Author: Sister Wucai
The parenting section of our public account has a type of message that appears very frequently:
A momentary impulse to yell at the child/hit the child, and now regret it, how can I control my emotions?
Even my friends around me often have such troubles, every time I want to talk to my children well, the result is always out of control, as an adult there is a deep sense of frustration.
In the face of the child's frightened and resentful eyes, he felt even more remorseful.
"I don't feel like a good mom," many people say in frustration.
Everyone hoped that I could give some advice, preferably some panacea, to help them suppress the fire at a critical moment.
Recently, someone in the readership has raised this question again, and I think I should write about it.
I don't have a panacea for a second to lower fire, but this thing is not insoluble.
At least I can help you get your mind through it and see if you can find a solution.
When it comes to scolding children, many people have a specific scene in their minds:
The child's homework is full of mistakes / Addicted to games and teachings over and over again / Late at night the demon refuses to sleep / Doing the wrong thing will only be cunning / Let him go east to the west / Say that he has to resist two sentences...
The conclusion is that the child is too bearish, and it is good to say that it does not listen at all, and the patience of the adult is exhausted before it finally explodes.
Is this really the case?
Is the parent-child war really just a parent-child war?
If we push the camera farther and farther away, the full story we see is likely to look like this:
The alarm bell rings in the morning, because you who have not slept well all night struggle to get up, and fight like a race against the clock to send your children to school and then rush to work;
Recent projects have not progressed smoothly, and the boss's face is not very good-looking;
Party A's father nitpicks, you laugh and communicate repeatedly, dry mouth;
Busy to miss the meal, hungry dizzy, hurriedly pull two mouthfuls of takeaway and continue to work;
Rush to pick up the child after work, leave the overtime colleague to have a word, you pretend not to hear, carry the computer and run away;
When you take the elevator downstairs, you look in the mirror as usual, and find that the eye bags are becoming more and more obvious, and the wrinkles seem to be deeper;
After picking up the child and returning home, you are a little annoyed to see the messy room, and you don't have time to clean up what to do;
Want to order a takeaway to save some things, but in the end do not trust the child to eat, and finally you still cook for the child to make dinner;
While the child is writing homework, the work group is flashing non-stop, you have two ends to cope, and you are tired;
You want to push the work at hand, can no longer delay, at this time the computer inexplicably began to flash back, you want to call the science and engineering man at home to see, but he today with the customer to eat do not know what time to come back;
The class group began to clock in, you looked at the bear child who was grinding and chirping at home, and told yourself to be patient and patient;
You open the circle of friends to breathe a breath, glimpse a few sunbathing babies, envy "other people's children" for a second, and then silently close the circle of friends;
It is so easy to wait for the child to finish the homework, a check is wrong, you patiently explain, the child understands, and then does the wrong thing, you can't help but reprimand two sentences, the child cries;
Seeing the child crying you are upset, the time is not early, the child is sleepy, you are also sleepy, but the matter is not over;
At this time, the work group flashed again, and the boss personally urged the work;
You suddenly want to die in your heart.
But the child is still making trouble.
So you break down and roar like a vicious-looking lion.
You think you're driven crazy by your kids.
You think the crux of the problem is your lack of patience with education.
You think that as long as you learn to "control your emotions", you will have a better parent-child relationship and a better life.
However, when such a complete story is put in front of us, the truth has actually surfaced.
Our emotional stress is not caused by someone at all, but accumulates in the bits and pieces of daily life, and the bear child is only the last straw that crushes us.
We always explode in front of our children, and it's only because they're the weakest.
When bosses, customers, colleagues, and partners create pressure for us, we usually do not easily attack, but choose to tolerate, ignore, forgive, more is better than less.
When work and life itself create all kinds of unhappiness for us, we can only accept it silently, because this is "bad luck", after all, we can't argue with God, can't we?
But the negative energy does not disappear out of thin air, but continues to accumulate until we find the exit of the bear child.
