Life is like a marathon, and children need to walk step by step to the end.
- Le Dad
◆◆ ◆
Author | Professor Hong Lan
Many educators always think, why are children disobedient? Why are they learning so slowly?
"Three years old to see big, seven years old to see old", this child may be like this in the future...
The reason for this situation is that on the one hand, the expectations for the child's success are high, and on the other hand, it is not understood that the child's brain development rules are not understood.
Professor Hong Lan, an expert on child education from Taiwan, believes that:
To pay attention to the child's emotions, the child actively learns the best effect;
There is no such thing as "losing at the starting line" and "3 years old is set for life", and successful people do not win at the starting point, but win at the turning point;
To convert mistakes into experiences, where to fall, to get up in another place;
Exercise, play, and reading are the three best ways to develop your child's brain...
Successful people don't win at the starting point
Instead, win at the turning point
As an educator, Hong Lan is also a Ph.D. in experimental psychology and a brain scientist at the University of California.
She told everyone that the brain is crucial to the growth of children.
Especially in 0-12-year-old children's brain is in the development stage, adults must not hit children, especially hit the child's head.
Because, this may cause damage to the physiological mechanisms of the child's brain.
Once the brain is damaged, people will encounter obstacles in the physiological mechanism, and no matter how to pass the education efforts of the day after tomorrow, the hope is also very slim.
From the perspective of brain development, each person's nerves are plastic.
Therefore, in her view, there is no such thing as "losing at the starting line" and "3 years old is set for life".
Because the human brain has been developing, has been changing, the brain is constantly changing the neural network connection due to external needs, "its neural circuits can be changed."
Life is a marathon, the struggle is the end, not the starting point, to run to the end is the winner.
Successful people do not win at the starting point, but at the turning point.
Some parents may feel that their children are slow to learn, and Professor Hong Lan quoted two classic sentences to answer the doubts in everyone's heart.
"One man can do it, and he has a hundred." Man has ten powers, and he has a thousand.
If you can do this, although you are foolish, you will be clear, and if you are soft, you will be strong.
Or born to know, or to learn and know, or to know and sleep, and to know one of its knowledge. ”
- "Etiquette: The Middle Way"
Learning is "learning + learning".
If someone else learns it once, he will learn him a hundred times; if someone else learns it ten times, he will learn him a thousand times.
If you can really do this, no matter how stupid you are, you will become smart, and even the weakest people will become strong.
Some people are born to know them, some people know them through learning, and some people know them only after encountering difficulties, but as long as they finally know, it is the same.
Emotions are the fastest tool to change the brain
"A child has a lifetime of time to learn, no need to urge him, and there is no need to rush for a moment, but improper emotional handling will make the child hate school and even produce a negative personality."
Professor Hong Lan told us that emotions are the fastest tool to change the brain.
Take the matter of learning, active learning is useful, passive learning is useless, children want to learn, steal to learn, learn the fastest.
Sometimes, you think that the child has a certain shortcoming, this time do not easily change the child, especially not to let the child have emotional disorders.
A map of the brains of survivors after the Wenchuan earthquake shows that the parts of the brain that dominate emotions and memory function in these people changed within 25 days, producing symptoms such as anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.
So, if a person is thinking about bad things every day, the negative emotions will be magnified.
She also shared a little story: the mother of the famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma once said that Yo-Yo Ma never gets beaten because he doesn't play his cello well.
Because this mother knows that if her child is beaten, she will have a fear of playing the piano.
Therefore, we must let the child have a good mood, which is the premise of establishing a good learning atmosphere.
The family was the first place to learn
Parents are the original teachers
Why is it so important to teach by example? The answer lies in the fact that the power of imitation is very powerful.
Children grow up watching the backs of their parents, the family is the earliest place to learn, and the parents are the first teachers.
Therefore, parents must lead by example.
At the same time, parents should support their children, trust their children, but also discipline their children.
Because the rules and restrictions set by parents do not make the child feel uncomfortable, on the contrary, it will form a rule that makes them feel safe.
What children are most afraid of is that the rules set by parents today and tomorrow are different.
She said that we learn to manage ourselves by being managed.
There is no external control in the beginning, and internal control does not arise.
What is the purpose of educating children?
It's about making him a useful person.
Professor Hong Lan shared the results of an experiment:
Experiments have tracked the growth of 17,000 babies born in April 1970 to 2008.
By the time these people turned 38 in 2008, the results found that the factors that affected their happiness and life satisfaction were not the IQ or academic achievement that the average person thought was, but self-awareness and responsibility.
So, what determines a person's success or failure is self-knowledge, integrity, and perseverance.
Successful people are not the smartest people, but the most persevering people.
Don't worry and nervous, don't be too anxious, the child is very sensitive, if the parents are anxious, then the child will be more anxious.
Parents treat it with a normal heart, and the child will naturally have a relaxed mood.
What you need most to grow up is not toys, but playmates
Many parents have a wrong understanding that the child's intelligence is related to the number of toys.
So, buy a lot of expensive toys for your children.
At the University of California, Hong Lan personally participated in this experiment:
The experiment put one mouse, two mice, and 10 mice together, and the results showed that there was no difference between the brain nerves of 2 mice and 10 mice together.
Therefore, she concluded that when children grow up, what they need most is not toys, but playmates.
"As long as it is a child who grows up in a normal environment, having a playmate is better than anything else."
