Literature/learning is the treasure of the body
Let's start with an ancient Greek myth.
There was a Cypriot king in ancient Greece, who was lonely and liked to live alone, and in order to relieve the loneliness in his heart, he carved a beautiful woman out of ivory and fell in love with the statue, and later he prayed to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to give life to the statue. In the end, the god of love was touched by his sincerity and promised him, and the king got his wish and married the statue beauty.
The king's name was Pygmalion, and the Pygmalion effect got its name from it, which means that if you have a strong expectation of some people, that expectation will have an effect.
Later, the American psychologist Rosenthal also proved this with experiments.
In 1968, Rosenthal took his assistants to a rural elementary school, where they chose three classes in grades one through six and conducted a "future development trend test" for the students of the 18 classes, after which they gave the school a list of the "most promising people" and told them not to pass it on, so as not to affect the correctness of the experiment.
The list accounted for 20% of the total number of students, in fact, the students on the list were randomly selected, the principal and students did not know, Rosenthal did not look at the test results.
Amazingly, after 8 months, things did change. In a test of the 18 classes of students, it was found that the students on the list generally improved their grades significantly, and their personalities were more extroverted, and their intellectual curiosity and self-confidence became stronger.
This is known as the Rosenthal effect, also known as the Pygmalion effect.
Faced with this result, Rosenthal also proposed a word called "authoritative lie." He believes that he is authoritative to the school authorities, and the school authorities are also authoritative to the students, passing on the "lie" of "you have the most prospects" to the students who are the subjects of the experiment (through emotions and attitudes of the teacher), and finally these students really become such people.
For each of us, the most primitive and important authority is the parents. So, how does the influence of parents' expectations of their children play a role?
In today's article, I will take the movie "Childhood Promises" as an example to talk about how parents' expectations have an important impact on children.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >1. The mother's expectations, the child's vows</h1>
Adapted from the french secondary school students' designated key book "I Promise", the film describes the legendary story of Romain Gary becoming a giant of French literature and the touching memories of his and his mother, an epic masterpiece spanning the twentieth century, a heartwarming film of joy and tears.
Romain Gary (May 21, 1914 – December 2, 1980) was a legendary life.
He spent his childhood in Russia and Poland before moving to France in 1926. During the Second World War, he went to London to join de Gaulle, joined the "Free France" Air Force, moved to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, received the Crusade medal and the Liberation Medal representing France's highest military honor, and became an air force hero. At the same time, he worked in the diplomatic community for two decades after the war, and was a full-fledged diplomat as Consul General of France in Los Angeles. He is a great writer in literature, and in 1945 he published his debut work "European Education", which became famous in one fell swoop. The novels Deeply Rooted in Nature (1956) and Life Like This (1975) won the Goncourt Prize, and he was the only writer in the history of the Goncourt Literary Prize to win twice (once under his real name, once under a pen name), and what really brought him international fame was his autobiographical novel I Promise (1960).
These achievements of Roman are his mother's expectations of him, and they are also his vows.
It can be seen that what kind of expectations parents have for their children and what kind of prophecies they have issued are a very crucial thing for their children's growth.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >2. The best expectation is that I trust you</h1>
The mother in the film, Nina, seems to be imposing her will on Roman, which makes many viewers feel uncomfortable, thinking that she is controlling the child and using the child as a tool to achieve her dreams, but my understanding is not like this.
Why?
The first reason is that Nina's expectations for Roman stem from full of love.
Some parents may also say that I expect my children to become better because I love them, but have these parents ever thought about what they have done for their expectations?
To have expectations for children is not only to send out expectations, but also to provide conditions for children to complete expectations. When parents take "other people's children" as their expectations for their children, have they tutored their children with homework, tried to improve their children's abilities in all aspects, and really provided substantial support for their children like other parents.
Nina in the film, as a single mother, is trying her best to provide the best living environment for Roman, constantly changing cities and occupations to try to make more money (Nina has sold hats, done sales, invested in real estate, run hotels, etc.), paid attention to Roman's education since childhood (learning to further study, knowing social etiquette, practicing shooting, constantly writing, becoming a warrior, etc.), did not want to increase the burden on Roman, concealed the illness, including the news of his final death, all of which were to let Roman complete his dreams with peace of mind, and more importantly, She will give Roman sincere encouragement in time, and write 250 letters a few days before her death, asking friends to send them to Roman regularly, because she knows that Roman needs her, and these heartfelt efforts are all interpretations of "I love you".
The second reason is that Nina's expectations of Roman stem from "I trust you".
Parents, as authorities, pass on to their children not only expectations, but also "I trust you".
As Teacher Wu Zhihong said: "The best expectation is that I trust you." ”
Many parents consciously think that they give their children positive expectations, but subconsciously convey negative expectations.
