Some time ago I wrote an article and received a lot of messages like the following in the background:
A small problem of cultivating children to eat independently, but digging into the contradiction of intergenerational parenting, makes people sigh.
I remember watching a speech by Professor Shen Yifei of Fudan University talking about her own parenting problems before, and helplessly talking about the current situation at home:
"I'm a parenting expert, but my son is still being fed by my mom when he's 9 years old!"
It turned out that even the female professor of Gaozhi of Fudan University was so helpless in the face of the problem of generational parenting conflicts that we ordinary mothers could not get around in our daily lives.
When you and your mother-in-law or mother-in-law in your daily life, because the concept of having children is contrary to each other, what is the real best solution?
Who does the baby listen to?
When the child is 9 years old, he still needs to be fed by his parents, which is a strange and funny thing for most mothers, including me.
A 9-year-old child, at least in the third grade of elementary school, is the age of taking the money for the New Year and may be calling friends to buy snacks in the small shop in front of the school.
In the speech, Professor Shen Yifei roughly described the causes and consequences of "Grandma Feeding":
Because of the arduous task of taking the baby, Professor Shen, as a working mother, still asked his own mother for help and asked the old man to come and help him build a handle, one of the things is the problem of managing the child's meal.
Young parents have their own set of parenting methods, the elderly eat a lot of "salt", once they take over the banner of helping to bring their babies, they begin to put their own set of rules into action.
Professor Shen's mother insists on feeding the child every meal, no matter how much the child eats or how little, before the child is ready to end the action of eating, she must personally feed two bites.
This became her mechanical process with the baby, and it also changed the whole habit of the child.
So even if she is already a professor at a TOP university in China and a parenting expert who has been "stamped" outside, Shen Yifei can only face the embarrassing and helpless thing that her 9-year-old child has to be fed by her grandmother.
In fact, I think that in the final analysis, it is still in the matter of raising a baby, two generations are competing for the right to speak, and they want to sort out the point of "who listens to the baby".
Don't feel that this issue of tenure is not controversial, in reality, it is a life war.
In real life, it is not a sentence of "mother is superman" can be completely done, most mothers are just ordinary people, not to mention working mothers, some children's noisy degree, full-time mothers may not be able to get it.
In such a situation, asking for help from the previous generation is the most suitable and helpless choice.
But we need to know that whether it is a grandmother or a grandmother, they come to help us with the baby because of love, neither obligation nor duty.
We have no right to demand that they do what we ask them to do.
Moreover, in the final analysis, parenting is still an "empiricist" affair in the eyes of many people, and the experience of people who come over will automatically give people confidence.
In practice, Grandma and Grandma naturally feel that they have enough experience, at least successfully raised a child, more confident than young mothers.
A person who feels that he is experienced and confident will naturally act according to his own routine, and if he has a strong personality, he will ask himself to make decisions.
I have a friend who, every time we meet and chat, I can't help but pour bitter water on my mother-in-law's "desire to control" raising a baby.
From the time she gave birth to the second treasure as a confinement, her mother-in-law volunteered to take care of her, and she felt very touched at first, afraid of working hard for the old man.
As a result, after the mother-in-law arrived home, she looked like a "commander".
First of all, she thought that giving the child diapers would make the child uncomfortable and "red ass", and strongly requested that the baby be given back the diaper, and after being rejected, the couple was counted down.
Seeing their 3-year-old Dabao sitting at the exclusive small table to eat, he was dissatisfied for a while, thinking that the couple was lazy, and if they didn't feed the children, the children wouldn't grow up if they didn't eat enough.
The couple was tired of coping, sometimes it was really noisy, but it was with her to tossing, and the result was that in the end, the mother-in-law brought Dabao to eat and open her mouth to stretch out her hands, and the second treasure was also inseparable from people for a moment.
In the end, the friend and her husband really couldn't stand it, and invited their mother-in-law back to their hometown after 6 months of the second treasure, and no matter how hard they worked, they decided to carry it by themselves.
