I am a mother of three children in a private Catholic school and, honestly, I feel school phobia as a guardian.
Read more Jill Biden’s memoirs: her view on her husband’s health and the loss of the White House
My three children require external support due to different difficulties, and two of them need accompaniment from multiple specialists.
Especially observing the difficulties of my youngest son, I wonder how much of what is today considered “problematic” is related to unrealistic expectations for young children.
Many times, as mothers, we end up becoming secretaries and drivers for our children to respond to therapies, meetings, reports, and constant demands from a school that requires permanent availability and frequent meetings. What should be a collaborative relationship ends up becoming invasive and exhausting.
Talking with other mothers, I see that many of us live in a state of permanent alert, trying to meet impossible demands. One thing is that, as parents, we decide to seek psychological or medical support for our children; quite another is feeling that the school demands diagnoses, certificates, and reports on deeply intimate aspects of family life.
What is the limit of the role that corresponds to the school? Many times, when there is no clear diagnosis, it seems that schools do not leave families alone until they obtain a label and almost a “magic potion” indicating how to act.
What is happening in schools that many mothers end up partially or totally quitting their jobs to respond, practically 24 hours a day, to immediate and urgent needs of the school system? What happened to the joy of learning in the preschool stage? When did we start expecting perfectly regulated children, capable of tolerating long days, multiple teachers, and increasingly early demands?
Educating, at least as we are taught at university, is guiding. It is not acting as parental judges, but promoting the education and integral development of each child. Not everyone learns, feels, or develops in the same way. And, finally, when a child has behavioral or emotional history, changing schools becomes a huge challenge.
Many times, that history ends up becoming a mark that follows the child everywhere. Looking for a new school can feel almost like what a person with a criminal record experiences when trying to find a job.
What absurdity are we becoming as an educational system? When did the school stop being a support space to become our boss, and us overburdened employees, trying to survive both parenting and the demands of the school system at the same time?
Perhaps it is worth stopping for a moment and asking ourselves what we are trying to shape. Because if for a child to fit in we need to put an entire family in a state of permanent alert, maybe the problem is not only in that child.
Read more Petro claims to have evidence of electoral fraud with modifications to the census and voting tables
