How to help children liberate themselves from negative emotions? | parents

Now many parents pay more and more attention to scientific parenting, on the one hand, they hope that their children will grow up healthy and happy under their careful company, on the other hand, they want their children to become a future talent with core competitiveness through various skills training.

However, parents can easily be unbalanced in the process of raising children, and if they are not careful, they will overprotect their children, resulting in children panicking when they encounter problems in life.

As a parent, allowing children to fail, encouraging children to do their best in the face of setbacks, and cultivating children's ability to resist setbacks. The harvest from setbacks and failures is also a rare gift for children to grow up.

The author shared today, starting from her own experience, shares with you how to deal with children's negative emotions, and also shares some of her own decompression methods, hoping that everyone can bring inspiration to everyone.

The child's resilience

Not as weak as parents think

In order not to affect their children's learning, many parents will choose to hide or report good news and not worry about many things at home. But in fact, children are stronger than we think, but also more fragile than we think, and where their strength and vulnerability are, it is necessary for every parent to carefully understand and patiently care.

A few days ago I encountered a parent's consultation: after the father of a nine-year-old child was detained, the whole family became a pot of porridge, although the parents hid the truth from the child, but the child began to be emotionally unstable and even refused to go to school, the parents were very distressed: the father's situation, say or not say?

Instead of giving an answer directly, I shared an experience of my own.

At the beginning of this year, my mother died of illness, the family experienced some sad things, let me and my daughter deeply hurt, coupled with my mother's medical treatment owed a lot of money, financial pressure and disillusionment of family affection, let my daughter once disappointed in the world to have a tendency to take a light life, at that time I myself was also in pain and could not walk out, so until the teacher found out that the child was not right, I realized the seriousness of the problem, first pulled myself, and then pulled up my daughter.

First of all, I completely saw it myself: whether I owed foreign debts, only mother and daughter were left, as long as we were still healthy and healthy, other difficulties were really temporary. When I didn't go to my heart and started to do things steadily, my daughter began to get better.

She used to cry all night and all night, saying that she was as happy as a princess in her childhood, thinking that her relatives would always love and that her wealth would not be spent, and now she had no relatives except me, and God was so unfair... Now she will advise me: "Mom, we should take good care of our bodies and work hard, in a country like New Zealand, you have the ability to be kind and strong, we will definitely live a good life." When the time comes, let's go to Dubai, go to the Maldives, and travel around the world! ”

She used to be a very clingy little girl, and every day she felt that I didn't spend enough time with her, but now when I work, she no longer complains that I don't have time to spend with her, but let me pay attention to my body. One day I was so tired of writing that I fell asleep on the computer, she silently put on a cotton coat for me, turned off the lights, ran to the kitchen to do egg fried rice and waited for me to wake up, and at night she put her arms around me and ordered, "Mom, the next time you go to bed, it will be comfortable, I will make you an alarm clock, and make sure that you will not let you waste time." ”

In the past, she was very shy and did not see outsiders, but now she will meet reliable friends with me, because she said that friends are more reliable than relatives at key moments, so it depends on how my friends interact. I started working as a real estate agent, taking customers to see the house on Saturdays and Sundays, and I didn't want to delay my child's art class, if it was before, my daughter would definitely not go to art class or wouldn't let me go out to do things. But now she is actually willing to get up early in the morning, take a book and a mobile phone and sit in the back of the car and follow me and customers outside for most of the day, tired and not complaining, encouraging me.

Before she was a very good face child, often for some small things on the face and I was angry, but the other day the dog bitten the lid of the braised jar she brought with rice, I said to buy her a new one, she actually said that a braised can costs dozens of New Zealand dollars, this lid is just ugly and not unusable, why waste money for face. I really don't want to bring such an ugly cover to the school to make people laugh, she actually rushed with me: "Others love jokes and jokes, why are they so good-looking?" Things are practical and cannot be wasted. "I was moved to tears: a super good-looking child is now so down-to-earth, it's incredible!

So children are really malleable, and they are not as fragile as we think when they face setbacks or changes. On the contrary, if parents can calm down and openly explain to their children the difficulties they are facing, their children may not be so godless, but can learn how to grow up in setbacks.

Develop your child's resilience

Start by accepting negative emotions

In our education from an early age, we encourage perseverance and setbacks, but modern psychology has found that in the initial stage of experiencing setbacks, people with such firm thoughts are often people who recover more slowly. Psychological recovery here does not refer to overcoming the difficult event itself, but from the perspective of long-term happiness in life, the whole event has a comprehensive level of repair on a person's mental health, happiness and intimate relationships.

When my daughter has a setback, I will hold her and ask, "You look so uncomfortable, cry out or punch something." Sometimes she would cry loudly, sometimes she would hesitate slightly: "Isn't it bad that I'm always so vulnerable?" I would tell her: "It's human nature to cry or vent sadly, I don't need you to be strong, I just want you to be healthy." ”

At this time, she will cry and talk, say all kinds of anger, say all kinds of fears, say all kinds of injustices... And this kind of crying and saying is actually the first step in the child's self-healing - she is willing to open her heart, and the toxin begins to drain outwards instead of inwards.

At this stage, parents must be cautious about using words to persuade. Because when people are in negative emotions, any persuasion based on reason is useless, and will only stimulate deeper anger and estrangement from parents.

