"Chicken babies are already a core topic for urban people. From pregnancy and childbirth to early education and further education, parents exhaust every detail to try to pursue a better life and achieve intergenerational leaps. In Congjiang County, Guizhou, which has just been lifted out of poverty, young parents are trapped by meeting the basic survival needs of their children, and they are often three or four children, and how to raise them scientifically seems to be a distant proposition.
The doll on her back was crying again. Wei Yufen coaxed a few times, but the crying still did not stop. She had to stop the movement of her hand, undo the harness, and put the doll down. The little foot stepped on the ridge of the field, almost touching the green rapeseed.
The doll is just over 1 year old and is Wei Yufen's third child. He was too young, and Wei Yufen had to carry him on his back when he went to work.
"Mommy," the doll uttered a few syllables he would have, pointing into the distance. When they first enter this world, children feel new to everything. Wei Yufen followed the child's instructions, and they were all accustomed to seeing the surrounding area: the mountains were undulating, the terraces were stacked, and the Duliu River flowed calmly from north to south. There are foreigners who come, all admire the beautiful scenery and good air.
This is Congjiang County, Qiandongnan Prefecture, Guizhou Province, located in the southeast of Guizhou, bordering Guangxi, mainly inhabited by Miao, Dong and other ethnic minorities. Due to geographical location and other reasons, the beautiful natural environment is accompanied by a long period of poverty. It was not until November 2020 that Congjiang withdrew from the list of state-level poverty-stricken counties and was one of the last counties in the country to be lifted out of poverty. It is difficult to get out of the mountains, and in a village near Wei Yufen's family, the first college student since the founding of New China was born last year.
For young people here, going out to work is almost the only option. When they return to their hometown at marriage age, they have children to leave for their parents, and the couple returns to the city to work together, and marriage and childbearing are like a task that must be completed. Generations of people are trapped in the same fate, and it is difficult to break free.
In the village of Zaiku, where Wei Yufen is located, there are 135 households. Because of poverty, neither she nor her sister went to school, and they have two younger sisters under them. Helplessly, the family recruited a door-to-door son-in-law for her, which meant that she had to take on the responsibility of two families. Here are two younger sisters going to school, and the eldest daughter Tingting is born again.
Wei Yufen could only go out to work, and Tingting, who had just been weaned, was left for the old man. The family is stretched thin, can not afford to buy milk powder, the baby teeth have not yet grown Tingting can only follow the adults to eat sticky rice. Occasionally send money home, buy some milk drinks, even if it is a supplement.
When Tingting was 5 years old, Wei Yufen gave birth to her second daughter, Xiaoyu, from Jiang. This time, she only stayed at home for more than a year, and then went to Guangzhou with a light rain. She took the manual work from the factory to do at home, and Xiaoyu played by herself. Sometimes I need to go to the factory to do work, so I bring a light rain to the workshop and entrust it to the lady boss to take care of.
The hostess taught Wei Yufen a lot of parenting knowledge, such as talking to the child more and adding different complementary foods according to the age of the child. Wei Yufen knew that there were so many doorways with children. Remembering Tingting, who stayed in her hometown, she felt a little indebted — she had neither understood the knowledge of scientific parenting before, nor could she tell the elderly how to take care of their children. Out of the psychology of making up, every time Tingting asked for clothes and snacks on the phone, she was always satisfied. But Tingting never mentioned the words of her parents, and when Wei Yufen and his wife returned home during the New Year, she did not have any special reaction. The long separation seems to hinder the development of the little girl's emotional consciousness. Perhaps for her, her parents were strangers who brought back belongings from afar once a year.
Figure | The two children of Wei Yufen's family were playing
Last year, Wei Yufen added a third child. 8-year-old Tingting, 2-year-old Xiaoyu, plus newborns, even with the help of parents, it is also busy to cope. When I first returned to Congjiang, the light rain that I was accustomed to living in Guangzhou did not adapt to the climate and diet of my hometown, refused to eat, and always tightly pulled on the hem of my mother's clothes. Originally, when I saw acquaintances on the road, I would take the initiative to call my uncle and aunt, but now I am hiding from people and are reluctant to speak.
What made Wei Yufen's headache even more was that Xiaoyu would also lose his temper. What she wants and does is not immediately satisfied, and the little girl will cry. Wei Yufen did not understand that 2-3 years old is the first rebellious period in life that psychologists believe. With the budding of self-awareness and the discovery that parents put most of their energy into their newborns, Xiaoyu began to use this method to win the attention of her mother. Wei Yufen had no choice but to give Xiaoyu change and let her go to the village commissary to buy candy to calm her daughter's emotions.
The 3 children completely disrupted Wei Yufen's life. How to educate children, make them feel more secure, and establish a close relationship with their mother, she is anxious, but she can't do anything.
On the first day of coming to Congjiang, Zhang Ling felt the gap between here and the outside world.
Zhang Ling, a staff member of the One Foundation, returned to Congjiang County in early December to investigate the implementation of the "Healthy Children's Paradise - Early Childhood Development Program" in the local area. The project focuses on children aged 0-6 years and their families in rural areas, and promotes the early development of rural children by providing them with early development kits, developing and providing nutritional health and parenting courses suitable for them, and organizing collective parent-child activities.
Zhang Ling grew up in rural Guangdong and was once a left-behind child, but she was still surprised by the remoteness and isolation of Congjiang.