If parents can be their children's playmates, it is better than buying countless high-end toys for their children. ”
Parents must give their children enough companionship, especially in the first few years of their children's lives, which almost lays the foundation for the development of children's lives.
Where to fall, get up in another place
How do you treat your child to make mistakes?
Professor Hong Lan told everyone the correct answer: I don't ask you to be perfect, I want you to have the ability to reflect.
When you make a mistake, what matters is not how bad the mistake is, or whether it's your fault. It is important to translate the error into an experience.
In the traditional concept of Chinese, "where you fall, you get up" seems to have become an iron law.
Professor Hong Lan's view is the opposite: where to fall, to get up in another place.
Why? Professor Hong Lan also quoted a classic quote.
Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, it will consider itself an idiot for the rest of its life. — Albert Einstein
Adults will feel that children are not good, mainly because they compare children with each other.
Don't compare children with other children, genetically different, the environment in which they grow is also different, so the ratio is unfair.
The child can only compare with himself, and if he improves today compared to yesterday, he should be rewarded.
She said that heaven is very fair, and people with good spatial ability often have poor language ability; those with good language ability have poor spatial ability.
In other words, the brain is a limited resource, and few people are blessed with everything, so we don't have to be harsh on our children.
Einstein's brain was donated after his death and analyzed in detail, and it turned out that he was indeed 15% larger than others at the intersection of the parietal and temporal lobes in the space he controlled, and he had more brain cells than others.
But Einstein could not speak until he was three years old, and if he lived in the present, he would be considered to be slow to speak, and after his private letters and diaries were published, some people thought he was dyslexic.
His right brain is more developed, probably related to the fact that his left brain is not very functioning, and he naturally uses his best brain to process information.
Therefore, educators should go with the flow and teach children to understand their strengths and accept their weaknesses.
What matters is what ability, not what lacks.
Look at the child with an appreciative eye and you will see his strengths; look at things with a positive attitude, and you will see the way to solve it.
Allow children to make mistakes
Let him learn from his mistakes
Allow your child to make mistakes, just not make a second mistake.
Albert Einstein once said, "A man who has never made a mistake means that he has never tried something new." ”
Professor Hong Lan said not to scold your child for not doing a good job.
Because scolding will make the child afraid of this thing, and after a long time, the child will resist and stay farther away.
In the same way, if we scold the child every day because of the score when the child is learning, will the child become afraid of learning?
The answer is yes.
Why? Because frustration is a bad emotion, and a child's growth can be long and short.
Good parents should not only say "NO", but should show their children a way to go after saying "NO".
"Allow your child to make mistakes, let him learn from them, so that he can not make the same mistakes again."
The best 3 ways to develop your child's brain:
Sports, games, reading
What kind of life experience can make the nerves activate quickly and branch densely?
Professor Hong Lan's answer is: exercise, play and reading.
1. Exercise
When people exercise, they stimulate the secretion of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and n-adrenaline, and these are the keys to promoting neural connections.
Therefore, when the stomach is hungry, doing homework is not efficient, and it is good to let the child do homework after just exercising.
This is also true of eating before exams.
Because, exercise makes the brain run faster.
In addition to this, exercise also makes the brain younger.
Experiments have shown that the brains of two-year-old mice with exercise are as young as those of six-month-old mice, and the brains of active mice are less fat and DNA oxidized by reactive oxygen species.
2. Games
The game is not the enemy of learning, it is the partner of learning, and the game is the nutrition of brain growth.
From the game can cultivate the child's basic ability, and the child who can play has a high EQ, can learn how to get along with people in group game interaction, and complete his socialization.
When children play, imagination is playing, and imagination is the root of creativity.
If you are too fierce, no one likes to play with you, and if you are too cowardly, others will bully you. These can be learned in the game.
Children who don't play with others when they are young will only play video games when they grow up, because only video games are lifeless playmates who can endure repeated, unreasonable swearing and beatings from children without leaving.
Professor Hong Lan also provided experimental evidence:
When children play, a special substance is produced, which, after being extracted, can help the nerves to grow rapidly.
3. Read
In Professor Hong Lan's view, speaking is instinct and reading is a habit.
Reading changes the brain, reading is the fastest way to absorb information, the eyes read 668 words a minute, speak the fastest 250 words a minute, reading is 3 times faster than speaking.
Reading is to let children "calm down" to see the world deeply, it is an infinite extension of children's intellectual development.
Reading internalizes the experiences of others into one's own, and uses a limited life to learn infinite knowledge.
So, how to increase reading ability?
She believes that reading a lot of extracurricular reading materials is the way to really increase reading ability.
Let the child read a lot of extracurricular reading, because everything that passes will leave traces, and reading extensively will increase a person's background knowledge, background knowledge, and determine what you see.
Brain science research has found that the plasticity of the brain is lifelong, and a person is constantly reshaping his brain throughout his life with new experiences.
Therefore, both children and parents should learn to continue to grow themselves
*Author: Prof. Hong Lan, Taiwan Child Education Expert, Director of Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Central University, Taiwan. The text comes from the network collation.
Disclaimer: [We respect originality. Text and picture material, the copyright belongs to the original author. Some articles can not be contacted with the original author for various reasons when pushing, if it involves copyright issues, please contact the original author to delete it, we only share it, not for commercial purposes. 】