Sometimes the Pope speaks of peace in the world, sometimes he does the parish priest of the world. So he overlooks the Angelus and gives advice to parents on the education of children, just as he would do, and often does, any parish priest.

“Dear parents do not forget to say no to your kids. A correct education does not equate to always satisfy the desires of the children. The no help to grow up,” said Pope Prevost from the balcony of Castelgandolfo.

That of Leone XIV would seem a superfluous lesson, because everyone in theory know how important the “correction” is in the educational path, and every good parent has taken into account that every now and then he will have to pronounce that fateful word. But the theory is one thing and the practice another and in many sectors of social life the actual behaviors of adults are now marked by a style that with that recalled by the Pope has nothing to do.

First of all is the school, in which the overprotective approach of many parents has greater effects. It has become a classic that in the face of a bad vote or a rejection, the families question the teachers, and instead of tickling the boy who has not studied and did not commit himself, and at the limit to understand why the insufficient, compass in the presidency to complain about the ugly, dirty and bad professors. A practice with which the educational institutions collide, let’s say they have long disguised themselves, so much so that the minister of education and merit Giuseppe Valditara has immediately thanked the pontiff for his words.

This very popular approach, for which parents are the unionists of the children and of which the school is the first “victim” has become such a widespread, and evidently shared way, that it is inevitable to open the debate: is it right to always support children? Why do today’s parents struggle to oppose even the most wrong requests, why don’t we know how to put boundaries? Where is the limit between education and authoritarianism?

Parents are the unionists of the children

Let’s say immediately that the modern childhood pedagogy has often wondered about the subject, and all the professionals called into question have alarming from the risks of an excess of condescending, which probably was born – and here we venture a short historical excursus – from the “rejection crisis” of a generation of boys, today parents, who in the seventies had undergone too rigid education, the one in which the personal choices were still “Contracted” with the father and mother, more often the father, the one in which the rules and roles were rigid and tended to dominate the personality of the individual. At that time they produced the student contestation; Then those students grew up, once they became parents they remembered “suffering” and the injustices of the constraints suffered, and have imposed opposite behaviors. Producing, as always happens when they go from one excess to another, as many errors.

The modern lack of no is so producing boys who do not have the sense of the limit, which do not know the value of the refusal, the rules that must be respected and above all that they are never faced with their responsibilities. I can do some things others not, some do me well and others hurt me, this is what parents no longer know how to say children, obviously motivating their indications and showing consistency with the example. Thus giving rise to a society only of rights and without duties, which are also as constitutional element as the first (“of the rights and duties of citizens”).

Hyper -protivism, that excuse them always, will not put the boys in the face of the concept of failure, which unfortunately life will then live them to know, and will not “train” their ability to react. A night in white after a bad vote because it has not studied enough or in the way and not because the professor has been bad will be a lesson for the future, and will trigger them the desire to do better.

All concepts that in words are easy to understand and on which maybe it is difficult not to agree, but that many in practice find few proselytes. And well he did the parish priest-Papa to remind us.