People's energy is limited, the child is tired of venting, the toxin is emptied, the natural emotional brain will be closed, at this time the rational brain will begin to work, and we will be able to carry out the next step of guidance: we and the child together to experience "Where are we now?" "Include your own emotions, including the progress of the event. At this time, do not step into the "how do we climb out of the predicament" step in advance, if you don't even know where you are, how can you find the best path to the correct destination?

To be honest, it is annoying for children to cry and put aside, but if you think about it from another angle: we are helping children climb up the ladder of anger, can we make ourselves a little relieved?

Again, the saying goes: things are an objective reality, and how to look at the problem is our subjective choice.

We need to keep in mind that the process of climbing from immature negative behavior to the best stage is long, and parents must understand that for children or adults, they can only climb one step at a time, and do not try to take shortcuts to achieve it, that will only make things worse.

Before I touched this ladder chart, I would be very mad when I saw a child crying. Because you don't know how long she's going to make trouble or how far she's going to get into trouble. Since having this negative emotional ladder in her mind, her heart has been much more solid, and observing her performance can predict whether this crying will last for half an hour or three minutes.

Parents who have psychological preparation are naturally as stable as Tarzan, and this stable emotion actually gives the child a strong psychological hint: "I am here with you, this is not a big deal." This psychological cue tends to greatly accelerate the child's climbing the ladder and allow the child to get out of the negative emotions as soon as possible.

And once you get out of the negative emotions and the rational brain turns on the thinking mode, it is time for you and your child to discuss how to find the best solution to the current dilemma.

When a child encounters setbacks

It's a good time to teach

When the child comes out of the negative emotions and the rational brain turns on the thinking mode, the parent can begin to discuss solutions with the child.

Before discussing the plan, parents themselves may wish to think about four questions:

What is my current status?

How do I see the problem at hand?

What is the essence of the problem?

What are my current resources? What are the strengths? What can be replaced by the missing part?

These four questions can provide a reference for you to deal with your child's negative emotions.

Here's a simple example:

Xiaoming always bullied Xiaohong, Xiaohong almost didn't want to go to school for a long time, and one day after being beaten by Xiaoming, he went home indignantly and said: "Xiaoming is such a nasty garbage, how not to die!" As long as he lives I won't go to school! How do parents deal with this? Is it to reprimand children not to viciously curse classmates? Or do you want to persuade your children not to worry about concentrating on learning every day? Or do you let the child fight back tit-for-tat?

None of the above methods may cause some unhealthy psychological effects. My suggested method is as follows:

Step 1: Identify with the child's negative emotions at this moment, do not evaluate right or wrong or provide solutions, just hold the child and touch it, and at the same time should be with her: "How did Xiaoming bully my child like this?" It's annoying enough. I repeated the words "hate" that the child uses to express emotions, so that the child feels unconditionally supported and cared for by the parents, and when the child feels that the parents are sitting on the same bench as her, they can gain a sense of security and be willing to open their hearts to tell you all the facts.

Step 2: When the child feels safe, he will vent in various ways, saying a lot of surprising curse words and even destructive actions. At this time, as long as parents ensure that the child itself is safe, they may wish to let the child vent, and the more thoroughly they vent into the rational link, the smoother it will be. Don't evaluate, don't stop, just make sure your child is safe.

My child once kicked a hole in the wall in an extreme emotional situation, and I was not angry at all, but held her foot for the first time and asked, "Does it hurt?" Didn't hurt yourself? ”

She put her arms around me and cried bitterly, telling me about all the unfair treatment she had received, even seven or eight years ago, and began to apologize to me for her rude behavior.

She never did anything like that, even when she was angry, and she told me that every time she went crazy, she remembered "can't let my mother worry."

The third step: the child vented enough, will enter the tired vacuum period, at this time do not rush to ask the child what to think, do not rush to instill the correct concept of parents, first meet the child's physical needs as a creature: give water to drink (according to physiological research, at this time to provide some ice sweet drink will accelerate the child into a pleasant and peaceful period), to the food, to the hug touch (it is best to give the child some furry warm fabric, evoking the sense of security required by human biological instincts), so that the child can slowly recover in safety and intimacy.

Step 4: After the child feels safe, without parental prompts, he will begin to share the solution to the problem with the parents, some methods will be extremely unreliable or even violent, but the parents should use the evaluation carefully, and only use the open question and answer to continue to guide the child to solve the details of the problem. This is the best time to teach children the exchange of resources —take what I have, exchange what I want.

Step five: After the above analysis, the child has basically been guided by the parents on the correct way to solve the difficulties, at this time the parents and children jointly formulate and implement the plan, so that the practical plan to ensure that the child can step by step according to their own plan to walk on the road to overcome difficulties!

After the above five steps, in fact, the difficulty itself has been basically solved, but solving the difficulty is not the goal. The ultimate goal is what we and our children have learned from difficulties and whether they have grown as a result.

Therefore, when children encounter setbacks or make mistakes, it is actually the best time to learn, which we call "a good moment to teach". At this moment, the most important thing for parents to remember is "quick praise, slow criticism". Allowing children to "learn from mistakes" is also a key part of cultivating emotional intelligence and reverse quotient.

Article author | Lion warm

Article source | Juvenile Business School WeChat public account

WeChat Editor | Song Jiaxin