As soon as she entered the village, she saw a young father go to the commissary to buy carbonated drinks for children over two years old. The child drank happily, and the father looked very satisfied. Although Zhang Ling is not yet a mother, she also vaguely feels that something is wrong, "Is it okay for such a small child to drink carbonated drinks?" ”
When she visited Li Huixia's home, Zhang Ling met the 35-year-old mother and her two children. She is troubled by her eldest son, Yu hao, who has entered the "child rebellion period". Yu Hao was originally well-behaved, and when he was 4 years old, he went out to work with his parents, and when his parents worked, he quietly stayed aside. Now in the first grade, he began to disobey, and he was not concentrating when writing homework, drinking water one moment and going to the toilet the next. Li Huixia forcibly hooped him to his seat, and Yu Hao blushed with anger.
Figure | Li Huixia worried about her daughter's education
Li Huixia went to junior high school, and staying in her hometown also gave her more time, and she searched the Internet for parenting knowledge in her spare time. The information gathered from all sides told her to be patient with children in the "child rebellion period" and to concentrate on accompanying and comforting. But the husband has been away for a long time, there is no old man to help at home, and the young daughter of more than 1 year old always involves her energy, taking care of one or the other.
Her younger daughter's education also worried her. Online says that early education is important, but Li Huixia doesn't know how to do it. One year old, one and a half years old, two years old, two and a half years old, what should be taught at each stage? How to teach? No one could tell her.
In a family in the village, Zhang Ling found that there were only two tattered toys in the house, and at first glance, the eldest children had played with the rest. Zhang Ling asked parents why they didn't buy new toys for their children to play with? What I got was a careless answer: Oh, the child is so young, he doesn't know anything.
The other family's parents are working outside the home, and the grandmother is alone with 3 children. When Zhang Ling came to the door, grandma carried the youngest child to the field to work, and the two older children lay on the bed and brushed short videos with their mobile phones. When Zhang Ling asked her grandmother if she was at home, the girl simply replied that she went out to farm and ran to the side to continue playing with her mobile phone. The other boy kept staring at the screen, not looking at the stranger who appeared in the house.
When distributing supplies in the new village, Zhang Ling paid special attention to communicating with the parents who came to collect the supplies, and beckoned the parents to participate in the parent-child game together. When they saw a parent leading their children closer, they beckoned them to come and participate. But many parents have waved their hands and refused: no, no, no. The children also shyly shrank behind their parents, not daring to come forward.
Zhang Ling realized that many local parents have not taken the initiative to understand early childhood education, and they do not know that 0-6 years old is the "golden period" of psychological, intellectual, cognitive and other development. While the parents in the city are busy with chicken babies, Li Huixia, Wei Yufen and many parents in Congjiang are helpless on basic parenting issues.
The impact that Zhang Ling encountered is the daily life of the director of the township kindergarten Liang.
In 2014, the first kindergarten was held in Congjiang County, and more than 200 children were equipped with only 6 teachers. In the past seven years, the number of kindergarten staff has grown to more than 30 people.
One in five kindergarten children are left-behind children, and every Monday when personal hygiene is checked, there are always children who do not wash their faces and cut their nails as required. Once the kindergarten set up parent-child activities to let the children go home and beat their parents' backs. As a result, in many recorded videos that have returned feedback, children seriously give their parents a back beating, but parents stare at the mobile phone intently, and parent-child communication has no effect. Director Liang was both anxious and helpless.
Figure | The villages of Congjiang are still very primitive
In the Congjiang week, what touched Zhang Zhiling the most was a sentence repeatedly recited by many parents. They always say: I know I'm not doing enough to educate my kids, but I've really done my best, and I don't know what else I can do.
A mother cried and told Zhang Ling that her child once asked her, who only had a primary school education, how to read a certain word, and she could not answer it. She feels that she cannot play any other role in the path of children's growth except for feeding and wearing warm food.
It is natural for parents to hurt their children, and Zhang Ling saw their anxiety, guilt, and the awakening of scientific parenting awareness. This is a good sign, it means that improvement is possible, but it needs more help from the outside world.
The Healthy Children's Playground program recommends that parents spend 15 minutes a day with their children, which can help promote the links of more than a million neurons in children's brains and stimulate intellectual development. This is a study by UNICEF. Zhang Ling found that some parents are slowly changing. For example, Wei Yufen. She carefully maintains the children's play corner, does not let other things encroach on, and accompanies the children every day with the toys, books, story machines in the material bag, learning and playing.
Under the shyness and taciturnism caused by years of closure, the emotional needs of children are actually ardent. When helping a family install a game corner, the little girl in the family avoided Zhang Ling at first, and then saw her take out a toy and smile and greet, so she slowly leaned over, and finally simply stuck to her. Zhang Ling taught her to read picture books: This is a watermelon, how many colors does watermelon have? This is banana, what does it taste like? Sweet. The mother of the child on the side was very inspired, saying that she would only read "watermelon, banana", and it turned out that she could interact with the child in this way.
Last month, Director Liang participated in the second phase of the Healthy Children's Playground project, as a volunteer to organize activities in the village, taking parents and children to divide cards and play sandbags. Seeing that children have fun, parents who were originally restrained are gradually engaged. Dean Liang took the opportunity to chat with them and let them play with their children at home, "some parents nodded."
Next, the Healthy Children's Paradise Project will launch a short video dedicated to teaching parenting knowledge.
When she embarked on the return journey, Zhang Ling kept remembering a visit two days ago. She went to the house of a six- or seven-year-old girl and found that there were many picture books in her room. The little girl said that it was bought for her by her aunt who worked outside, and told her to read more books since she was a child. Zhang Ling thought that if children had such "aunts" who knew how to educate early, their lives would have different possibilities.
*For privacy protection, the characters in this article are pseudonyms
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Written by | Rowland