——From the theory of personality development, we will talk about the importance and methods of mental health growth in infants and young children
In recent years, children and adolescents have frequently experienced psychological problems, and even the tragedy of suicide of primary and secondary school students has occurred many times. This fully exposes that we blindly pursue the cultivation of children's knowledge and ability, but ignore the importance of children's psychological growth.
So how can we do a good job in the mental health of children and adolescents?
To solve this problem, we must first understand the characteristics of people's psychological growth.
According to psychological research, the psychological development and changes of people from birth to adulthood and old age are staged. Psychoanalytic psychologist Freud first proposed this statement, and proposed the theory of stages of sexual psychological development.
Freud believed that before birth to the age of 6 is the most important stage of psychological growth, and most of the psychological problems of people are problems with the psychological growth of this period. He divides this period of psychological growth into three stages:
1. Lip period: 0-1 years old;
2. stage: 1-3 years old;
3. Sexual organ period: 3-6 years old.
Psychologist Eriksen also believes that early childhood psychological development is crucial, but he also believes that psychological development is always going on and is very important from the age of 6 until old age, so he put forward the theory of stages of psychosocial development on the basis of Freud's theory.
The psychological development of a person's life is divided into 8 stages, namely:
1. Infant period: 0-1 years old;
2. Early childhood: 1-3 years old;
3. Preschool age: 3-6 years old;
4. School age: 6-12 years old;
5. Puberty: 12-18 years old;
6. Early adulthood: 18-35 years old;
7. Middle adulthood: 35-60 years old;
8. Later years: after the age of 60.
It can be seen that the first 3 stages of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development are the same as Freud's theory of stages of psychosexual development. Because he retained part of Freud's views and expanded them.
Let's talk about the characteristics of each stage of psychological development of human 0-6-year-old children, and how to cultivate a healthy mental state.
(1) Infancy (lip stage): 0-1 years old:
This stage is the stage when people are just born, and the first need of newborn babies is food, because only in this way can they ensure the continuation of their lives. The baby's neurodevelopment is not yet complete, can not carry out complex activities, the simplest is the sucking reflex, the baby in the birth of not long, the mother with the nipple or finger touched the baby's lips, there will be lip sucking and squirming. Babies satisfy their food needs by sucking on their mother's nipples, which in turn gives them the pleasure of eating. This is the characteristic of the lip period.
Immediately after the baby receives breast milk, it will perceive this strange world, temperature, airflow, sound, color, etc., and the baby will immediately develop insecurity. But if a parent or other caregiver is able to give him basic care, he will gain a sense of trust for the first time.
At the same time, when the infant is aware of the existence of his own limbs, minds, and thoughts, he will have an individual consciousness, and he will be able to feel that he is a separate individual, not an air like chaos. He will develop fear, and then the baby will also develop insecurity, and unlike the previous insecurity, the insecurity of the external material world in the front, this time the emotional insecurity. At this time, when parents touch, communicate, and release love, the baby will also gain emotional trust. At this point, the baby's physical and emotional sense of security is satisfied.
From the characteristics of infancy, we can know that we must first meet the feeding needs of infants, and breastfeeding is the best choice. Otherwise, if the baby's lip period is unable to get the satisfaction of food and the pleasure of eating, it may later become greedy and possessive. Secondly, to meet the baby's physical and emotional security needs, more care, more care, more communication and companionship. Otherwise, it will be difficult for babies to develop a sense of trust, become unable to trust others, reject others, and become afraid of love and intimacy. This seriously affects the establishment of interpersonal relationships.
(2) Early childhood (anal phase): 1-3 years old:
By this time, the child has learned to walk basically. That is, after experiencing "three lifts, four turns, six sittings, seven rolls, eight climbs, nine support weeks will walk", after the age of 1, it will be the first time that the child will challenge the ability to autonomy, and the parents will begin to try to discipline the child. The reason why Freud named this period phase is because at this time the young child felt the pleasure of relieving the internal pressure during fecal excretion, that is, the reflex, so he was particularly interested in activity, but at this time the parents needed to discipline the child's excretory behavior.
One is that parents are too strict and clash with young children will lead to the so-called constipation type personality, such as too clean, excessive attention to organization and small sections, stubbornness, stinginess, patience and so on. The other is that too much discipline can lead to anal-type personality, such as sloppiness, waste, disorganization, wantonness, and ferocity.
But actually discipline certainly goes beyond excretion, but is just a good metaphor for Freud. The content of discipline mainly includes: learning to be independent, learning to control the power of the individual, learning to express and control negative emotions such as anger and hostility. These are the main developmental tasks of young children during this period, when parenting patterns and attitudes of parents have a crucial impact on children's future personality development.