Weak and small they end up taking on all our emotions.
Every time you yell at a child and regret it, it is not strictly an educational problem, or even a parent-child problem, it is essentially a psychological problem that requires our introspection.
Knowing ourselves, facing up to stress, and stripping away all the factors that affect our emotions are the prerequisites for solving this problem.
Let's start by summarizing all the possible factors:
1
Physiological factors
Whenever a parent tells me that she is grumpy and easy to lose control in front of her children, usually the first thing I ask is:
Are you getting enough sleep?
If a person doesn't sleep well for three consecutive days, it's a walking bag of explosives, with an impatient face that can ignite at any moment.
It has nothing to do with personality cultivation and learning.
Especially for mothers, the experience of caring for newborns is likely to have completely changed their sleep patterns, and any slight noise will wake them up and make it difficult to fall asleep again.
However, sleep problems are often overlooked, and many people, when they blame themselves for "I'm not a good mother", do not think about how long they have not slept well.
At the same time, the physiological effects of some chronic diseases will also be directly projected onto the psychology.
One of the most intuitive examples is allergies.
Whether in China or Germany, I have some friends with allergies, and when it comes to the pollen season, they are full of snot and loveless, sneezing constantly during the day and unable to breathe at night.
Continuous physical pain can subtly affect a person's state of mind, and moodiness can only be said to be normal.
2
Time pressure
There is a Word Zeitstress in German, which literally translates to time pressure, which is the pressure that has the most extensive impact on our moods and behaviors.
I have lived in different cities in Germany, and whenever a friend in China tells me that "the quality of Germans is high", I laugh and don't say anything.
If you have a lot of time every day, of course, you can walk on the road and nod and smile at everyone, let others check out first when queuing in the supermarket, the bus people may wish to wait a few more shifts, the red light is on, even if there is no car, obediently wait...
As long as there is no time pressure, you can carry out the elegance to the end.
Living in a small German city is like this, sometimes two cars meet in a narrow road can be humble for half a day, and the drivers can't stop gesturing to each other to thank each other.
But when you go to a central city like Munich to see, the car is driving more than one wild, and when the traffic jam is blocked, the horn of the horn is rolled down and the car window is rolled down and scolded the street.
Is it because the quality of people in big cities is lower? No, it's because they're in a hurry!
The pressure of time can force people from gentlemen to angry roads in minutes, and of course, they can also force people from loving mothers to shrews.
Work to punch in, school is afraid of being late, interest classes to pick up, online classes to pinch the table, work has a deadline, even sleep is full of urgency, afraid that the child sleeps too late to affect the development, but also afraid that they can no longer sleep after a little.
When we shout to our children to hurry up, and feel intolerable and helpless to their grinding and rubbing, the anger in our hearts rises.
It's anger at being a slave to time, and it's anger at losing control of life.
3
Uncertainties
My daughter has a German teacher with a four-word mantra that is simple and crude and unique:
"I hate technology!"
Whenever a computer or projector made a mistake and the carefully prepared courseware could not be used properly, she would explode in place and shout hysterically.
At this time, even if the student just bent down to pick up a pen, he would be criticized by her, and the atmosphere was terrifying.
I have to say that while various high-tech bring convenience to our lives, it also brings more uncertainties and more emotional bursts.
The printer suddenly can't be connected, important files can't be typed; the network suddenly goes out of condition, important emails can't be sent; online banking suddenly collapses, and there are several accounts that are urgent to turn; the system suddenly gets stuck, and half of the online classes can no longer enter the classroom...
There are code words like me, looking at the code is about to finish, suddenly in front of the eyes of a black, the computer crashed...
Madness is less than a second.
In addition, there are many bugs randomly generated in our daily lives, the so-called "water retrograde":
The courier was lost, the takeaway delivery was late, the subway did not catch up, the store closed...
