Raising children is not easy

29 April, 2026

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EduFamilia

Voices

20 August, 2025

8 min

Raising children is not easy

Exciting, but difficult

Father and mother are by nature the first and indispensable educators of their children: having brought them into the world, it is also their responsibility to use every means at their disposal to help them grow and develop as people.

It is true that, today, many parents ignore this right and duty to educate, often without realizing that they are failing to do so.

But this kind of forgetfulness is understandable, among other reasons, because the mission of educating is not simple.

♣ It is full of seemingly irreconcilable contrasts, and today more acute than in other periods of history:

♦ Indeed, many characteristics of the contemporary world seem to oppose a proper education.

The task of parenting is natural to parents,
precisely because they brought their children into the world;
However, it is not easy:
it is full of seemingly insurmountable contrasts.

Some difficulties when educating

In any case, throughout their existence, parents:

♦ They must welcome and love each child as they are, even with their limitations and defects, even if sometimes they do not meet their expectations, clash with some of their pretensions and convictions, or they may even dislike them.

♦ They must know how to understand, but also how to demand, without giving in unnecessarily, when the child’s well-being is at stake.

♦ They must respect their children’s freedom and foster it as much as possible, overcoming all possessiveness and overprotection; but at the same time, they must guide and correct them with tact and prudence, without interfering too much in their affairs, giving them the essential autonomy so that, step by step, they can carry out their own projects and become masters and responsible for their lives.

♦ They must help them in their tasks, but without replacing them or preventing them from the educational effort and satisfaction that carrying them out entails, and which strengthens their self-knowledge, their self-esteem and their ability to cope in life, without always depending on their elders.

♦ And, above all, very above all – since in a certain way it is an unavoidable condition of what we have said – they must have a lot of personal contact, one on one, with each of their children.

♦Personal, one-on-one contact! Because if diamonds are only polished by diamonds, people only grow and improve through personal contact, through close and prolonged relationships with those who love them—even more so when it comes to their children.

Just as diamonds are only polished by diamonds,
people only improve through personal interaction.

Key implications for education

All of the above leads to a couple of truths that we should never forget:

1) As Lukas states with absolute truth and coherence:

“There’s nothing that can replace parental time, family life, and the integration of children into their parents’ lives.”

2) Hence, parents must learn to be parents themselves, and from a very early age! (Although, if this hasn’t happened yet, everything in life can be fixed.)

“There’s nothing that can replace parental time,
family life, and
the integration of children into their parents’ lives.”

Educate without prior training?

In other professions

In absolutely no profession, professional training begins when the candidate reaches prominent positions and is assigned highly committed or high-risk assignments or assignments that are truly important to the institution to which he or she belongs:

♣ This is not the case in agriculture, masonry, mechanics, graphic arts or design;

♣ not in medicine, architecture, engineering or computer science;

♣ nor in law, in the military, in politics, in law, in administration or in any other business.

Any job requires
thorough prior preparation
and constant, rigorous updating.

In the “profession” of parent-educators, in the difficult process of educating

Why should it be any different in the profession of parents, that of educating?

♦ Perhaps because their responsibility is less than that of a conventional profession or any of those that constantly emerge today?

♦ It seems not, but rather the opposite.

Ultimately, if the issue is addressed in depth, education is providing the means for a person to develop appropriately, move closer to fulfillment, and be happy.

And is there anything more important than that ?

To educate is to provide the means
for a person to develop appropriately,
to move closer to fulfillment
and to be happy.

♣ Is it, then, because it is more of an art than a science?

Even assuming this opinion as a hypothesis, inspiration and intuition are not enough in any art.

It is also necessary to educate, train and practice, as confirmed by the artists who, at first glance, perform their work with little effort:

♦ The more natural the masterpiece appears, the more work has gone into it, although sometimes it is prior work, embodied in skills or abilities.

It’s worth learning how to be parents, how to educate:
the stakes are high!

Being good parents to be able to educate

Recipes for education?

On the other hand, learning the profession of parent and educator is not easy, as I have been saying:

♦ It does not consist of providing a set of recipes or solutions already given and immediately applicable to the problems that arise.

♦ Nor a bunch of infallible techniques.

♦ Such recipes and such techniques do not exist.

In education,
recipes are not effective,
but neither are simple techniques,
apart from personal development and
the effort to improve as a person.

Rather educational principles

There are, on the contrary, principles or foundations of education, which illuminate different situations.

Parents must know them very thoroughly and strive to internalize them, until they become part of their own thoughts and lives, their own lives: in this way, almost without the need for deliberation, they will be able to face the daily practice of their task of educating.

And it is not an easy or comfortable mission either: it requires a lot of attention to the children, a lot of reflection and dialogue between the spouses, and a lot of sacrifice in knowing how to give up one’s own well-being, even when it is necessary and not capricious, when the good of the children requires it.

In a nutshell:

♦ It is impossible to educate well, to parent well, without making a serious effort to be good parents.

It is impossible to be a good parent
without making a serious effort to be a good parent.

Personal improvement

All of the above translates into a constant effort, on the part of each parent, to improve personally.

For only those who have developed their own personal category, those who have learned to truly love, possess the strength and greatness to put aside their interests and put everything they are and their worth at the service of others:

♦ of the children, in this case, and of the spouse, since children are nourished by the love of their parents for each other, as we will see in detail in later articles.

Only in this way, putting the good of each of them before our own, will we help our children grow.

The goal of every educational effort is to help children love,
to be capable of giving and giving of themselves.
We will only achieve this
if we strive to “love first.”

Shift the center of gravity

As in all other circumstances of life, in education our effectiveness also increases to the extent that we shift the center of gravity from ourselves to others:

♦ in the proportion in which attention, concern and interest move away from oneself and focus on the person of the child we intend to educate, on his real possibilities and on his limits;

♦ so that we effectively support the former, making the most of their qualities, and reduce the negative effect of the latter, their defects and limitations.

To educate, we must forget about ourselves
and focus all our interest on the person of each child.

Some examples

And so:

♦ A parent will effectively help their children if, when necessary, they know how to do without a desired outing, a hobby they are passionate about, a moment in front of their favorite television program, or any other pastime; as well as, occasionally, a well-deserved rest.

♦ And instead, even if it’s difficult for them, they dedicate that time to playing or talking with the son or daughter who needs them at that moment.

♦ Furthermore, with that time of play or with that conversation, especially if they know how to pay attention and listen, they will notice that their son or daughter has certain abilities (he or she is good at drawing, literature or mathematics, communicates easily with others, perceives what happens to others and usually comes to their aid) and they will be able to encourage them.

♦ Or, on the contrary, they will notice that they have difficulty speaking in public, or that they are frequently distracted or that they are always “doing their own thing,” and they will be able to take steps, with affection and without bad manners, to make these activities easier and more pleasant for them or to rectify less upright behaviors.

♦ By forgetting about yourself and growing as people, you will know your children better and will be better able to care for them: you will be able to educate them.

The ” you” of the loved one must
always prevail over one’s own ” I” :
this is the golden rule of all educational work,
of one’s entire life, and of true happiness!

With this in mind, and without too many pretensions, in the following articles I will offer an accessible and concrete memorandum of the main criteria and suggestions on the art of arts, as education has been called.

(To be continued)

Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]

EduFamilia

Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.