Planet me

Although it may seem like a pipe dream now, there was a time when humans shared consensus on a great many matters. Even on the now highly subjective field of child-rearing: "Children walk at one year old and talk at two," was the illuminating, unifying motto that served as an educational compass on the fascinating journey through this evolutionary period.

With nuances and flexibilities, the rhythm of the extraordinary maturational growth of humans during the first two years of life became a collective consensus, ordered by objective milestones, and passed down from generation to generation. To this was added another tribal truth: "Human children control their sphincters by age two," or "in the summer of their second year," or, in any case, "before starting school." And—though it's hard to believe now—mostly, they "became" toilet trained.

But all of this is now history. As journalist Helena López explains, overprotective parenting and so-called "positive parenting" have upended all the paradigms. Now, practically half of the students arrive in the second cycle of preschool still wearing diapers, with the argument that they'll stop using them "when they ask" or "when they decide." Because it seems that the desirable "positive" approach to parenting—observing, respecting, being flexible, explaining—has ended up becoming "I'm not interfering: let them do what they want."

Professionals working with five-year-olds report increasingly surreal situations: children who don't go to summer camp because they're still breastfeeding, or who arrive at school in their pajamas because they didn't want to get dressed, or who choose to dress inappropriately (rain boots or pajamas...) and expect to enter the classroom looking at their father's phone and sucking on a bottle, or who categorically refuse—with the full support of their families—to do the relaxation routines the teacher sets after playtime because they prefer to keep playing...

It's true that the collective has always been a great pedagogical challenge. Perhaps it's time to remember, however, that the true meaning of education is not to sanctify the limits of each individual and thus perpetuate their limitations, but to achieve their successful integration into their environment. And this is achieved through socialization, compensating for inequalities of origin, and stepping outside one's comfort zone.

Respecting individuality and personal pace cannot mean giving up on growth, maturation, or personal autonomy. Accepting a reasonable collective pattern is not stifling but enriching: it makes us flexible, empathetic, adaptable... and capable of learning beyond our initial preferences or desires, which, at five years old, and you'll have to forgive me, can be quite limited and limiting. In fact, it is our social dimension—and not our solipsistic one—that allows us to move toward the best version of ourselves. Confusing the necessary attention to children's needs with the satisfaction of every desire goes in precisely the opposite direction.

The consequences of this inability to set limits for young children have been noticeable in secondary school for years, but in much less "nice" ways: zero tolerance for frustration, emotional hypertrophy, perpetual infantilization, poor self-discipline, difficulty controlling oneself in the face of trends, pathologically insecure and introverted...

Now, we've also learned that "helicopter" parents have even reached university. In Alba Tebar's report for VilaWeb Testimonies are being gathered from nine universities in the linguistics area. The growing trend is that parents are handling enrollment procedures, attending tutorials, and requesting grades for their adult sons and daughters. One concrete statistic: more than 50% of the inquiries received by the UPF information service are now made by parents, not students!

And so—completely unprotected as a result of this overprotection—young people are thrust into the real world, where competitiveness, inequality, and precariousness guarantee them unlimited access to frustration that is now truly real. And, without mechanisms to cope with these issues, they try to escape into consumerism, triviality, fiction, or the many mechanisms that allow us to perpetuate our individual bubbles indefinitely: social media profiles, the gaming, he bodycare –in version nails of purple either heavy tattoo–, The literature of the self...

Or voting—out of identification?—for a thousand other vain, capricious, and ignorant men—Milei, Trump...—whose limits no one knew how to set when we still had time.