▲ Li Yinuo
This article is from: Li Yinuo's new book "Where Does Power Come From"
Author: Li Yinuo
Image source: Li Yinuo
Guide
Mom, the most beautiful language in the world.
When we were babies, the moment we cried and opened our eyes, the first face we saw was our mother. She gazed at the little us with loving eyes, and life has been bound since then.
Writer George Eliot said: "My life began with opening my eyes and falling in love with my mother's face. ”
Motherly love, the most sincere love in the world. She gives me comfort in times of sorrow; she gives me hope when I am depressed; she gives me strength when I am weak. She is the beacon of my life, illuminating the way forward for me.
Today, Yinuo shares with us her 11 years as a mother, different periods have different stages, and different stages have their own "truth". Looking back on the 11 years since I had children, many times it feels like chaos – the photos of children in their swaddling seem to have been taken yesterday. However, different stages have their own paths.
Hopefully, these sharing is helpful to both parents and friends who are already parents.
cinian
11 years, 3 children, 3 magic weapons
▲ Yinuo and Huazhang also have three children
The first stage: new life
Moms need to take care of themselves and save their strength
At this stage, it is mainly from the preparation of pregnancy to the child's 14 months or so.
The biggest challenge during this period is the various changes and discomforts of the body and mind, and the need to adapt to a new state of nurturing and nurturing life.
Why should the child be almost 14 months old, because the average child learns to walk at this age and begins to explore independently, thus beginning the process of separation from us on the physical level.
For many women, pregnancy may be the first time we've paid so much attention to our bodies and started to have an unprecedented level of awareness.
Awareness begins with the body. Pregnancy can cause us a lot of discomfort and pain, and for me, yoga and swimming are effective in relieving discomfort. Whatever the method, remember to pay attention to and take good care of your body at this stage.
After a child is born, the biggest challenge is that life is irregular, because children have their own rhythm. For the first time, I realized that being a mother is about giving up almost completely about her own needs and constantly responding to the rhythm and needs of another life. Being on standby is very hard, and I often find myself physically weak.
At the time, I felt like returning to work was something I could never do. Because of these all-encompassing challenges, the data shows that many new mothers are depressed after giving birth, and their proportions are high.
Therefore, I would like to give a few suggestions to newborn families.
Dads, learn more and participate more.
The role of the father is crucial to the healthy growth of the child and the happiness of the family, not to automatically "stand aside", but to actively participate. In the newborn stage, dads have to remind themselves that almost half of new mothers will have postpartum depression and depression tendencies, so if the mother has any emotions, let her express them, and you are responsible for accepting them.
The most important thing is to let her eat well, sleep well and feel comfortable in a limited time.
Moms, love yourself.
Be sure not to forget to take care of yourself. The most important one is to eat and one is to sleep. I slept as a child at that time, and I didn't have any attachment to the usual regularity and rhythm, whether it was day or night, whether it was two hours or four hours.
▲ Yinuo's two children are feeding horses
Remind yourself that difficulties will always pass.
There are new problems every day in the neonatal period, and I keep reminding myself that all the problems that seem very anxious at the moment will pass.
My second eldest Rudy had very serious eczema when he was a child, and seeing his face full of small rashes rose and fell, day by day, the situation became more and more serious, I felt that I was particularly useless, and finally one day I cried.
But after I cried, I began to think of ways, ask friends, go to the hospital, and check online and offline. Later, Hua Zhang found a magical eczema cream that was really cured. Looking back on this time, I think the most empowering thing is to let yourself know that no matter how heart-wrenching it seems at the moment, it will pass.
Start rehabilitation and exercise early.
I started active exercise about a month after giving birth, starting with walking. The other is to insist on doing abs training every day. Many readers and friends know that I have a vest line, which is actually the result of insisting on exercising during this time.
When my child is 4 months old, I will return to the workplace, and thus enter the breastfeeding period.
