Parents want to maintain dominance, children want to regain autonomy, what to do?

The winter vacation has begun, and the "parent-child war" has also begun. On the surface, everyone is arguing about right and wrong, but secretly there is a dispute for control. Parents want to maintain their own dominance, and children want to regain their autonomy. How to quell this "family war"? Today, we especially recommend this book, "Allow children to make mistakes." The author is Jessica Lacey, a well-known American educator. She is a columnist for the New York Times Parents' and Teachers' Association and has worked as a middle school teacher for more than a decade and has a wealth of insights and experience in education.

Text | Leon

| Tianyue

01 Allow children to make mistakes, why is it so difficult to do?

"For your own good" has become a negative label attached to parents, but no matter what kind of criticism they face, parents just can't help but want to pass on their life experience and wisdom to their children, so that children can take fewer detours, suffer less losses, and suffer less hardships. The intention and motivation of "for your own good" is not wrong, what should be reflected is actually a technical problem, that is, how should the good experience and suggestions of parents be accepted by the child? To put it bluntly, it is how to pass it on, so that it can be passed on.

What is the method of teaching parents? Usually, preaching and advising before there is a problem, such as "you should be like this"; after the fact, accusations and complaints, such as "Look, wrong!" Tell you that you don't listen." It turns out that this method has little effect, and there is often a situation of "how many times you say it, you just don't listen". Not only did the precious wisdom of life not pass on, but it made the sword and light sword shadow and sparks splash around.

Title: Allowing Children to Make Mistakes: Believing That Children Have the Ability to Become Better

Author: Jessica Lacey

Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company

In this book, Lacey tells a story: a friend of hers is very fond of music and believes that musical literacy is a basic cultivation that a person must have. This friend has also been encouraging his son to learn piano, and has found a teacher for the child, hoping that this will improve the child's musical literacy. But the son was very reluctant, and repeatedly told his mother that he did not want to take piano lessons, and the mother did not agree, so the two argued continuously...

Until one day, the son said angrily: "Mom, I think playing the piano is your dream, not my dream." Only then did she realize that even if playing the piano was indeed beneficial to her child's life, she could not impose her will on her child.

And the best way for parents to stifle their children's interest in something is to impose their own will on them.

This book gives us another line of thought, and that's what the subtitle says— the belief that children have the ability to become better. Parents take a step back, be "supportive and autonomous" parents, rather than "controlling parents", learn to close their mouths, let go of their hands, stand at a distance and pay attention silently, leaving enough space for their children to allow their children to do things according to their own wishes.

Of course, this also means that parents should have the courage and tolerance to allow their children to make mistakes, and choose to let their children gain experience and harvest growth in the practice of making mistakes and correcting mistakes.

Such an approach is easier said than done. Because, from the day the child is born, parents have an instinct to protect this fragile life from any harm. This instinct is more subconscious, like a tendency written in genes. However, the harm of overprotection of children is more serious than we think.

02 It is not allowed to make mistakes and destroy the child's innate internal drive

Someone asked a question on the Internet: "Children are very decadent, either looking at mobile phones, or playing games, so that what to do has no spirit, what to do?" ”

We might as well turn the clock back to the infancy of our children. At that time, the child had just learned to climb, looked at the ball in front of him, twisted his little ass, and excitedly crawled towards the ball, at this time, the adult pushed the ball forward, and the child was not discouraged and continued to climb forward. The child tirelessly climbs up and down, opens the cabinet door, pulls open the drawer, turns out the things inside to see, touches, and explores everywhere in the house, full of exuberant curiosity and desire to explore.

Look at the children who can't lift their spirits now, what's going on in between?

Curiosity and the desire to explore are the internal driving force of human beings to do anything, unfortunately, in the process of growing up, many people do not protect and stimulate the internal drive of children, but destroy their internal drive little by little.

When the child encounters a problem, before he can think about it, he is answered by the parents.

For example, when a child is recently learning an idiom story, I ask him: "What does the idiom of Jingwei reclamation tell us?" When the child hesitated, I couldn't wait to say, "Didn't you just learn?" Jingwei reclamation does not mean that although the strength of Jingwei is very small, he has not flinched, nor is he afraid, and his will is firm and persistent..."

