Competent child

Last researches have demonstrated that infant comes from his/her birth equipped with an endless number of capacities that enable him/her interacting with his/her surrounding and that he/she has great potential to modify it.

Participative child

This notion is related to the recognition of children’s right to express, choose and decide on issues that concern them. It also has to be with the capacity to build their own destiny. It is adult’s responsibility and task to recognize and respect children’s point of view and their contribution, considering their age and maturity.

Resourceful child

This notion is related to an active and competent child with motivation to accomplishment, protagonist and participative, who constructs his/her own destiny creatively facing adversities with tenacity and in harmony with his/her social, economic and cultural surrounding.

The concept infantile resourcefulness is defined as "a way to be and to do” from a set of capacities or competent axes that push the child from his/her birth to interact productively and constructively with his/her reality, allowing him/her to assume a protagonist role and to build up his/her own destiny creatively facing adversities with tenacity and in harmony with his/her cultural and ecological surroundings.

• Explores his/her reality and is alert on possibilities of constructive realization.

• Transforms his/her environment creatively discovering alternatives adjusted to his/her objectives.

• Starts up actions using his/her own resources in order to achieve his/her goals.

• Faces challenges and difficulties showing that he/she values himself/herself making possible to handle disillusions.

• Designs the necessary routes to develop his/her capacities in a sustainable way in order to reach his/her goals.

• Face once and once more the adversities that are presented in his/her daily life assertively.

We define the resourcefulness capacity as “the person’s natural dispositions to do and be, which combined with the environment in a process of effective interaction allow a creative, independent and sustainable performance addressed to solve problems, challenges and take advantage of opportunities in order to achieve an optimal development to have the necessary conditions to chose the life that they value the most”.

These resourceful capacities must be classified in:

• Cognitive-emotional capacities of performance, where children’s competent axes like curiosity and creativity are found.

• Motivation capacities relevant for performance, where children’s competent axes like autonomy and self-esteem are found.

• Will capacities for performance, where young children’s competent axes like eagerness to achieve and perseverance are found.

The development of resourcefulness capacities in a child depends on a great extent from the number of interaction opportunities that he/she has with his/her significant human pair to practice his/her capacities through strategies like the play. The incentives of motivation displayed by the environment, constant individual attitudes and will are important factors in this aspect.

We see the competent axes as complex competences and strategies designed genetically to promote that the child uses resources to explore, discover, obtain knowledge, transform and get achievements, which are indispensable for promoting and polish other competences, build up human destiny and transform the environment. These competent axes also act to give impetus to the infantile participation.

Curiosity

There is an epistemofilica tendency in all children, in other words “love to learn”. This curiosity to get to know must be stimulated from the child’s birth because it is the source of his/her development, productivity and personal and social progress. The curious child is observant, has energy oriented towards the satisfaction of his/her knowledge as first step to the discovery and transformation.

Creativity

It is the capacity to modify constructively the reality forming something new. The resourceful child uses his/her creative potential to transform, achieve something innovative and effective, as well as to face the problems and daily tasks offering diverse and new personal answers.

Autonomy

This capacity leads the child to participate following his/her own impulse without expecting something from others. It means to take the first steps by himself/herself to solve problems or to get achievements, be motivated internally and take risk in a constructive action. It is the desire to achieve goals by his/her own because it gives him/her satisfaction, instead of acting because other people animate or direct his/her actions.

Self-esteem

This variable is defined as the notion, value and feeling that a child has from himself/herself based on self-knowledge and relationships with other people, as well as values and ideas of the socio-cultural and physical environment, where he/she grows up.

Eagerness to achieve goals

This variable orients the child to obtain what he/she wants and to establish goals in different spheres and moments of his/her growing process. It drives him/her to develop effective strategies to achieve them and it is the engine of a constructive behavior.

Perseverance

It is the capacity that influences significantly when reaching goals. It has to be with the maintained effort to reach aims that the child has planned. It also means to do a second, third and fourth effort until obtaining the planned thing, to be untiring, to learn from defeats, not to leave the task when difficulties appear. Perseverance is obligatory to reach small, medium or big goals.