The Paper's reporter Yin Lin
Unable to identify with the parenting methods and methods of the previous generation, and without forming a meticulous and serious and in-depth thinking, the new generation of parents is more likely to fall into confusion in parenting.
In the first semester of the 5th grade, my daughter fell in love. Min, a 39-year-old mother, is a little nervous, but she wants to be a good mother of the new era: "Who is the boy?" Tell me about it? Well, it's handsome, so you guys get along. What flashed in Min's mind was the American TV series that she had watched, and those enlightened parents seemed to communicate with their children in this way - early love is normal, parents should not be too nervous, affecting the child's attitude towards love. However, the conversation so far and the couple's profile picture of her daughter's WeChat can always make her blood pressure fluctuate, and her grandparents and grandparents' relatives and friends also put pressure on her from time to time: You parents really can't understand it.
In the second semester of grade 5, her daughter was facing a promotion to middle school, and Min wanted to send her to an international middle school. "She loves to play, she has opinions, or she should go abroad." The public elementary school is free and scattered, and Min is worried that her daughter will not be able to keep up with the homework of the middle school, so she makes several sets of papers every week. The daughter regarded her mother as a sister, and the instructions were often violated by yin and yang, verbally agreed, and often handed in white papers. Although angry and jumping, Min "didn't want her to hate me", so he proposed economic stimulus: make a set and give 50 yuan. Until that day, she came back from overtime, excitedly trying to knock on her daughter's door, and heard the child copying the answer while complaining to her classmates: My mother is really stupid.
"From a young age, I was suppressed too hard by my parents, so I wanted to give my children more space." Trying to learn parenting, trying to love children, only to find myself living a joke, I rarely say no to my children, and I don't care too much about children, but in the hearts of children, I am no better than my parents. Min is helpless, like Min's confused and stubborn mother, although the number of parents in the current group is not so large, but it is also conspicuous.
Declaration of Rebellion: I want to be completely different from my parents
In her paper "Pulling The Big Child: A Cultural Genealogy of Folk Parenting," An Chao, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at Tsinghua University, describes the image of a generation of mothers who aspire to betray the original family parenting style.
As the first female doctor in the family, An Dejing was exposed to the more equal and free Western educational ideas very early. An Dejing reported many family education classes, parent classes, parent schools, etc., with a tuition fee of more than 100,000 yuan a year. In the family WeChat group, she is the main advocate of the new family education concept, often forwarding a lot of psychological articles, disseminating scientific parenting knowledge such as the original family and child growth, childhood trauma and emotional education, etc., sharing her experience of accompanying her children to grow up in the expensive parent class: "Mother believes in you, we understand you, you are our pride, you are the only mother, no matter what others think of you, don't compare with anyone, no matter what happens, Mom and Dad will always support you in their hearts." ”
The son is grateful to his mother for the freedom and tolerance he has given him, allowing him to grow up in a relaxed and free environment, but his academic performance has been bad, although his parents have repeatedly emphasized that he is unique, but his sense of self-identity is still very low, not adapted to school life, as if he has not grown up.
This unique love is more in line with the trend of modern education, and it is also an educational concept vigorously advocated by many education experts and psychological experts. However, An Dejing is not so much solving the problem of her child's education as alleviating the pain left by her parents who forced her to study hard. Although she is a successful role model in the eyes of her people, she is also saddled with great psychological pressure. Her approach to education went to the extreme opposite of her parents. An Chao said.
We usually point to rebellion toward adolescence, but adults who have not experienced adolescent rebellion have made parenting the most intense rebellion in their hearts: I don't identify with my parents, I want to be my ideal parents.
Parents say they want chicken babies, I say that grades are not important, children should play easily and freely and grow up;
Parents say to understand the rules, I think the rules should be less, the freedom should be more;
Parents say to share with people, I say this is your thing, you can choose not to give;
Parents say more tube, look at what is in the child's mobile phone, I said this is personal space can not be disturbed;
……
After more than a decade of wandering like this, rebellious mothers increasingly felt conflict and frustration.
The concept of love and freedom of family is not only in conflict with the selection criteria for schools that value academic achievement, but also contradicts the current employment situation in society. Can't get the appreciation of others, that's all, look at the child's appearance on weekdays: free and loose, lack of self-discipline, overconfidence in doing things is also easy to be overly inferior, can fight for their own rights and interests but lack of empathy and love for others, even the most concerned parent-child relationship is far from what they think: rebellion may come earlier than other children.
Rethinking "rebellion"
The trouble that children bring, their emotions are out of control, and their inability to deal with problems both frustrate rebellious mothers and give them the opportunity to reflect on the fact of rebellion.
"I always think of the famous metaphor, like a confused old woman, bathing a baby, and after taking a bath, throwing the child out of the door with dirty water. Because there is a lot of anger towards my parents, I don't objectively look at the pros and cons of my parents' actions at that time, I just feel that I am hurt, you are the source of the problem, and I want to be a better parent and create happier children to make up for the shortcomings. "Pingya, a parenting editor, believes that fragmented reading and public articles on the Internet that stir up the anger of the original family have also contributed to her." Many articles carry a lot of emotions, and quickly grasp people's dissatisfaction with the original family, anxiety about the growth of children, and lack of objective rational thinking about parenting. ”
"What resists is not reading and learning, not effort and self-discipline, not respecting and caring about the feelings of others, but not seeing the needs of the child as a person, not seeing the child's difficulties and asking for help, only the negative emotions of command, accusation and nagging. This part is actually not the fault of the traditional social upbringing of children, but under various pressures, the parents' personality development is immature and they are unable to deal with the problem properly. Qiu Ming, a psychological counselor who pays attention to inner growth, believes that not blindly opposing the original family, looking at the problem objectively, analyzing the problem in detail, finding the crux of the problem, and looking for a variety of solutions to the problem are the skills that parents who are eager to be different from the original family should master.
Unable to identify with the parenting style of the previous generation, and without forming a meticulous and in-depth thinking, the new generation of parents is more likely to fall into confusion in parenting.
"At best, they want their children to be happy, and at worst, they are afraid to do the work of educating their children. It seems that he takes good care of his children, but in fact, he only wants to be 'good buddies and good sisters'. Jonis Webb, author of "Emotional Neglect," believes that parents may not help their children prepare to face the real world outside, and that children grow up in a beautiful childhood in the fog and do not learn to understand the difficulties they face.
How to maintain true intimacy with children, how to express expectations for children, understand what children need, what they are good at, what are their weaknesses, guide children to face problems, solve problems, learn how to understand themselves, understand others, these missing parts in growth are a lesson that many parents need to make up for themselves. These nuanced skills require critical thinking and long-term learning and accumulation, not the anger and expectation in the heart.
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Hua
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang