Tree Hole Asks:
I was always criticizing my children from morning to night, and I couldn't stand myself. I am a person with a very strong sense of happiness, my career and family are very smooth, but there are a lot of problems in my children. I refuse to get up and wear clothes, refuse to take off my pants when I get home, don't want to take them off when it's hot, and don't wear them when I'm cold. I will nag about this kind of small thing countless times a day, but even so, it takes two hours for children to wash up every day, and it takes an hour to keep urging; learning is not hard, and playing other things without watching for a while. These small things are really annoying from morning to night, and they have not changed for several years. I want to endure and can't help it, what should I do?
One Point Psychological Expert Tuan Shuhui (Practical Psychological Counselor, Founder of Shuhui Psychology):
In order to help your child get rid of these bad habits, you have tried a lot and used many methods in the past few years, but the effect has not been ideal. Why? Although there are many methods, but your pattern of problem solving is the same - repeated urging, preaching, why did you choose such a model to solve the problem? Because you see the problems presented by the child as his personal problems.
You might ask, "My child does have some problems right now, so why should I turn a blind eye?" "If we just stare at the child, this is indeed his personal problem, but if you look at it from the perspective of parent-child relationship, the child's problems become his ability, and the real problem actually lies in your relationship with the child."
It can be understood that your child is to be called four or five times every morning to get up, that is, to spend an hour or two a day washing, facing learning is the need for you to stare to complete, these are the skills of the child and you get along, for several years as a day, he insists on using these skills to establish a relationship with you, firmly occupy you, and even make you feel very frustrated.
Only by seeing your child's problems as his ability can you be more aware. You might be thinking, "Why can't you help but urge him?" Why can't you involuntarily criticize him? "You will find that your relationship with your child has always been in a non-virtuous circle.
For you, what is important now is not to change the child, but to be aware of how you are entangled with the child. If you are interested in this problem, then we have basically the possibility of solving this problem from a psychological point of view. For a child's growth, the problems he presents are initially just an attempt, but they are not intended to continue like this.
You mentioned that you are a person with a "strong sense of happiness", that your "career and family are very smooth", and that the problems are all in the children. I feel that your words do not seem to be finished, try to help you complete: "It is the child that makes me very worried, there are all kinds of problems in the body..." If this is the case, there is a very important problem that needs to be perceived, you regard the child's problem as your "enemy", you think that the child is destroying your sense of happiness and comfort.
If you think about it, is your sense of well-being really strong? Are you too sensitive to your sense of happiness and comfort, as long as the child procrastinates you feel that you are unhappy, so that the boundary between you and the child becomes blurred. If you are indeed a person with a strong sense of happiness, you will not be so eager to urge your child's problems, especially when the problems have just emerged, you should have realized that the child needs to have a process of experience. But you reject the child's experience, so the child will complete his own experience in various ways, and you may have been entangled in this for several years.
So the next thing you need to do is change your mindset, change the way you get along with your children.
Change can start with small problems. For example, if you buy an alarm clock that your child likes and let him set a wake-up time by himself, you must make an agreement with yourself in your heart: for the next week or two weeks, you will wake him up no more than three times a day. The advantage of this is that part of the autonomy is given to the child, and it is not completely withdrawn, so that the child has a process of adaptation. After a week or two weeks, the number of times you call him can be reduced to two times, once, and finally he can get up on time without you calling, and this process is to allow the problem to exist temporarily and solve the problem with the child.
The child refuses to change into house clothes when he comes home, you can consult with him, clean up a place that is large enough, if he wants to leave this place, ask him to change into the house clothes himself, which not only respects the child's ideas, but also invites the child to learn to respect you as you respect him. When you and your child respect each other, communication will become smoother and smoother, and he doesn't always have to confront you with similar questions.
Whether these methods are useful depends on whether you are willing to understand the problems presented by your child from the perspective of relationships, and whether you are willing to untie your "happiness" and "comfort" from your child's problems. If you look at your child's problems as his "skill", you will be keenly aware of the problems in your relationship. Once the child is understood this way by you, he himself will not let these problems recur.
Author Shuhui: Practical psychological counselor and founder of Shuhui Psychology
WeChat public number: Shuhui Psychological Station