"My expectation of her is not to go to a prestigious school, if she can't cope with all kinds of things in life and study, she will be depressed."
Tang Wenna responded with a short sentence to the current situation of Kochi family "chicken babies" that frequently appear in today's society.
If there is an annual education hot word in recent years, it must be "chicken baby". Tens of millions of school district houses are not blinking, and various tutoring classes are filled every weekend... In short, in order to make their babies win at the starting line, parents are painstaking. For Tang Wenna, who graduated from Cambridge, "it is more important for children to be happy." This idea actually stemmed from an experience of my own.
It's important to learn to be with yourself
In 2002, Tang Wenna went abroad to study education at Lancaster University, "At first, because she wanted to be a teacher, she chose the major of education. In 2007, Tang Wenna, who had finished her master's degree, returned to Dalian, and at first saw in the Dalian overseas talent market that if you want to go to a university as a teacher, your academic qualifications must be a doctorate, and if you go to middle school, the salary of middle school teachers in Dalian at that time was about 3,000 yuan. Faced with various unsatisfactory circumstances, Tang Wenna chose to continue to study for a doctorate in Cambridge, England. "The time I was studying was so smooth that I didn't have to work to earn tuition fees, and I didn't have to think about any life and survival issues."
So much so that after she returned home after graduating with a doctorate, she suddenly entered the tense rhythm of work and life, and at the same time began a married life, with five or six people living under one roof. "I lived alone in a foreign country for 17 years, and after returning to China, my living habits and eating habits were different, and I had to deal with various family problems, and my emotions could not be dealt with correctly. So after returning home, I experienced a short period of depression. ”
Tang Wenna said that the biggest pain at that time was to say that she didn't want to do anything, she wasn't interested in anything, she wanted to sleep at work, she didn't want to tell anyone around her about any problems, she felt that no one could help her, she didn't have much interest in the child when she returned home, she didn't want to open herself to a psychologist, she ate Prozac, and also took a lot of conditioning drugs, but none of them had any effect.
Later, it was by chance that she came into contact with the course of positive discipline, like a good medicine injected into Tang Wenna's life, she suddenly realized that these emotions were all given to herself, and women can only manage their lives well if they manage themselves. "This course taught me how to communicate and express myself with my child, and I was suddenly grateful that I had this child and that she healed me."
Parenting begins with self-rearing
The process of raising a child is actually a process of healing oneself.
"It's important to adjust yourself." Tang Wenna said, "Raising a child is bound to sacrifice some personal time, but at the same time it also brings you a lot of happiness that can't be brought about by things, and children can teach you a lot and make you a better version of yourself." ”
How to do both scientific parenting and enrich herself, Tang Wenna gave such insights: for example, when telling children about picture books before going to bed, mothers can paste a mask; when mothers want to do nail art, they can take their children with them, she can go next to online classes, reading books, drawing, each can do what they want to do, and do not interfere with each other.
At the same time, I also learned to respect the child's expression of ideas. Once, the child came home to Tang Wenna and said, "Mom, I signed up for a musical at school today. Tang Wenna was surprised: the child did not come to ask his mother's opinion first, but made his own choices and decisions. This is very similar to her experience when she was a child, "At that time, the school asked us to sign up for the book club, and my first reaction was to go home first and ask my mother if she could report, but when I returned to school the next day, the registration was closed, because I had to go home first to consult the parents, and I missed a very valuable opportunity." ”
And one of the results of this is that the child must ask the parents for advice in everything, and the parents will also participate in the child's decision-making in everything, which is actually an unhealthy dependency. And the child's practice, let Tang Wenna is very surprised, at the same time she is also very pleased, the child already has the idea of making their own decisions.
Image source: Visual China
In terms of relationship maintenance, Tang Wenna, who is now a single mother, has not cut off the connection between the child and the father. "I think all the concerns of single mothers may be in the child's emotions, whether the child will lack love, whether the child will be insecure." And this sense of security, in fact, comes from both parents to give, without either party, the child can not feel the full love.
"I have never said anything bad about her father in front of the child, so the child will not have this feeling that I want to strip them away, and I don't think the relationship with the child's father is good or bad, I don't think it should be passed on to the child, because his love for the child is a lot, and this is crucial to the child's sense of security." And single mothers are easy to pass on anxiety in front of their children, I divorced my father, he doesn't love me anymore, in fact, there is no need to amplify in front of the children to say. ”
"Generational parenting" is a problem? Developing reliable teammates is key
In the process of raising a baby with a baby, Tang Wenna also encountered the problem of "generation-skipping parenting".
