Educationalist Daniele Novara will be the featured speaker at a meeting dedicated to parenting and managing family conflict, including a presentation of his book "Mollami! Raising Adolescent Children and Finding the Right Distance to Help Them Grow."
The event is scheduled for Wednesday 22 October at 8.15pm at the Teatro di Sant'Eulalia , as part of the Love Sharing Festival.
Through concrete examples and nonviolent communication tools, Novara encourages parents and teachers to build relationships based on listening, autonomy, and mutual trust.
In your book "Mollami!", the central theme is the right distance between parents and adolescent children. What do you think is the most common mistake parents make today in their relationships with their children during this delicate stage?
We're talking about adolescents, that is, boys and girls who want to escape the maternal nest and the childish control of their parents to experience their own freedom. Parents, however, struggle to understand this transition from childhood to a new stage of life, and try to maintain the intimacy and closeness they once had, still viewing them as children. In this way, they pursue a pleasantness that no longer belongs to their children, who have now entered a completely different phase.
When you seek something that can no longer exist, difficulties and conflicts arise: children raise the bar of opposition, and disagreements become inevitable. However, they would be much more manageable if moms and dads understood that adolescence has entirely different needs than childhood.
The book's title is provocative. What's behind that "Mollami"? Is it a cry of rebellion or a plea for trust from the kids?
"Leave me" is a classic expression used by teenagers toward their parents. It's not just a word, but a communicative signal: it expresses the need to distance oneself in order to rediscover oneself, to distance oneself in order to build oneself. It's part of that repertoire of typical phrases—"You're the worst parents in the world," "When I'm 18, I'm leaving," "If you keep this up, I'll report you"—which, if read intelligently, shouldn't be scary. They're ways of defending one's autonomy. Parents shouldn't take them literally, but they shouldn't abandon the issue either: at this age, children shouldn't be left alone or supervised like infants. They need to be supported, with an educational approach that respects their need for independence.
