Carelis Natalia López Uribe, a student of the Master’s in Artistic and Creative Therapies, the Master’s in Psychotherapy of Emotional Well-being and the Postgraduate Program in Early Intervention, presents in her Master’s Final Project, a proposal for a support workshop for adults in the transformation process of parenting, through creative artistic therapies, which you can read in full here.
Parenting Practices
In my personal and professional life, I have had the opportunity to share and work with diverse families in different sociocultural contexts. Families with different parenting practices and guidelines, influenced both by their sociocultural contexts and by expert recommendations and/or readings from books and the internet. Families who try to parent in the best way according to their resources and possibilities, but daily occupations and the constant changes involved in having a child can overwhelm them and generate frustrations. Where the recommendations heard and read so far do not seem sufficient, and the fear of doing it “wrong” serves as a guide for decision-making and knowing how to act in different situations that arise.
Given this, I believe there is a need to create spaces for adults who undertake the task of parenting that go beyond instructions on how to act and address their new children. A space where they are accompanied in the transformation process that parenting entails, where they can learn and develop their own tools to manage their emotions in the face of new situations they will face in this process, which will consequently positively affect the parent-child bond and the child’s development.
Characteristics of the Parenting Process
The proposal seeks to be an experiential and reflective space for adults during pregnancy, in which it is recognized that:
- Parenting is a bidirectional process; the adult and the baby are mutually changing and building themselves at a psychic and corporal level, in the relationships of being and doing, individually, familiarly, and socially.
- Parenting is a social process, in which its practices are a construction mediated by the sociocultural and historical context in which each family is found, and the way it is exercised becomes a socialization process in itself.
- The affective bond is fundamental for the baby’s adaptation and survival, through which they will learn to relate and the foundations of their psychological development will be laid, which prepares them for the future.
- Emotional intelligence skills play a fundamental role in our way of living, as the way we interpret our emotions leads us to act in one way or another. Emotionally intelligent parents will be better able to accommodate and satisfy their children’s needs, which will consequently positively affect the child’s intra- and interpersonal relationships and how they learn to manage their own emotions.
- The establishment of boundaries and how these facilitate freedom, since learning to recognize what the boundaries are will allow the person to know within what space they can explore and move with confidence and security, without harming themselves or others. Boundaries that arise from the family’s sociocultural context and the child’s own physical and mental development, where it is important for the adult to accompany them and provide an environment in which their needs are respected and opportunities are provided according to their possibilities.
- Parenting is a creative process, in which both the adult and the child are discovering and learning; ultimately, they are creating each other. Therefore, the creative impulse will be fundamental for their development and adaptation to new experiences.
The Role of Artistic Therapies and Play in Parenting
To facilitate this process, artistic therapies and play are pertinent. Artistic Therapies, with their holistic vision of the individual (mind-emotion-body) concerned with a better “being” and “existing,” seek through the creative process for the person to be able to talk about themselves from a distance, facilitating the exploration of their socio-emotional needs and the processing of conflictive situations. And play facilitates the projection of the person’s inner world and allows them to transform what is unpleasant through pleasure and grow in creativity to relate and adapt to their environment.
Artistic Therapies and play will provide a space where adults can acquire creative tools to manage unknown and conflictive situations that may arise in the parenting process, preparing for the unknown and gaining greater self-security and confidence. In turn, it will promote emotional balance, fostering positive and relaxed moods, which will stimulate the generation of hormones such as endorphin (happiness hormone) and oxytocin (love hormone), fundamental for the pregnancy process and the parent-child bond.
Objectives of the Adult Support Workshop
Therefore, the creation of these care spaces for adults, where they themselves can explore calmly and without judgment, where they can develop tools for emotional management and foster their creative impulse, will facilitate their adaptation to the changes inherent in parenting, which will consequently positively affect the parent-child bond and the child’s development. This is because it is through the family that the foundations of the baby’s cognitive, physical, and emotional development and their future ways of relating are laid. In fact, studies show that adults who have better emotional regulation and self-confidence will have a greater possibility of accompanying their children in their growth with love and understanding, respecting their own rhythms, becoming models that the child can imitate and learn from.
Carelis Natalia López Uribe
Former student of the Master’s in Artistic and Creative Therapies and the Master’s in Psychotherapy of Emotional Well-being, both from ISEP. Psychologist with a vocation for the educational field. Specialized in artistic and creative therapies, with an emphasis on emotional well-being and early intervention.