“You talk, you talk, that’s all you know how to do! »stubbornly repeats, from his cage, to the humans around him, Laverdure, the parrot of Zazie in the subwayby Raymond Queneau (1959).
Why invite today, on the couch of the World, this curious bird? Because, as strange as it may seem, what he says could be useful to parents who, faced with a task that the times are making more and more difficult, often say they are confused.
Why do parents feel confused?
Parents have the task of “educating” their child. Notion which is the subject of numerous debates (the interest and usefulness of which there is no question of denying here), but which we would certainly gain from defining more often by simply starting from the goal it aim. Educating their child consists, in fact, for the parents in helping him to develop himself in such a way that he can become an adult capable of living in the world; and above all to live there happily. Definition of common sense, which has the merit of showing that educational choices should proceed not so much from ideological a priori as from an awareness of realities, comparable to that of an architect who designs a building according to what will be called upon to confront.
This education, which must allow their child to blossom, to develop all his possibilities, all his abilities, but also to learn to live among others, is difficult for parents, because it comes up against the ” functioning” which is that of every child at the beginning of his life. Based on “omnipotence” and the “pleasure principle” (“I only do what I want, if it makes me happy, and imagining that everything must bend before my will”), this “functioning” is indeed incompatible with life in society.
Parents who, concerned about the present and future development of their child, want him to be able to adapt to the world and establish happy relationships in it, must therefore make him understand the two principles necessary to achieve this: respect for other as his property; and that of the common rules. An example : “Your boyfriend’s blue truck is very nice, but it’s his, and he’s attached to it (like you, to the stuffed animal your grandmother gave you). So you can’t take it from him. » Two principles to which the child, who initially always feels the frustrations that these principles impose on him as an injustice (why couldn’t one have and do whatever one wants?), always opposes a refusal, source difficult conflicts to live with for him and for the parents. To these two principles they must now add a third: the weight of words.
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