Building trust and being creative, key in education for supporting families
One year after the successful of the first International Workshop on Family Support, the UIC Barcelona Institute for Advanced Family Studies (IESF) wanted to commemorate these days with a webinar to which more than 450 people registered. On this occasion, two of the same workshop speakers, Mónica Larruy and Montserrat Santigosa, shared their experiences involving empowerment of families
The webinar, titled “Empowered Families? Support, a paradigm for a cultural change,” was moderated by the dean of the Faculty of Education Sciences, Enric Vidal. During the session, Mónica Larruy, early childhood education expert, and Montserrat Santigosa, psychopedagogist and postgraduate lecturer in Family Coaching and Guidance, touched on different topics about the family and converged on a central idea: the key and importance of personal training and dialogue to be able to help others.
In this regard, Santigosa said that “parents need spaces to talk. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy; simply, on a day-to-day basis, creatively rediscover time for themselves as a couple.”
Conversation is also needed with the children: seeing them and listening to them. Larruy said. “We have to give our full attention to what we are doing to keep relationships with our children or our partner from becoming superficial.” A receptive, listening attitude, being aware that we can learn from everyone.
And above all that, it is essential to support families the speakers assured, “because there can always be moments of frailty or weakness,” the expert in early childhood education stated. And with that, the introduction of the postgraduate degrees that are offered by the IESF, which provide support education: from anthropology (knowing the person and their dynamisms) to psychology (people relationships and life cycles, and the normality of imperfection) and training in other types of tools that facilitate support.
In short: to train, knowing that training is not leading, but supporting. And “How do we start supporting?” the moderator asked; creating a culture of support in different settings, knowing that each family is indeed different.