It's all small things, it's not enough to hang on to your teeth, but don't underestimate the loss they cause to our emotions.
Life is already so difficult, how can it withstand all kinds of chaos?!
When we yell at our children, these seemingly unrelated little things are invisible pushers behind the scenes.
There is a type of anger called "anger transfer."
4
Interpersonal stress
In my observation, Eastern-style relationships are more likely to bring stress.
Because our interpersonal relationships are mainly "vertical", the elderly and the young are orderly, and there is a difference between respect and inferiority.
In the workplace, especially within the system, there is a lack of equality and respect for the way superiors and subordinates get along, and the inferior party is often forced to bear the emotional garbage of the upper party;
In the family, the elders generally interfere too much with the lives of the younger generations, lack a sense of boundaries, and the younger generations are trapped by the word "filial piety" and often need to suppress their emotions.
As a result, many ordinary adults have to be educated by leaders in the workplace, and they must be educated by their parents and elders at home, and there is nowhere to eliminate negative emotions, and finally they can only pour out to children who are at the bottom of the vertical relationship.
Ironically, this bullying pour is also often referred to as "education."
When this vertical relationship is passed down from generation to generation, the emotional stress that comes with it is naturally passed on from generation to generation.
5
Deep anxiety
Deep within us, there are many anxieties that are subject to the environment.
The pressure of survival and competition brought about by the inner volume often puts us in a state of stress and does not dare to slacken off.
The arrival of the epidemic and the outbreak of war have further undermined our sense of security and shaken our worldview.
Economic downturn, energy shortages, inflation... A series of real-world problems overwhelmed us.
Will the world be better?
Where will our lives go?
How can our children be happy?
In addition to these, as middle-aged people, we must also face our increasingly visible aging, and the increasingly common death around us.
Overlapping anxieties are like shadows hanging over our hearts, and finally inevitably projected onto the issue of parenting, deepening educational anxiety.
We are all adults who have been worn away by life, working diligently, treating people with humility and courtesy, and wearing good armor and masks as soon as we go out, which is our basic cultivation as adults.
Our exhaustion has nowhere to go, and our grievances have to be carried by ourselves.
In the midst of the trivialities and coldness of reality, negative emotions are like snowflakes falling silently.
And our children are often unfortunate enough to witness the final avalanche.
After yelling at the child, I regret it, am I still a good mother?
If your heart is suffering, then I want to hug you and tell you the answer is yes.
People who are able to realize problems and try to solve them are sober and remarkable.
Here, I would like to provide some solution ideas for everyone as a reference:
Use every emotional outburst as a signal for help.
There is no right or wrong in itself, and it is a true reflection of our own state.
Accepting them, analyzing them, and reading their call for help helps us relax and adjust ourselves as quickly as possible.
Is there something wrong with the body? The pace of life is too fast and overloaded? Too much bad luck lately? And who has had an unpleasant affair? Or is there too much anxiety in your heart?
Even if these problems may not be solved immediately, at least we have a direction to adjust.
Make up for a good night's sleep, make more reasonable plans for time, complain about troubles, and visit and eat with friends, all of which can help us return to the blood in time and resurrect in situ.
There are no "emotionally stable" people in this world, only people who can quickly self-regulate!
Similarly, once we think this through, we can accept the emotional storm in our intimate relationships.
We will no longer blindly complain about the "grumpiness" of our partners, complain about the children's "unreasonable trouble", and complain that the parents are "unreasonable", but will analyze the "complete story" behind them as we analyze ourselves.
For example, behind the child's crying, it is likely that he was criticized by the teacher at school, ridiculed by his classmates, could not understand self-doubt in class, and did not take the exam well to hit confidence...
Many inconspicuous little things piled up and weighed heavily on their hearts.
And one or two of our accusations may be the last straw that crushed them.
Their crying is also a signal to us for help.
Accept them, understand them, help them, and the problem will be solved.
Find an outlet for emotional venting and draw borders.
