In the process of his or her personal
development, a human being meets a
lot of educators.
The first educators are the parents. The
family has the greatest influence on a
person’s life and parents face an
immense responsibility.
A lot of parents think that
satisfying the material
and physiological needs
of the children is all there
is to parental duties.
These efforts, however, are not the end of parental
responsibilities.
Children need their guardians to:
•listen to what children say,
•speak in a way that children
understand,
•notice and acknowledge their
achievements and talents,
•respect their feelings and
needs,
•support their search for
different solutions,
•help them go through difficult
times,
•spend time with them and
give them attention,
•respect their limitations and
difficulties,
•refrain from constantly telling
them what they are doing wrong,
•refrain from constantly telling
them what they should do,
•be clear and consequent about
their rules,
•let them deal with the
consequences of what they do,
•show them how the world works.
•It is necessary to
make parents and
educators realise that
the person who
educates has a
significant
responsibility for the
success of the
education; in other
words, to change a
child we often need to
Ages between 10 and 18 are times of many important
development changes. It is a period particularly prone to
disturbance and risky behaviours, the most common of which are:
smoking, drinking alcohol, use of other substances, early sexual initiation
and experimentations with sex, aggressive behaviour, self-aggression,
criminal activity.
A young person who:
feels a strong emotional
connection with parents,
is confident about his/her own
self-worth, abilities and identity,
has social skills,
is able to say no to activities that
might be threatening to him or
her,
becomes less likely to participate
in the risky activities.
The neccessary aspects
of educator’s work: support
the child and be demanding
to help the child gain and
develop the abovementioned skills and
abilities.
It isn’t true that there are children you can’t praise for anything,
There is something good about each and every person – you
just need to want to see it.
We can all learn to notice the good in every human being.
Thanks to the educator’s
support, the child builds up a
sense of control and of his or
her own value.
When a child experiences the
respect and trust of adults,
gets a chance to make a
choice and solve the problem
him or herself, the child gains
trust and selfrespect, the faith
in his/her own abilities and the
sense of his/her own
limitations.
The child gains courage to
deal with even more difficult
tasks.
The adult develops an even
bigger trust and respect
towards the child.
•As educators, we most often
focus on the behaviours we
don’t like.
•To discipline the child we use
a raised voice, comparisons
with other children, threats,
punishments and bans. These
aren’t very successful and
usually result in increased
resistance, making it really
difficult to build up positive
personal relations.
Instead of forcing the
children to do something,
it’s worth to try cooperation,
leave them a choice, make
the rules clear and be
consistent about keeping
them.
Parental competence should constantly be in the process of
development and improvement, seeing as social life is changing
all the time, roles change (for example the woman is at work, the
man stays at home).
A study of parental competence was conducted in Poland in 2010.
The study focused on:
•Parents’ attitudes and their reactions to children’s
behaviours in everyday life situations.
•Assessment of parents’ knowledge in the area of
delopmental psychology, the typical skills of children
at different stages of their delopment.
The study shows that the parents’
competence is on a relatively low level.
Grading of the parents’
knowledge
insufficient
17%
low 41%
sufficient
34%
good
6%
very good
2%
The parents want to be „good
parents”,
And the low results are not due to their conscious doings, but
rather because of the lack of necessary competence. The parents
are lost in the current world, busy with professional lives and
lacking the possibility of exchanging experience in raising
children, which used to be provided by multigenerational homes,
something that doesn’t happen very often nowadays.
They don’t have the ideas, tools nor knowledge about how to
deal with children.
How to build up a positive relation with children, basing it on
mutual respect, understanding and communication, on a clear
system of values. How to deal with difficult situations.
The children have a right to have
responsible parents
And a responsible parent is one that can admit
to making mistakes and to lacking knowledge,
one that tries to fix the mistakes and searches
for the answers when in doubt, one that isn’t
afraid of changes even if the changes need to
start from him- or herself.
What should a good instructor be like?
The following factors influence the current level of
competence:
Instructor’s competence
experience, knowledge,
the ability to recognise
personal traits and use
them in predicting
people’s behaviours,
positive influence on
others (rational
persuasion, consultation
and inspiration)
Psychological factors:
active energy,
the will to make effort,
to work with others,
acceptance of others,
being able to make the
right conclusions and find
solutions,
A good instructor is confident and able to
control his or her emotions. Not being able to
control oneself leads to problems with
controling the group and gaining the group’s
trust.
The instructor cannot present him or herself as
omniscient, the instructor’s work cannot make
the students feel inferior. His/her task is to
inspire and motivate to self-development. The
final result of the workshop depends on