We run away from her when we are older and we are distressed to see that our children suffer, I speak of sadness and yet it is perhaps one of the feelings they experience before and the smaller they are, the more passion they suffer.
After watching the Pixar movie “Del Revés”, we are not a few who have discovered the usefulness of this feeling that many times we do not know how to manage and that nevertheless is part of our life and our development and obviously that of our own children to that it would be very good for us to teach how to manage it, so that they learn to live with it in its right measure and to be happier.
Why being sad is not being unhappy, because they have to learn what it is, what they feel and why Recognizing your emotions is also a vital teaching that we must take care of.
French philosopher and economist Serge Latouche notes that “Happy people do not usually consume” that is, it consumes what it needs but not beyond its needs, something that can be interpreted just the opposite: people who are not happy tend to consume even if they do not need it. And when we say "people" we can also be thinking of "children", ours, without going any further, but we know that excessive consumption will not make adults or children happier in any case.
Sadness not unhappiness
You remember where the idea of the movie “Del Revés” came from, from the director's own experience with his eleven-year-old daughter.
A girl whose age plays tricks on uncontrolling her emotions, as happens to the vast majority of children of that age. To carry out the film from that personal reality, the director Pete Docter, He wanted to count on the professional advice of two scientists from the University of Califormia although later, all his advice could not be included in the film, such as the fact that we have many more than five emotions but it would have been crazy to try to make the story understandable with many more right?
The Australian psychologist Joseph Forgas is an advocate of the need for sadness as an indispensable sensation because it offers us an evolutionary advantage, just as fear pushes us to flee from danger or anger encourages us to fight.
There are studies that indicate that sadness causes us a greater physiological activation so that we react after the loss or the situation that has saddened us, It is an answer to overcome it.
According to this same psychologist, there are data that indicate that many more erroneous judgments are made when one is happy than when one is sad and even the fact of feeling sad is related to a greater capacity to memorize.
And yet
And yet Do we really teach children to manage their feelings? Do we allow them to be sad?
Perhaps it is one of the most complicated teachings that we must face as parents: teach them to manage their own emotions, to live with them, to learn to recognize them and to allow themselves to feel them, live them, recognize them and grow from there.
No, easy nobody said it is necessary but it is necessary and much.
There are psychologists who point out, for example, the importance of teaching children to recognize and manage their own emotions, above which we teach them in school the need to behave based on principles or values.
Perhaps it would be more sensible to teach them to recognize and peacefully manage their anger before trying to explain to them that violence is not a path that helps us to live in peace. Perhaps it would be good to start talking to them about themselves, what they are and what they feel, before telling them about the whole.
How many times do we let them cry while we try to comfort them? How many times to help them do we take away from those problems that distress them? How many times have we put ourselves in their shoes when we talk to them?
The image of that boy with his Portugal shirt comforting the follower of the French team in the past Eurocopa went viral because of that, we are surprised how small they give us those lessons of empathy, right? Yes, we have a lot to learn sometimes from our own children but we must not forget that it is we who have to teach them most of the time.
And what we should banish completely from our tools as parents and educators is that "boys do not Cry" because we have already seen that for generations of men, that imposition has not come at all well in their life.
Conclusion
Nobody likes to feel sad, it is not a mood in which we find ourselves comfortable, full and comfortable but we do not have to deny its existence.
There will be many moments in the lives of our children in which sadness will be the predominant feeling but they will have to know how to get out of it, they will have to have tools that help them overcome it by learning from that moment, that circumstance and that feeling. And this is something that we as parents should have taught them.
Teach them to relativize, to face, to live the moment from its beginning to its end, teach them to recover after the pain and after the sadness that also generates frustration, that does not imply the end of their world, that does not exceed them, that does not cancel them out.
We are your reference. Are we prepared to teach them to be happy without turning their faces to sadness?
Photos | FB Disney Pixar | iStockphoto
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