Negative emotions will not disappear for no reason, and they will need to be "discharged" to a certain extent, what should I do at this time?
The human instinct is to "find a soft persimmon to pinch" and bully an object that will not resist.
But in intimate relationships, the object that does not resist is often the person who loves us the most, either a parent who is infinitely tolerant of us, or a child who is infinitely dependent on us.
The elderly and children, their own energy is very weak, our negative emotions they can not only not catch, but also internalized into their own pressure.
Therefore, venting emotions to the elderly and children is a very cruel thing.
My approach to this is that the middle-aged people's affairs are solved within the middle-aged people.
My teammates and I have already reached a tacit understanding in our common life for many years:
Feng Shui takes turns, temper takes turns. You are very inclusive of me, and I am also a lot of you adults.
But to go crazy and to go crazy, we must determine the boundary in advance:
No insults, no parents, no old accounts, no breakups, civilized quarrels, rejection of the Cold War.
I also allow and even encourage children to vent their emotions at home.
When the children were very young, I told them that everyone had a temper and wanted to quarrel when they were angry, but we all had to behave decently and cultured outside, so we all liked to keep the fight and come back to argue.
It doesn't matter, your family is the one who still loves you after arguing with you.
At home, you can be yourself with confidence.
But you must also know that throwing tantrums can hurt people, so you must find a way to minimize the damage, and think clearly about what you can never say and what you can never do.
And, after calming down after each tantrum, don't forget to take the initiative to hug the other person, because she/he shares your bad mood.
Figure out the underlying logic of parenting.
No matter how it is analyzed, the fuse of anger at the child is after all a problem of the child's own behavior.
The reason why children's behavior will eventually trigger our emotions is not unrelated to our deep parenting anxiety.
As far as I can see, this anxiety essentially comes from the superstition of the "standard model" of parenting.
That is to say, the vast majority of people believe that there is a standard for education, as long as they work hard enough and the children work hard enough, then they must be able to meet that standard.
I remember a friend once showed me a form in a domestic parenting book, the date is accurate to the number of days of birth, corresponding to the child's various "should" skills.
She was in a hurry, because the child had been xxx days old and could not open the bottle cap, shouldn't there be any problem?
I laughed as soon as I heard it, a child with sound limbs, why are you worried that she won't open the cap? Will she ever learn to open a bottle cap for the rest of her life?
Maybe you will think that this example is very bloody, but look at how many parents around for the child's literacy, word volume, computing ability is anxious, for the child to write homework procrastination can not be done in one breath in a hurry, for the child to play will not take the initiative to learn anxious...
You'll understand where parenting anxiety really comes from.
Other children can, but my children can't, is it that I don't work hard enough, or is my child not working hard enough?
Is it enough for us to push a little harder and force the child again?
In fact, as long as one sentence can break this anxiety, that is:
Every child is different.
Unfortunately, very few people can truly understand and accept this sentence from the bottom of their hearts.
A friend told me that when she was raising her boss, she was extremely anxious and harsh, always worried that due to her negligence, the boss's growth would be "off track" and miss something important.
But when she had the second eldest, she suddenly became enlightened:
The imaginary "right track" did not exist at all!
Even if it is a child born to the same father and mother, the personality, hobbies, and talents are all very different, let alone other people's children.
Every child has its own rhythm of growth, and the hearts that have been are just blind worries.
As long as we understand this problem, the direction of our education will no longer be to cultivate "standard products", and we will always be troubled by children's "failure to meet standards", but will adjust the goal to:
Let the child be his best look.
Children grow up day by day, progress day by day, mature day by day, and become better and better, that is successful education.
Once individual differences are acknowledged and comparisons are abandoned, most of the anxiety in parenting will disappear.
Develop the parent-child relationship into a "horizontal relationship".
Having lived in Germany for many years, it was clear that their relationships were much easier than ours.
