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Anna Manso. Barcelona, ​​1969. Television screenwriter and writer of children's books with 47 published titles. In The worst mother in the world (Harp) he claims a sense of humor so as not to go crazy trying to be the perfect parents

Has it taken a lot of work to be the worst mother in the world? Three children. And yes, it has taken me work. When you start planning to have children, you want to be the best. Just as the generations of our parents lived motherhood and fatherhood as something normal, as a more natural process, we have gone crazy and crazy. In what sense? We intend to reach perfection. And that's the easiest path to disaster, at least in my case. Because reality puts you in your place, but you insist and have a terrible time. And when you're already there, in the hole, at the end you see the light and you say to yourself: "Maybe you don't have to be so perfect." It has not been an easy path, but I consider it well paid because it has allowed me to invent this character from The worst mother in the world, which is absolutely real -in the book I do not tell anything that is not true- and that is cured through humor. Is there much competitiveness in the field of motherhood? Do we always think that the children of others are pluperfect? ​​We suffer a double pressure. An internal pressure that I do not know where it comes from, I do not know who has inserted that Matrix program that forces us to do it super well. And then there is the external pressure, which comes from the family to the neighbors, through advertising, Instagram ... My children are now older and when they were little there was no Instagram, thank goodness. I already had a pretty bad time, because it seemed to me that everyone was doing very well except me, imagine how it would have been with the idealized vision of Instagram. Today I have posted on Instagram some photos of the disorder in my house, the instagrammer postureo concussion is over . In his book he tells that he changed the chip, that he abandoned his claim to be a perfect mother, when one day he put on some glasses three dimensions of those that have a blue and a red cellophane paper crystal. What happened? Those glasses are kind of a symbol. I am a writer of children's and youth literature and when I go to schools I carry a box with tools to tell my job, and there are always some pink glasses that I use to explain something as technical as the literary point of view. And one day I started doing the same with the topic of motherhood. When you put on those glasses you get a little dizzy, but in the end you see everything very funny and very ridiculous. Those glasses allow you to see the whole situation from the point of view of humor, of laughing at yourself. And for me that is the key, the click. I think humor is absolutely therapeutic, in fact I am suspicious of people who have no sense of humor. There is always a day when, even if you do very well, you feel like the worst father or mother. I laugh a lot when people come up to me and say, "Excuse me, but the worst father or mother is me." Sense of humor is also an empowerment tool. Empowerment? Yes. Because of those internal and external pressures we were talking about before, you are always doubting yourself. Humor is a tool that allows you to regain your own power and common sense. Also, and as one of my older sisters says: "Don't worry, whatever you do, you're going to be wrong." Why are we so ashamed to admit that we were wrong when we were parents? This society does not tolerate error. And I have seen that in different contexts: at school, in the educational world ... And in motherhood and fatherhood it is little accepted that we can be wrong, when in reality we are going to crash. If they told us the first day, perhaps we would be more relaxed. Any of us, if we saw ourselves on certain occasions from the outside practicing parents, would make us laugh, right? Totally. But this is not automatic. There are things that I can laugh at from minute zero. But there are other fat things that can take time. There are many taboos in the world of motherhood and fatherhood. And one of the great taboos is that you cannot have a bad time, that if you have wanted to have children you have to feel bad and if you feel bad you can put up with it, it will come later. There are things that I can't laugh at the moment, maybe it will take days, weeks or months for me to do it. But I force myself to go through the exercise of humor. And that allows me to put in place what has hurt me. A very good psychological exercise is to imagine that what is so frightening that is happening to you you are telling someone as if it had happened to you 10 years ago. It is a very powerful exercise, and that has saved me many times. There are things, for example, about my oldest daughter who made me crazy 10 years ago and now I can count laughing a lot. What does the worst mother in the world do when her children do not want to get up in the morning and end up going to school disheveled and wearing a slipper? of each color? For me it is not so much about giving guidelines, saying that you have to do this or that, but how things are done. It is about lowering standards. If you want to go to school disheveled, let them go, the world does not sink. It's like order in the house. Maybe it doesn't have to be perfectly ordered. I always joke that when I die I do not want my children to say at the funeral that I was an extremely orderly person, I prefer that they say that I loved them very much. Do you speak, then, of resigning, of doing whatever you want? Not at all. There must be minimums, and children must be given educational guidelines. No, I am not talking about resigning, if I am talking about micro-divisions sometimes. What I think should be done when things do not flow is better to apply creativity and try other ways. I apply for example the alea jacta est, which in slang would be something like yourself, suck. What does your son want to go to school in his pajamas? Well, there he is. Have you ever felt judged by other parents? Constantly. For example, I care a lot about food. But when I went to look for my children at school I knew that if I brought them fruit and spelled bread as a snack they would throw it at my head, as they had done the previous two days. So from time to time I brought them cookies that we should not buy ... but we buy. And the other parents looked at me with a "no, no, no, that's not right." So I talk about empowerment, doing what your common sense dictates. I wanted my children to eat 15 types of vegetables, but they insist on eating only three. Well, only three, nothing happens. Have you ever wondered who would send you to have children? I remember when I had the third I thought: "Anna Manso, you have overrated yourself." But I think all of that is part of the process. And a fundamental part of that process is to forgive yourself, to remove the feeling of guilt. If guilt was of any use, go ahead, tons. But it crushes us internally and is very toxic. You have to learn to forgive yourself, not to be a perfect father or mother. You remind yourself of your own parents and realize that they weren't perfect, and that they weren't perfect is a great favor you did us. In addition to the amount of money in psychiatrists that we are saving with our children, because if we were perfect parents, they would not be because they are human and they would feel very frustrated. Where does all this pressure for perfection come from, when indeed in previous generations motherhood and fatherhood were lived in a more relaxed way? I think we are a generation of little ones and little ones, and that comes from a very good and positive thing: more education and more professional training. We have been able to study more, we believe that we have a higher cultural level than our parents, many of us have careers or professions that our parents did not have ... And that sometimes makes us lose our perspective and place ourselves in a situation of superiority. And to that we must add a point of individualism. I come from a family of seven brothers, so in my house the feeling of a tribe exists and there has always been, more or less, a baby or a small child and I have been able to see models. Now each one is in his bubble and he says to himself: "I am going to do better than the neighbor, who I hear his son scream not to see." And how do those parents who apparently have perfect children do it? Lie. There are no perfect children. Even when it seems they are perfect, they are not. It may be that they take out honors, that they are awarded a scholarship at an international school, that they help at home, that they are organized ... But maybe they don't communicate well, maybe they don't like vegetables,. Not to crush us, but to socialize those imperfections and relax, because it is very relaxing to see that what happens to your child also happens to another mother or father with theirs. We should ask ourselves how we have been able to arrive at a type of society that fosters perfection in human behavior and that is so sad about error. Mine is the counterproposal: let's laugh.

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