Another example: when the child plays basketball and shoots, it happens that the basketball is stuck on the edge of the basket, and the child laughs and shouts: "Mom, the basketball can't come down!" As soon as I saw it, I immediately gave an idea: "You pick up a small rock on the side of the road and smash it, and you come down." ”

In life, parents always tell their children that they should do this and that, and parents condense their life experience into one conclusion after another, omitting all the twists and turns, heartache, sadness, joy, and creation and thinking in the middle. In the eyes of parents, those are valuable experiences exchanged for blood and tears, but in the eyes of children, they are just a pale and weak nagging, after all, "paper is finally shallow".

In fact, for a child's childhood, the most precious thing is the excitement of facing challenges, the pride of standing up from failure, the pride of winning success by their own strength, and the heartbeat and joy of learning new things. And if you are always protected and do something, you will be stopped, suggested, and criticized, and these denials will destroy the enthusiasm and internal drive of children to dare to try, constantly explore, and solve problems independently.

03 Mistakes are not allowed, and it is impossible to cultivate a child's sense of competence

We need to have love to do something, but to be able to insist on doing something for a long time, we also need a sense of competence, that is, the sense of confidence that I can do and I can do.

Competence is not that I think I can do it, nor that others think I can do it, but that it proves that I can do it.

Learn to ride a bicycle, learn to jump rope, learn to wash socks, control the football freely on the football field, and become friends with a strange child, from not daring, not daring, will, these small things have milestone significance for children. Every small achievement is to store confidence in his heart, to increase his sense of competence, and to make the child feel that "I can control a lot of things". And this sense of competence must be achieved through real experience.

Some parents always say, "You just need to study well, don't worry about other things", in fact, it deprives the child of the opportunity to practice the ability to cultivate competence, and also deprives him of the hands-on ability and the opportunity to learn quickly recover from frustration.

In this book, Lacey tells a small story about her son. Her 10-year-old son always wears only strapless shoes, at first she thought it was the child who liked it, once the child left his shoes behind the classmates, and there was a physical education class that day, so he could only wear another pair of spare shoes that needed to be laceed. The child was very reluctant, shouting that he would rather wear rain boots and be ridiculed by his classmates than tie his shoelaces." Why is he so reluctant to tie his shoelaces?

It turned out that when he was younger, every time he went out, his son tried to tie his own shoelaces, because of repeated mistakes, which made Lacey very mad, so while directly helping him tie it, he complained madly, which made the child also collapse, and after a few times, the child was no longer willing to wear shoes with shoelaces.

Although this is a small thing, it gives the child a deep sense of frustration. In his mind, tying shoelaces is a big trouble, and with the mother's many complaints, it has also deepened the child's cognition - "I am not born to tie my shoelaces."

In the process of practice, if the child does not ask for advice, parents should not intervene, do not prompt, do not correct, and give him appropriate guidance when the child needs it, is it not good?

04 Making mistakes is an important opportunity for children to grow

If we look back carefully, we will find that the experiences and feelings of adversity make us remember them even more. Without an in-depth process, lasting internalized knowledge cannot be formed. The easier it is to come to knowledge, the less secure it is stored in the brain. Making mistakes, failing, and learning from failures, and then trying again and again, are reinforcing knowledge, and smooth learning does not have this process of reinforcement.

For example, the child did not wash the residue on the plate, he put it directly into the dishwasher, you see, choose to be silent. When he takes out the plate, he will find that the residue on the plate has not been cleaned, at which point he may ask, "Why can't the dishwasher clean the dishes?" "At this time, you then tell him the right way.

At this time, the child will not be a little uncomfortable, because he took the initiative to ask you. And he will also intuitively feel that his method is not good enough, he is more willing to accept your suggestions. This small "mistake" deepened his experience and harvest of washing dishes, which was more impressive than the advice of his parents to repeatedly tell him to "clean up the residue on the tableware first, and then put it in the dishwasher".

In fact, the younger the child, the smaller the risk of trial and error, and the more children should be encouraged to practice and trial and error. Some parents on the Internet asked: My son is in the second year of junior high school, has been addicted to games, does not listen, talks too much, simply locks the door of the room. Parents are extremely anxious, seeing that they have passed the exam, what should they do?

Experts have given a lot of advice, parents feel unrealistic, because all parenting methods need time, and the middle school entrance examination is imminent, there is not so much time for parents and children to practice, the cost of trial and error has greatly increased.