Someone once asked Tang Wenna: work is so busy, how can we achieve high-quality companionship? Tang Wenna replied after thinking about it: It is to cultivate the "pig teammates" at home into "elite troops". Previously, in the process of sharing a baby with my grandmother, there were often problems such as discord in educational concepts, for example, if the child did not listen to her grandmother's words today, she would say: "If you disobey again, I will put you in a small black house." When hearing this, Tang Wenna will seriously explain to her grandmother: "If the young children threaten in this way, the result for the children is super insecure, and she will feel that the grandmother does not want me." ”
At first, the child's grandfather would also feel that Tang Wenna let the child learn too many lessons, "Tired, such a little child, as for?" Tang Wenna did not respond too much to her grandfather's ideas, but felt that it was more convincing to talk about the results, and now that her granddaughter is proficient in piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, and has also received an offer from Cambridge Primary School, Grandpa will now think that her granddaughter is very good.
Tang Wenna began to apply for the "admission ticket" of Cambridge Primary School when the child was in kindergarten, one is because the child has consciously exercised her English listening since she was very young, so there is no problem with listening and speaking, comprehension; second, the school will examine the background of the family, Tang Wenna herself graduated from Cambridge University with a doctorate in education, the strength naturally does not need to be repeated, "she has to thank herself for having a Cambridge graduated mother"; the third is to have an authoritative and powerful letter of recommendation." At that time, I went to a very authoritative professor I knew during my studies, because he met with the child, and when we were chatting, the child was quietly drawing on the side, which left a good impression on the professor. ”
Although now due to the epidemic, the plan to study abroad has been temporarily shelved, but the time spent with the elderly at home has become more, Tang Wenna frankly said that the era of parenting is still stuck in the state of eating and wearing warm, and now more emphasis on scientific parenting, so it is inevitable that there will be differences in parenting in different generations, and what is important is how to adjust and change the parenting concept of their "teammates".
The life problems faced by 30+ women have long been answered
Last year's explosive "Thirty Only" and "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" are emphasizing that 30+ women have more choices in addition to family and children, which has suddenly aroused the resonance of many mothers, "Many people died at the age of 30, once they passed this age, they just became their own shadows, and the rest of their lives after that were spent in imitation of themselves, day after day." A quote from Romain Rowland breaks through the status quo of 30-year-old women.
Moms in their 30+ face the tricky question of how to balance family, career and themselves. 30 years old is a watershed for women, the career rise period and the strong needs of young children, and the gradual loss of self in contrast, in the end should choose which has become the most distressing problem for women, on the one hand, do not want to give up the career, on the one hand do not want to miss the period when children need the most parental company, on the other hand, they want to improve themselves.
For Tang Wenna, this problem is particularly significant: when the child was three years old, she worked in the Internet factory, it was almost impossible to leave work before 12 o'clock, every day when she returned home, the child was already asleep, the child was not awake and had to leave for work, and there was very little time to accompany the child, "So the choice of a priority in the stage is very important for 30+ women, especially I learned the knowledge of pedagogy, I know that the development process of children 0 to 6 is irreversible, if I choose a high-paying job, But without the company of the child, then my heart will be very unreliable. So at this time I chose to retire to take care of her and help her develop a good habit and character. ”
But there are also women who have started to work as full-time mothers after giving up their careers and returning to their families, and Tang Wenna has put forward an important point: she does not approve of mothers taking their babies full-time. "Although taking care of children is a very laborious and labor-intensive thing, if you are 24 hours a day and you only have children in your eyes, both the children and the husband will have great anxiety." Even if you do some part-time work at home, it is a good choice. It's never too late to start over at any time, like I'm running 4 now, and then I start to start a business, in fact, life can set sail again, but the child can't go back to before the age of 6, this may be a balanced decision I made in the first place. ”
At nearly 40 years old, Tang Wenna chose to set off again, and also chose a direction that she would not have chosen before - entrepreneurship. In her view, this is both an adventure and a redemption, "family is important, children are important, and it is more important to improve yourself." Starting over to find myself requires courage for women in 30+, and thankfully, I have this courage. ”