Build high-quality houses, be a nurturer of high emotional value, and grow up with your children

When my son was in the sixth grade, I used to joke with him, "Where do you go to college in the future, where will your parents follow?" The son replied "Yes", and I continued, "So when you get married in the future, will we still live together?" The son replied "Yes" at first, but then he thought and said, "Mom, why don't we live at the right door?" "I don't know how he'll answer in a few more years.

Half a year ago, my 14-year-old son began to lock his door, and before that, we used to go straight in, and his sudden lock was very uncomfortable. After negotiations, we had to knock on the door before we went in, and from then on he rarely locked the door again, but occasionally.

The impression is that the young man who always shouts "Mommy, Mommy" seems to be walking away a little bit. After reading the book "Get along with children like this: Give children a good enough native family", I tried to understand my son's changes, and the sense of loss in my heart gradually disappeared.

"Get along with children like this: give children a good enough native family" (hereinafter referred to as "get along with children like this") This book is jointly produced by Wu Zhihong Psychological × See Psychology, the author Liu Yongyi (yin Tongting), is a doctor of the Department of Psychology of East China Normal University, a supervisor-level psychological counselor, focusing on the treatment of children and adolescents for more than 10 years, with more than 8,000 hours of counselor time and more than 1,000 counseling cases. In the book, the author uses the analogy of "house" and explores four major themes around the "spatial parenting method":

First, deeply understand the nature of the parent-child relationship

Second, analyze the parenting dilemmas that parents will encounter at all stages of their children's growth

Third, improve and develop the inner space of parents, and grow up with children

Fourth, explore the effective way to raise children, good enough native families, and achieve children with their own light

The author expounds through the three perspectives of children, parents, children and parents, bringing us some inspiration and thinking.

01

Child: Like an adult, he is an independent being

The author explains with the concept of "space" that the child's mental space is often within the psychological space of the nurturer, just like a big house with a small house. Because children are not yet able to live completely independently, they are very dependent on adults. It is precisely because of this dependence, as well as the weakness and immaturity of children, that their need for external and inner space is often ignored or even invaded by adults. But it is precisely because children are weak and immature that they need adults to give them enough protection and respect for their inner space.

As it turns out, as independence increases, the child's dependence will gradually weaken. The child who used to be able to take him out of the house anywhere began to lock the door, began to refuse to participate in social activities led by adults, and began to keep his diary properly... Children gradually have boundaries between physical and psychological space.

This requires us to temporarily let go of the identity of the parent and think of the child as an independent person. Respect his privacy, respect his choice, equal communication, reasonable guidance, in addition to appearing in time when the child needs, but also to learn to withdraw and let go in the child's life at the right time, and give the child an independent world.

02

Parents: Raise yourself first, then raise your children

Office colleagues have had children in recent years, and more and more people have asked for a sister-in-law at home. One of the reasons for a male colleague is: when a child, his mother and mother-in-law came to take care of the confinement, the old man was tired, the wife's mood was not very comfortable, during which he also had two acute mastitis, the whole family tossed enough, this time the second child resolutely asked the sister-in-law, find a professional person to do professional things, avoid the elderly, but also to ensure that the wife's body and mind are relaxed and comfortable.

I very much agree with him. Under the premise of economic conditions, asking the confinement sister-in-law to take care of the mother, or staying in the confinement center, cared for by professionals, will greatly alleviate the pain and continuous fatigue caused by childbirth, so that the mother can have spare energy to better take care of the newborn.

As the book says: If the nurturer's inner space were an island, how many emotional resources would she have to raise the child? Nurturers who are pregnant, widowed parenting, poor intimacy, and lack of social relationships are usually "island" high-incidence groups, and are prone to self-consumption in exhaustion, irritability, and anxiety.

The advice given by Yang Lan is: being a parent is not an easy task, teaching by example is more convincing than words, don't make it all on your child, if you are full, happy, responsible, and have emotional management skills, your child will imitate you.

Yes, how can a crumbling, leaking, dilapidated house be at peace? Not to mention raising children! So, as a parent, please raise yourself first, and then raise your children.

03

Child and Parent: The child will see himself in the eyes of his parents

In the book, the author shares a view from the famous psychoanalyst Kohut: a child's healthy narcissism comes from a consistent and steady response from parents. In layman's terms, if there is light in the eyes of the parents when they look at their children, the children will feel that they are valuable and worthy of being loved. The emotional experience of being constantly noticed, appreciated, and responded to will be internalized in the child's own mind and become the core of healthy narcissism.

Just like the famous experiment "Water knows the answer": paste different words on the wall of the bottle filled with water to let the water "see", and as a result, seeing "love" and "thanks", the water crystals appear in a complete and beautiful hexagon; those who are scolded as "muddy eggs", the water can hardly form crystals. Good thoughts yield good results, and so do people.

How many families are "usually motherly and filial piety, a tutoring homework chicken flying dog jumping." Whenever we can't help but want to attack our children, in addition to silently chanting "biological, biological", we also think more about the experiment of "water knows the answer".

Reduce control, stop being critical and blaming, and let us learn to illuminate our children's world with the light of attention, appreciation, and response.

Write at the end

The core of the parent-child relationship is to laugh and grow with the child

In the movie "Hello, Li Huanying", the line that many viewers are most impressed by is: My daughter, I just want her to be healthy and happy. One sentence tells the core of the parent-child relationship, which is the same as the author of this book. Laughing and growing up with children requires a stable, rich and fun family as the premise, so parents must first build a mature and stable inner space to accommodate each other's interactions.

The book "Get along with children like this" reminds us that everything is developing and changing, and we must look at children and changes in parent-child relationships with a developmental perspective. Build high-quality houses, be high emotional value nurturers, and let us grow up with our children.