For example, parents who expect their children to be excellent may be the logic that they rarely really encourage and approve of their children, they are just criticizing their children for not being excellent, and try to force their children to become better in this way. As a result, most of them will fail, while the others, even if they are superficially successful, become superior in external standards, and they will be extremely inferior in their hearts. Because the child will think that the expectations given to them by their parents are still "how can you be so bad", and this is not to trust the child.
Nina in the film gives Roman absolute trust.
When Roman was 10 years old, in the face of malicious reports from neighbors, Nina said to her neighbors: "You see clearly, this is my son, he will be a French ambassador, an honorary general, a writer in the future!" This is not a "bold word" that Nina said in a gamble, but a word of trust from the heart.
Such trust is faith.
Later in life, Nina worked hard, paid, and lived for this belief.
For Roman, at the beginning of life, meeting such a mother who likes herself and trusts herself is the best gift of fate.
It can be seen that authority expects to play a better role, which requires the sincere efforts of the authority and the sincere trust of the other party.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >3. Self-fulfilling prophecies that meet the expectations of the mother</h1>
As mentioned earlier, as an authority, in order for their expectations to play a role, they need to really like and trust each other and make efforts, so as to bring about a positive impact, and if you want to really produce the Rosenthal effect, you need another aspect, that is, the other party "agrees" to this expectation.
That is to say, the expectation issued by the authority is agreed by the other party and is willing to work hard for it.
Like Roman in the film, when their mother and son are forced to go to France, he "vows to turn the situation around and make the world surrender to his mother, and I want to make her sacrifice meaningful and worthy of her", which is that he agrees with his mother's expectations and is willing to give everything for it.
Later we also saw that Roman was indeed fulfilling his oath.
When he was studying in Paris, he devoted most of his time and energy to writing, and it was at that time that the short story "The Storm" was published; he used his sacrificial break time on the battlefield to create "European Education"; as a "Free French" air force, he was not afraid of sacrifice to go to the battlefield... These are all his vows with practical actions.
Roman turned his mother's expectations into his "self-fulfilling prophecies."
"Self-fulfilling prophecies" refers to the fact that the words that a person often says may become his own life prophecies.
Roman often reminded himself to make writers, officers, and ambassadors his life goals: when his mother Inzalumba was angry about courtship, Roman told himself that "I must become a genius of French literature and write a masterpiece"; when he studied in Paris, he thought about letting his mother see the novels he wrote; during his military service, he thought of being awarded a military rank and returning home with honors; when he and his mother finally separated, he told his mother that "I will fight to the end, I will fulfill all your wishes"; on the way to the battlefield, he was still immersed in writing.
Such efforts and efforts are not something that ordinary people can do.
From this point of view, the reason why parents' expectations of their children have not become a reality, in addition to the parents' lack of pay for their own expectations, there is also an important reason that children do not agree at all, and are unwilling to pay for it.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > written at the end:</h1>
In fact, from the Rosenthal effect we can see a metaphor for the mirror, that is, the authoritative person is our mirror, and when we get praise, it is equivalent to seeing ourselves in the mirror as good, but when we get criticism, the self seen in the mirror is bad.
If parents have positive expectations for their children from the bottom of their hearts, they will pass on the feeling that "I am basically good", which is extremely important for the establishment of children's self-confidence.
Self-confidence is also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As Teacher Wu said, "In our childhood, we have summed up some words from the experiences led by our parents or other parents, and they have become our own cognition." And because of the psychological mechanism of narcissism, we constantly pursue 'I am right', my cognition is correct, then these words are likely to predict our future life. ”
It can be seen that self-fulfilling prophecies are likely to have the power of authoritative expectations, and the completion of self-realization is inseparable from their own choices and efforts.
At the end of the film, Roman states:
I did everything she asked for, I did everything, but she was gone, she died without seeing anything, she never knew I had fulfilled my promise. Life is impermanent, making childhood promises unfulfilled, and after that, you will be empty and hungry until the end of your life. Whenever a woman takes you into her arms and tells you what she wants, it is just a scrap of food, and they say they love you with their gentle lips, but you know that a long time ago you found the sweet spring and drank it all.
We can see from this that the important position of mother Nina in Roman's heart cannot be replaced, but I want to say that as an adult Roman, he should try to get out of his sadness, because living the rest of his life is also fulfilling the promise of his childhood.
For us ordinary people, if we are parents, we should give our children positive expectations from the heart, and try our best to create conditions for children to achieve expectations, trust children, and love children;
If we have not received the positive expectations from our parents, we should form our own self-fulfilling prophecies through introspection, because when we say a word, we will fall in love with what we say, and out of the most essential narcissistic needs of human beings, we will push things in the direction of this prophecy, as a way to prove that I am right.
Now, then, find that positive self-fulfilling prophecy.
End of this article
Thank you for reading