortunately, it seems that some
people began to realize that less could be more. Less activities and less rush,
with more free time to coexistence and to discover and learn new things, avoiding
to want to prepare the children in the present, for the competitive future they
will have to face. I think some parents realized that this "theoretical
preparation", in practice, was already leading to failure long before the
time. Let's taking good care of our children and let them develop, in a more
natural way, their own weapons to meet the challenges of the future.



"The concept of 'super parents' is declining," says Carl
Honoré, author of Under Pressure - No Child Deserves Super Parents, a book that
is helping to popularize the philosophy of "slow parenting" movement
created by him. Is like a comparison between slow food bid as opposed to fast
food. That is it. Enjoy life with their
children instead of turning it into a race. "I think the pendulum now
is going to the other side. More and more families are making a stop, going
back and stopping to treat the child as if it were an Olympics”. 



Some similar movements can be
seen in other situations: the discussion between "slow food" and
"fast food", the cars replaced by bikes, doubts about the limits of
the use of electronic devices and our enslavement to them, to the point of a
cell be practically a new organ in the human body and 4G or wifi an air
component we breathe. All this discussion is still very novice and with few
people involved but I hope it could be a start up of a wave of deceleration for
the planet, with the consequent awakening to other more significant things,
which will help, very much, the sustainability matter.



Like this post is already too
long, I will stop here, following the discussion of some specific points of the
"slow parenting" in the next post.



Before concluding, I must say
that additional information about the "slow parenting", could be
obtained on the links below, two reports of the magazine “Pais &amp; Filhos”,
Editora Abril, from which I removed some information for this post. And of
course, in the book of Carl Honoré and some others.



http://www.paisefilhos.com.br/familia/7-motivos-para-pais-e-filhos-desacelerarem-ja#sthash.cGTOkktT.dpuf

http://www.paisefilhos.com.br/familia/devagar-esempre2#sthash.Q48VyPfa.dpuf




Until Next Post !!!