To be a back-milk mother, you have to pump milk in various environments, and then freeze milk bags and disinfect utensils, which is an incomparably complicated project. Of course, the biggest headache is travel. When you go to various places, you will really feel the support of different regions for women's breastfeeding. Many public places in developed countries and regions have dedicated mother and baby rooms; when I travel around the country for business, the toilet I most often go to.
My three children, breastfed to the age of 6, 10 and 13 months, now look back on the proudest thing is that they have not wasted a drop of milk for so many years because of business trips, and have had countless strange experiences.
Once I went to Shaanxi County on a business trip and stayed in the county inn. After I finished pumping, I asked the hotel if there was a refrigerator, and they said no, only a large freezer in the back kitchen. Opening the freezer, which was impressively half-sized frozen pork, I soothed myself and let a few small bags of milk "snuggle" next to the huge half-fan frozen pork. Although breast milk is placed in sterilized and sealed bags, there should be no hygiene problems, but this scene still impresses me.
There was also a business trip, to the airport of a third-tier city in China, there was no mother and baby room, I found a toilet, all kinds of busy after getting it done. Then, I took a taxi to the customer's meeting, and when I got into the car, straightened out my formal clothes, breathed a sigh of relief, and was about to rest for a while, I suddenly found that the seams in my fingernails were all black!
So hurry up and clean up... Then "glamorously" go to the meeting. Those black nails are one of the countless "truths" in the career of working mothers who have been "tall" on the surface in those years.
I think that maybe all the working nursing mothers have a similar experience, and looking back is a joke, but what is really worth promoting is the support of breastfeeding mothers in various places, work units, especially in public places.
The second stage: young children
Mothers need to use their brains and understand children
At this stage, the child is thirteen or fourteen months old to about 5 years old.
The challenge of the first stage of motherhood is mainly physical, emotional, and energetic adaptation, and we need to take care of our children and respond anytime, anywhere.
The biggest task of the second stage is to understand the laws of children's development. The child is not the smallest adult, and his behavior logic and emotional patterns are very different from those of adults. For example, children's sensitivity to order and the way of expressing emotions at a certain age have inherent laws of scientific development.
When Andy was more than two years old, once we were out of town and staying in a hotel. Before going to bed, I handed him a bottle to let him drink, but he just didn't want the bottle and cried inexplicably. The hotel was not soundproofed well, and his crying was loud, which made me feel helpless.
I forced myself to calm down, remembered my knowledge of the sensitive period of the child's order, and recalled the process of giving it to him: I first opened the lid on the outside of the pacifier and then gave it to him. So I closed the lid of the bottle and gave it back to him. He stopped crying at once, opened the lid himself, put it aside, and began to drink milk. I still remember that moment, and the feeling was: Ha, the book is right! It's amazing!
Here are a few books that have helped me at that stage, Sun Ruixue's "Love and Freedom" and "Capturing Children's Sensitive Periods" and Heim Lee's "Love and Freedom" and Heim Lee's "Love and Freedom" G Ginote's classic book, Kid, Give Me Your Hand.
These books have helped me to understand more scientifically the laws of early childhood development and the response methods of adults. After understanding these laws, the method that has had the greatest influence on me with children is from Lawrence Cohen's "Game Force".
I learned a few concepts from the book:
First of all, the child's language is not to teach, but to play, so play is a child's natural favorite.
Secondly, there is a lot of meaning in playing, and children can find confidence in the game. For children, adults in life is an incomparably powerful, often full of authoritative existence, and in the game, the image of adults is "stupid and stupid", in their pretend to be weak, children can feel that they have strength, this positive motivation of psychology is very important for children to cultivate self-confidence.
Therefore, play is the best way for children to express and release emotions.
▲ Yinuo reads with the children
Game power is available everywhere. No matter what kind of challenge parents encounter, think about whether there are any games that can be solved. Children don't like to brush their teeth, you think of yourself as a toothbrush robot, let the child direct you, so you will find that the child brushes his teeth in laughter.
When you go out for a walk with your kids, you can turn into a blindfold and say, "Oh, I can't see anymore." You have to be nervous, ask your child to give you instructions, and you will find that your child can lead you home with a particular sense of responsibility.
You may say: I'm so busy, where do I have time to play games? And the truth is that without the game force method, it will take longer and it will be unpleasant.
Parents may first think of reasoning with their children, or pulling hard and intimidating. However, those who have used these methods probably know that they are not always useful, and even if the purpose is achieved temporarily, everyone is in a bad mood.
And the game can save time, and there is a good emotional interaction, why not enjoy it? The biggest difficulty in using the power of the game is not technology, but the need for parents to change their state of mind, to give themselves a few seconds to "withdraw" from the obsession of the child to obey the arrangement, to see the child, to crouch down, and to communicate with him in a way that the child can understand.
These exchanges, acceptances, and games are far from being a few words or actions on the surface, but you and your child are building a real and deep emotional connection, which is an important cornerstone for the subsequent development of your child's life.
The third stage: children
The mother wants to use the "heart" with the child
This stage is from the age of 5 to 10 years.
I wrote about 10 years old because my eldest was just 11 years old this year, and I hope to have the opportunity to share my child's experience of growing up a little more with you in the future.
At this stage, the child's physical strength, intelligence, and ability are growing every day. You will find that your expectations for your children are also growing rapidly, and you used to be pleasantly surprised to see your children walk and ride bicycles, but now you will feel that this is far from enough, and all kinds of anxieties and expectations will arise.
The books that had a greater impact on me at this stage were The Awakening of Parents and The Awakening of the Family, written by Shafari Sabari. Both books allow us to see the child below the appearance, and seeing that the child's state is actually an extension of our own state; Seeing our expectations and investment in children often reflects not the needs of children, but the needs of our hearts generated by insecurity.
If we don't realize the self behind these interactions, a lot of our love will pass on to our children with pressure and burden.
If the first stage is mainly based on physical strength, and the second stage begins to add mental power, then this stage adds mental strength.
There are two important things at this stage, the first is to remind yourself at any time, and the most important thing is to have a deep connection and communication with the child; The second is to start consciously letting go of your own purpose and talking to your child. Once you do that, you'll find that your child has so many great ideas to surprise you, and you and your child can travel together to a world you didn't imagine.
When the school year is about to start in 2020, we are going to buy a used car, and 10-year-old Andy asks me: Mom, why can't we buy a tank? I think if you drive a tank and take me to school, it's going to be a really cool thing!
My first reaction was: Bullshit! What tanks to buy?
Then I thought, why not? So I said to my son: This is a very interesting idea, let's discuss it. Why don't you see people driving tanks on the street?
So he began to look up the information, and came to tell me in a moment: because the tank is too heavy, it will break the road; Tanks have tracks, and the tracks will break the ground.
I said: Then let's see if there are tanks with wheels. Andy really went to the Internet to check, indeed with wheeled tanks, as well as second-hand tanks, the price is tens of thousands of dollars, similar to small cars, not unacceptable.
But he made another discovery: the main reason people don't drive tanks is fuel consumption. According to the MI Abrams series main battle tank he saw and the relevant data on the Internet, he calculated that the fuel consumption of the tank was about 40 times that of the average car, and 80 to 100 times that of a hybrid car. We discussed it and abandoned our plan to buy tanks.
Such a dialogue, we can all carry out, just need to put down their own voice, keep an open mind, follow the child's thinking to think about his problems, will get unexpected surprises. Children will actually do a lot of research in this process and can learn a lot of things.
- END -
Yinuo's new book "Where does the power come from" is on sale in JD.com and Dangdang, and it has topped the Dangdang new book inspirational list a week after it was officially listed. I hope that you can also harvest the strength and wisdom to face real life and self.
Click on the image Welcome to purchase
Li Yinuo, "Where Does Power Come From"