Being a parent does not mean being perfect parents, but exercising the responsibility of a father or mother in the best way you know and can. And this requires truthful and useful information, and, in many cases, also effective support from other families, to create your own tribe. Elisa Molina (Madrid, 37 years old), teacher and expert in positive discipline and conscious parenting, explains it. Both approaches focus on mutual respect and guiding children to develop healthily, rather than resorting to punishment and fear. “Small progress is being made towards these perspectives of educating, leaving punishments and threats behind. But we must be aware that this is a continuous learning exercise in which perseverance and a lot of patience are needed,” he says.
The communicator is the founder of Educar en Calma, programs online for mothers and fathers who want respectful parenting, created with her husband Francisco Huerta, also a teacher, and who has 114,000 followers on Instagram and from whom podcasts of the same name. Plus, he just published his third story Brothers (Carambuco, 2025), illustrated by Marta Costa.
As he explains, it is a book that aims to help parents resolve conflicts between siblings with empathy and dialogue: “Ideal for working on emotions and coexistence at home. And it also offers easy guidelines for calmly mediating and trying to be impartial.” And he summarizes: “In short, the aim is to give a solution, or at least an answer, to families who dare to have more than one child, which is courageous today, just look at the birth data”. Molina is right. According to the latest data published yesterday, 19 November, the 318,005 born in 2024 were 0.8% less than in 2023, marking a new historic low since the beginning of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) surveys.
Molina is a mother of five children and lives in Belmonte (Cuenca), where she has been directing an educational project since April 2024. “It is a public nursery, but privately managed, and is based on Montessori pedagogy, and this is why we aim to respect the rhythms and autonomy of the child.”
ASK. Why a book about brothers?
ANSWER. Because it was the natural evolution of the stories I’m writing with Carambuco. At first it was about educating without shouting, which it was Just a whisper (2023), AND then that came out monkey brain (2024), on how children and adults need to understand how the brain works. Now it was time to learn how to manage siblings at home. And when you have more than one child, your expectations are far from the reality you experience. Everyone thinks that their children will play together, have fun, have a life partner. But it doesn’t always happen. We must not lose sight of the fact that you are bringing into the world a human being who will have a different age, a different maturation period, and his own needs and temperament. And some get along well as long as the family is together, but one day the grandmother dies and eventually they discuss money, but in reality they discuss many other things that were hidden.
Q. What do parents do wrong to make sibling bonding unhealthy?
R. Well, maintain a dynamic based on comparison, on labeling who is good and who is bad, who you love more, who is my favorite… If this continues, the relationship between brothers will not improve.
Q. Now that you mention favorite child, do all parents have one?
R. Not me, I’m serious. I have five children and just last week I asked one of them, “Do you know who my favorite child is?” And he said to me, “I don’t know, everyone?” And I insisted, “Well, let’s see, favorite, there’s only one.” And then he replied, “Then I think it’s me.” In short, with the joke I went to another son. Everything separately. And I tried them all and they all told me the same thing. First they told me that everyone and then that they were seeing each other. And it left a bad taste in my mouth thinking about not behaving so badly towards them, when at first the response they get is that they don’t see any difference. And then, if I have to vote for someone, I feel a bit favored. That is, every person feels seen, feels taken into consideration.
Q. Do you think it’s important for siblings to help each other?
R. We work very superconsciously so they help each other a lot. For example, even if I know the answer, when someone says to me, “Mom, can you help me with this problem?” I reply, “Look honey, I could help you with this problem, but your brother is amazing, he will help you and you will also understand it much sooner because you will mentally connect with him. Try to see if he can help you right now and if not I will give you a hand.” And so, without wanting to, they share time in which they help each other. And it’s better to raise him that way.
Q. And without wanting to, you feel better…
R. When we say that we need to work on autonomy, we do so because this directly affects self-esteem. When you help others you feel better. And generating that climate of well-being is very simple. How different the world is when you can help each other. Let’s try as a family to do one good deed a day.
Q. It can be a nice activity to do at Christmas: one good deed a day.
R. Yes, it would be a nice activity for Christmas, but only if, after the Christmas spirit that invades us all, we were able to maintain that good habit. It would be very nice to keep it as a challenge 365 days a year.
Q. One of the parental themes that you carry as a flag is the importance of limits when being a parent, why are they so important?
R. Boundaries are necessary to maintain healthy coexistence between everyone. The fact is that even if you live alone in the middle of the mountains, you need some boundaries to coexist in that space. Naturally, limits are not imposed, but they are modeled by example, they must be inspiring. Ultimately, fathers and mothers are great influencers, but we must be leaders. Because there are also different profiles of children, for example those with high abilities don’t want you to impose limits on them. They need to understand them. You have to reason with them. They are high intelligence profiles who need to understand the why and wherefore. Of course, when they understand them, they hire them.
Q. As Christmas approaches, how can parents limit consumerism during the holiday season and ensure kids don’t go crazy? I don’t know if there are any rules at your house.
R. First of all, it’s normal for children to ask. They are surrounded by catalogues, advertisements… but mothers and fathers must exercise serenity and common sense. For us at home, the four-gift rule works very well, which consists of a gift to read, something to wear, something they need and something they really want. We also write down what they ask for throughout the year, take a photo and save it to a file folder on your cell phone. Then we review what they maintain over time, because sometimes it is a purely specific whim. And we always add a fifth, a fifth gift, and here the rule becomes more flexible, which is a familiar experience.