05 Set rules and boundaries to guide children to set goals according to their own wishes

Many parents worry that if they are allowed to do what they want, their children will be lawless and become bear children.

In fact, this kind of worry is necessary, which requires us to set the necessary rules and boundaries for our children. In fact, there are no rules and boundaries, and children will feel confused. Rules and boundaries provide a clear code of conduct for children. Within this framework, the child is free to explore, and the parents do not interfere too much in the details of his life and learning. For example, completing homework every day is a rule to be followed, but children can decide when to complete it. The simpler and clearer the framework drawn by the parent, the more convenient it is for the child to implement.

Two days ago, my second-grader and I volunteered in the school library to help sort the new books according to the corresponding numbers of the shelves. We first clarified the rules of placement, and then assigned tasks, determined the completion goal, and each person was responsible for a region and performed his or her duties. After a busy morning, the child looked at the area he was responsible for, the books were all on the shelves, and they were placed in order, full of excitement, although the arms were tired and the legs were tired, they repeatedly asked to continue to work in the afternoon.

It was a manual job, and there were frequent situations in between, and from time to time I heard him say to himself, "Ah! Misplaced "Ah! The book fell" but the child did a very good job. Everyone wants to do things according to their own wishes, and the summoning power of will is far greater than all kinds of supervision.

Therefore, it is best for parents to guide their children to set positive goals according to their own wishes. With a goal, there will be determination and will, and infinite wisdom and strength can be stimulated. Achieving a goal is a temptation in itself, and the satisfaction of achieving a goal is a reward. Once children taste success, especially success by their own efforts and persistence, they will become addicted and will be more willing to succeed through their own efforts in the future, entering a virtuous circle.

06 Understand your child's feelings

To do a good job, you need a process of constantly making mistakes and correcting them. The process is full of hard work, frustration, disappointment and pain, and it is a rather difficult process.

▷ The first time you do it badly, he will go crazy;

▷ After working hard for a long time, the grades do not improve, and he will be frustrated;

▷ At ten o'clock in the evening, he has not finished his homework, he is inevitably tired and anxious;

▷ Seeing that others have achieved good results, but his own results are not good, the feeling of frustration overwhelms him...

In this case, as a parent, you should focus on understanding how your child feels in the process.

Just like a video that went viral on the Internet a while ago, "a 15-year-old girl can't buy a mobile phone, and beats her mother violently in the street." As bystanders, we instinctively feel that this child is not well taught and is too ignorant. However, the real situation is much more complicated than that. It turned out that the girl saved 4,000 yuan for part-time work, and said to her mother that she would add another 2,000 yuan and go to buy a mobile phone together, but after arriving at the store, her mother learned that the old mobile phone could still be used, and she regretted it. To this end, the two people had a conflict, from the store to the outside of the store, attracting many people on the side of the road to watch, some people took pictures with mobile phones, and more people helped the mother scold her daughter. The girl finally collapsed, screaming and hitting her mother in the head.

It is certainly not right for a girl to beat her mother, but her behavior is also questionable. If you temporarily repent and propose not to buy a mobile phone, you should also fully understand the child's disappointment, soothe the child's emotions, and sincerely communicate with the child, rather than forcing her to accept her own temporary decision with the authority of the adult, nor should she let the child suffer from the public opinion of the onlookers when she is watched.

Everyone needs to be heard and understood, especially children, and this is the perfect time to form an emotional connection between parents and children.

If a child's feelings and emotions are seen and understood by adults, he will have the power to move forward and change. As the humanistic psychologist Rogers put it, "The most wonderful truth is that once I accept that I am who I am, then I will change." ”

In the child's life path, the parents can be cheerleaders, logistics ministers, or coaches, but not players, so parents should give the initiative to their children. Because for the child, the power of "I do" is far greater than "I obey.". Children who grow up in a relatively free trial-and-error environment have stronger performance in terms of independence, frustration, persistence, and the ability to face problems flexibly, which will accompany the child throughout his life.

In the book "Allow Children to Make Mistakes", the author Lacey provides parents with detailed suggestions and methods, using 80+ scientific strategies and skills, 50+ detailed and vivid cases, from classroom to school, from learning to making friends, from early childhood to adolescence, hand in hand to teach parents to find effective solutions, recommend interested friends to read this book.