At the same time, for young children, they will face autonomy and self-doubt, and will erupt into a strong inner conflict between self-trust and self-doubt. During this period, young children need to explore, experiment, make mistakes, test and other activities.
On the one hand, they need to "trust in their own abilities", that is, to develop a "sense of courage" to deal with these development tasks. On the other hand, they deeply "doubt their own ability", that is, they have a "sense of discouragement", which will hinder them from completing development tasks.
At the same time, they will also develop a sense of discouragement and "dependence" on their parents. At this time, if parents encourage the "dependence" of young children, that is, to encourage their withdrawal and do not allow them to actively explore, then the development of children's autonomy and independence will be hindered, and the child's ability to deal with external things will also deteriorate in the future.
From the characteristics of early childhood, we must first know that the discipline of young children cannot be too strict, nor can it be left alone, but should be guided moderately. Secondly, we must actively encourage children to explore the outside world while ensuring their safety.
(3) Preschool (sexual organ period): 3-6 years old:
Children of this period have a distinctive feature, and they gradually realize that the difference between male and female is not simply a standard. For example, children before the age of 3 may think that girls have long hair and that those who wear skirts must not be boys, but after the age of 3, they will gradually realize the difference in gender. This difference is generally found first in their parents of the opposite sex.
Freud believed that children at this time would develop unconscious sexual desires for their parents of the opposite sex. This unconscious is very primitive and aggressive. Therefore, children will feel that this is wrong and choose to suppress this unconscious sexual desire.
But Freud believed that the repressed unconscious did not disappear, but became the human subconscious and would affect a person's whole life. You may not realize that when we choose a partner as adults, we are very influenced by our parents. If we are very dependent on opposite-sex parents, then the partners we choose tend to be very close to those of opposite-sex parents.
And if we hate heterosexual parents, we tend to choose partners who are the opposite of heterosexual parents. But at this point, we may become the image of the parents of the opposite sex who are disgusted. For example, a girl who grew up under the influence of a father who was prone to domestic violence was so disgusted with her father that she chose a gentle husband. But she has become a father-like role in marriage, and her attitude toward marriage is often pessimistic, she will not deal with the conflict between full husband and wife, often use cold violence, it is difficult to feel love in marriage or love, and she will not express love for the opposite sex.
Based on this phenomenon, Freud coined two nouns:
Oedipus complex: Refers to a boy's love for his mother and hostility towards his father.
Oedipus complex: refers to a girl's love for her father and hostility towards her mother.
During this period, fathers should be more friendly to boys in order to attract their identification with men. Mothers should be friendly to girls to attract their identification with women. We should not be hostile to them, or even deliberately cultivate them in the opposite gender direction. For example, let the boy wear female clothing, let the girl act like a boy.
He believes that during this period, if parents do not deal well with these two complexes of children, children's attitudes and feelings about sex will have a very serious impact in the future.
Most of the later psychologists opposed Freud's claim because it was too metaphysical and lacked scientific evidence.
But later the study of homosexuality had a profound impact. Because a large number of sociological surveys have found that most homosexuals experienced a bad parental role demonstration during this period.
At the same time, after experiencing the early childhood of 1-3 years old, children in this period have taken shape in their exploration of the world. After the age of 3-6, they begin to develop a sense of autonomous choice. For example, at the age of 1-3, most of them do not know which clothes look good, or which kind of clothes they like, and their own aesthetic hobbies have not yet been established. After arriving, they gradually developed a sense of choice and began to have preferences.
The main task of children's psychological growth during this period is to acquire the ability to choose and the consciousness of independence. If children are free to choose activities that are meaningful to them, they can develop positive attitudes towards themselves and actively engage in those activities.
If parents do not allow children to make their own decisions, their subconscious will be hostile to their parents, but this hostility conflicts with the love for their parents, so the child's heart has a sense of guilt and guilt, and then they become afraid when they make decisions. In the future, you may develop the habit of not taking the initiative to take action, relying on others to make choices for yourself, and lacking the courage to make decisions in doing things.
Of course, parents can not let the child make unlimited freedom to choose at this time, but should use a friendly attitude to guide the child to choose in the right direction, rather than rudely preventing them from making a choice.
The above are the characteristics of the psychological development stage of 0-6-year-old children, and how to cultivate a healthy psychological growth process. In the next issue, I will continue to introduce the psychological growth characteristics of school-age children and adolescent children, as well as the psychological characteristics of adults and the elderly, if you want to understand the psychological knowledge I share, please pay attention to and collect me, I will share high-quality psychological knowledge with you without reservation. Thank you!