If our relationship between people is mainly vertical, then they are mainly horizontal.
For example, in the workplace, although there is also a distinction between levels and the relationship between leaders and leaders, it is mainly the difference in job responsibilities and cooperation methods, and different positions are equal in personality and mutual respect in communication.
It is almost unheard of for a leader to dictate to his subordinates and flaunt his might.
In the private sphere, including intimate relationships, there is a clear sense of boundaries and mutual independence between people, and it is rare to see one party interfering with the other.
In our parent-child relationship, this "horizontal relationship" can also be borrowed.
We can guide children to the right values, provide them with mature life experience, and provide timely support when they encounter difficulties and need help, but don't forget that they also have private spaces that they don't want us to enter, and don't forget that they and we are equal in personality, not a party that we can manipulate and trample on at will.
One might wonder if this "horizontal relationship" would cause parents to lose their prestige and cause children to disrespect their parents.
I don't think so.
Anyone who wants to gain the respect of others depends on character and ability, not on temper and voice.
If you don't believe it, think of your leaders, the more fierce you are, the more respectful you are?
Exercise, read, travel, and occasionally escape with your children.
The mundane is the source of all troubles.
Mothers who are trapped in chai rice oil and salt all day long, and children who are busy with exams and examinations all day, are most likely to form an incompatible relationship, because their world is too tight.
The most direct way to improve mood is exercise, because exercise secretes dopamine, and dopamine makes people happy, which is equivalent to taking medicine directly.
Reading is also a good medicine for the soul, and the slogan of the famous German bookstore chain Hugendubel is "reading for six minutes a day, the pressure can be reduced by 68%".
I also watched a German tv show about insomnia, which compared all non-drug hypnosis methods, and finally concluded that reading is the best sleep aid.
Putting a book on the pillow and temporarily saying goodbye to the mortal world and hiding in another world before going to bed is the lowest-cost way to repair the body and mind.
If possible, you can also take your kids on a trip to see the bigger world.
Occasionally escaping from a familiar living environment, temporarily forgetting a chicken feather, and cleaning up the emotional garbage thoroughly, travel is a very wise choice.
Friends who have read my old articles must know that Germany is a country with a high incidence of depression (but the suicide rate is very low), and you may not know that Germans are also the most tourist-loving people in the world.
When I first came to Germany, I couldn't understand their travel fanaticism and willingness to spend so much of their savings on vacation.
Later I understood that this is an instinctive self-help.
When you feel that winter is unbearablely long, when you have to fall into a low point and can't see the beauty, you must go out and look for the sun.
The moment you see Sunny Beach, maybe you're saved.
Just as this article was about to be written, I saw a video retweeted in a small group.
A child was scolded by his parents for refusing to take online classes and jumped off the building.
Because the names of the shopping malls and communities involved in the incident are very familiar, the hair children are speculating whether it happened in our hometown.
The mother in the video stumbles out of the building in a shawl and sees the child who has fallen to the ground, crying bitterly and collapsing to the ground.
That miserable and desperate voice was something I had never heard in my life.
I never even knew that people could make such a sound.
Turning off the video, my hand was still shaking.
I don't know how this mom is going to spend the rest of her life.
Perhaps when it becomes the talk of others, it is a tragedy between a "mother who loses her temper and kills a child" and "a child who is psychologically vulnerable and is about to jump off a building after saying two words".
How many people will care about the "complete story" behind this mom and this child?
How many people will think about the unprecedented pressures and challenges that this era brings to each of us?
Inner volume, epidemic situation, lockdown, online class...
Our parents didn't meet it, and our parents didn't.
But when we were parents, we met.
Our child was a child for the first time and unfortunately met.
We can't blame the weaker children, so we can only force ourselves to grow and adapt more quickly.
Just like when an airplane encounters a violent turbulence in the airflow, we must wear an oxygen mask ourselves before we can protect our children.
And this oxygen mask is called "emotional management."