"I think it's just like the ancient war, suddenly two great generals came to command, you disobey me, I don't obey you, in the end there is only the result of losing the battle!"
Therefore, when young mothers need to compete with their elders for the right to "raise a baby to listen to", then the original baby raising help has become resistance.
Don't think of alternate parenting as a flood beast
Since there are so many hidden dangers and problems in intergenerational parenting, should we simply stop letting the elders participate in parenting?
The ideal is very full, the reality is very bone.
Of course, there are many young mothers with strong parenting skills or families with very good financial resources who can handle it on their own, but the truth is that most ordinary families are still out of reach.
The need for grandma and grandma to help raise a baby is an objective need, not an unreasonable behavior.
In my opinion, generational parenting is never a flood beast, as long as we can find the problems and solve them.
Responsibility and trust are the foundations that need to be built in intergenerational parenting.
When we raise children with our elders, contradictions often arise in the unclear distribution of rights and responsibilities and the lack of trust.
When you put all kinds of child-rearing chores into the hands of your elders, and at the same time ask them to keep your mind in sync and execute exactly according to your ideas, contradictions arise.
I often hear many new mothers talk about conflicts with their mothers-in-law or mothers-in-law when they bring their babies, such as making complementary foods for their babies, while asking their elders to do the whole process, while also thinking that what they do is "not scientific enough".
The elders used the old experience to refute a few words, and they immediately had to move out the "instructions" in so-and-so's parenting book to argue for a right or wrong.
As soon as these words came out, the elders held their breath in their hearts, turned their heads and threw away a sentence, "Then you will do it yourself."
Since you want your elders to help you complete this matter and put the responsibility on the other party, then the decision should also be given to the other party.
No one can speak to you calmly when they have taken on some kind of responsibility but have not been given the corresponding power.
Just like the problem of making complementary foods mentioned earlier, or you just let the elders buy or process any part of the ingredients, and most of the work is done by yourself;
Either communicate some basic principles with the elders in advance (to match meat and vegetables without seasonings, etc.), and let the elders handle it with full authority.
Rights and responsibilities are indispensable, especially in the process of co-parenting, and they are also the switches of most contradictions.
Speaking of the issue of trust, Professor Shen Yifei also talked about a problem of trust between himself and his mother-in-law in his speech.
Professor Shen's mother-in-law used to be a "midwife" and had a lot of experience in child-rearing, but Professor Shen felt that many of the practices were old-fashioned superstitions with no scientific basis and could not be used casually on children.
When she gave birth to a child, her mother-in-law said that she would "bundle candles" for the child — wrap the newborn child in swaddling or cloth to prevent it from moving.
Professor Shen felt that this is the old way, not allowing children to move freely will affect growth and development, the couple resolutely do not believe in the experience of the mother-in-law, refuse to give the child "bundle candle pack", the mother-in-law is very sad.
As a result, when Professor Shen gave birth to a second child at the no. 1 maternity hospital in the United States, he got a scientific explanation from the doctor about a similar "bundle of candles".
It turns out that the child was just born, suddenly faced with a sudden change in the environment, unable to adapt quickly, it is easy to cry because of lack of security.
The purpose of "bundling candle packs" for children is to simulate the baby's physical sensation in the mother's womb, so that the child can slowly adapt to changes in the surrounding environment.
It can be said that because we always feel that we are highly educated, we have a natural sense of superiority and distrust of some of the experience and knowledge of the elderly, resulting in a gap in communication.
Give the elders more trust, less blind confidence in themselves, if the uncertain situation is confirmed by querying authoritative information and then effective communication, you can also solve unnecessary quarrels and injuries.
Written at the end ·
Every family has a difficult scripture, and generational parenting may be the one that is sometimes warm and sometimes helpless.
When we respect the efforts and value of our elders in the process of childcare, and entrust them with the responsibility of childcare helpers, we can also give them the same power and trust.
I think there will be far fewer contradictions in intergenerational parenting than there are now.