«Children are a reflection of their parents. And if we have a society whose parents are unfortunately regular, the child will not be any other way. And today, Spain is the first country in the world with the highest consumption of anxiolytics and benzodiazepines. It is the warning voice issued by the psychologist and journalist Isabel Rojas Estapé in the last chapter of The Ostrich Effectthe program produced by the Catholic Association of Propagandists and broadcast on YouTube.
The psychologist and journalist, who has just published the story I need a hug and who received the Ángel Herrera Prize together with his sister Marian in 2023, explains that “we live in a society that until very recently solved problems only with medication. And today children are bad because they are a reflection of society: if I have parents and adults who live with a lot of anxiety, who are flying, with a lot of rigidity, with a lot of perfectionism… the children are not going to be any other way. .
For this reason, he advocates for “a radical change in parents, and also in children”, based on a way of life that “helps them understand themselves, understand themselves and know how to manage what happens to them”, based on a correct emotional training.
Back to reality
To achieve this, Isabel Rojas gives a series of guidelines. The first, keep children away from screens, be it mobile phones, computers or tablets. Because “the moment you take away a screen from the child, he lives real life: the sand, the stones, the street, the toys, getting dirty… And this is key, because we have to teach our children to enjoy real life, of the palpable, of the close, so that we can increase curiosity, open ourselves to the world and sponge up the brain.
This contact with reality “makes the child begin to use the neural circuits that activate the areas that govern wanting to read, investigate, wanting to talk to others or the desire to relate.” Something that is “fundamental for children’s emotional health.”
Relationships and family
Almost naturally, the second guideline is to promote “relationships with other people and, above all, with other children.” A way to promote emotional intelligence and empathy, because it will allow minors—and also adults—to “realize that not all children are the same, that not everyone thinks the same, that each one has their problems.” , and that they don’t do things the same as you.
Furthermore, Isabel Rojas, who works at the Spanish Institute of Psychiatric Research together with her sister Marian and her father, the famous psychiatrist Enrique Rojas, insists on family communication.
«A family in which emotions are talked about – he assures – helps a lot to create people with strong emotional intelligence, while if in a family emotions are not expressed verbally, there are no gestures of tenderness, or there are no kisses or hugs, They create alexithymic people, that is, people who do not know how to express their feelings, feel ashamed when doing so, and do not know how to recognize what is happening to them: why I am sad, why I am tired or overwhelmed, etc.
Taking care of the spiritual life heals the rest
Along with all this, Isabel Rojas Estapé demands the cultivation of transcendent dimension of the person. Something, ensure for The Ostrich Effectincreasingly forgotten and which is at the root of many emotional and psychological problems.
«Today –says the psychologist–, the new religion is health; and we have turned all the activity we do to control our physical and mental health into a new god. However, the moment we turn health into a god, the entire spiritual dimension and even the God that many of us know, loses its prominence.
This idolatrous substitution of religion transcendent due to the obsession with health, he explains, is not innocuous: “Something I see in the consultation is that the lack of spirituality and inner life leads many people to be psychologically worse, due to the emptiness that one experiences.” A lack from which arises “that constant need to fill our interior with sensations, with activities…, with dopamine.”
And he concludes: «We increasingly need more external inputs to feel something, because we experience everything more and more from the outside. Therefore, if we return to cultivating our interior, if we return to spiritual life, if we return to a life more focused on God (even if we do not call Him that), then we will realize that we improve everything else.
