Before we talked about how to give your child a healthy birth family, talked about 3 important stages of psychological development of a child from birth, talked about how to help children build a sense of security, and help children identify their emotions.
In fact, the goal of all this is to let the child slowly come out of the parents, explore the outside world, and live their own lives.
As the saying goes, all love in the world is for being together, but only the love of parents for their children is for separation.
That child was able to start exploring outwards, and the parents played a huge role. Maybe when you hear the word "exploration", some people will feel as if they have to do big things and make big moves, but in fact, children's exploration is the accumulation of small things in life.
For example, we are all familiar with a scene in life, and now many shopping malls have children's playgrounds that let children play with sand, and children like to play. We often see a child grab a handful of sand and throw it over his head, giggling himself, and then this time he will look at the mother next to him and want to know the mother's feedback.
If at this time, the mother is smiling at the child, may also accompany the child to throw a sand, then the child will get a feedback, I do this mother is allowed, I and the mother feel very happy, then next, the child will grab a larger handful of sand to throw to play, and then slowly, go away from the mother a little, to develop more ways to play. This was a successful exploration.
When a child explores outward, he looks back at his mother, who responds to him with a smile, an affirmative expression. At that time, the child will feel very solid in his heart, he will be more daring to try new things, he knows, his mother is watching me, she will protect me to support me.
At this time, the mother is equivalent to a safe base for the child, the child knows that he can safely explore outwards, the mother is supportive of him, and when he feels scared or tired when he needs it, he can also return to the mother.
Therefore, you will find that when parents can serve as a safe base for their children, children will dare to explore outwards, and put more psychological energy on developing themselves and establishing relationships with the outside world.
Then if parents do not want their children to explore outwards due to their own reasons, hoping that their children can always stay by their side, as we said in previous courses, some mothers have put all their focus on their children and cannot accept their children leaving themselves.
When the child wants to explore outward, the mother will pull the child back, and the child will not be able to form a safe base inside. The result of this is often that the child is still inseparable from home after adulthood, for example, like the old man or the mother treasure man.
There is also a bad situation where the parents are very open to let the child go out and explore, and then when the child feels that he needs the parent, when he wants to go home, the parent "snaps" and closes the door.
Although such a child has the opportunity to explore outward, he does not have a strong backing, which will lead to him not being able to continue to explore the world under the premise of a sense of security. In this case, the child may have borderline personality disorder.
Because if the child has no way to balance the relationship between exploring outward and seeking comfort inward, it will be easy to form a borderline personality.
Now we know that in the process of children's growth, parents must be able to let their children explore the outside world, and at the same time become a solid backing for their children. But in the process of actually raising children, sometimes, the child's exploration is dangerous, and everything wants to try, at this time, do parents still allow their children to explore?
So I'll tell you about my own real experience. When I was working and studying in the United States, I was the housekeeper of their children in a family that had 3 children, one 6 years old, one 7 years old, and one 10 years old.
All the time the three children spend except for class time, as long as I don't have any other job, I will be with them. At that time, the first thing I had to do was to keep them safe.
For example, one of the little boys, he especially likes to dismantle all kinds of things, then this is actually a kind of exploration, but the exploration must be under the premise of ensuring safety. So I'm not going to let him take down the charged stuff, let's say, he's going to take down the radio, okay, no problem, but I'm going to make sure the radio has no electricity, the battery is taken out, and I'll let him take it down, whatever he wants.
And I'll make rules with him, I'll tell him, you can take this radio off, but you can't put your hand inside the socket because the socket has electricity. In the case of observing this rule, he can take the initiative and explore freely.
Then when the child breaks things in half and has difficulties, let's say, if he breaks the semiconductor tube, he will be particularly sad and may cry, and then this time he will go to me.
Like a 4-6-year-old child, his focus is to explore externally and find a safe base internally. So when he needs to come back to me and find a safe base, I'll hug him, I'll comfort him, and then, when his emotions can calm down, I'll probably continue to encourage him to keep doing it. Then he may also say, I don't play the radio today, I want to play something else, or I don't play anything, ok, no problem.
Then by the next day, we can let him play and encourage him to continue exploring. And you can tell him that the next time you want to pull out the semiconductor tube, if you don't have enough strength, you can find adults to help, we can help you get it out together, next time we don't want to break it.
Because we say that in the process of exploration, children are bound to make mistakes, but as long as they are within the rules we have established, parents can accept the mistakes made by their children. If the boy breaks the radio and we scold him, he will no longer have the urge to explore. He may feel that I should do nothing rather than do more wrong.
Well, then I will summarize the places that parents should pay attention to when acting as a safe base for their children. First of all, we must set up a rule, and the purpose of our rules is not to limit the child's exploration, but to ensure his safety.
Then encourage the child to be safe, to explore according to his ideas, then when the child needs to come back for comfort, the parents must give him comfort. Then slowly as the child grows up, even if the parents are not with him, but in his psychology has been internalized a very reliable safe base, he can comfort and take care of himself.
In fact, as parents, we go to lectures and read books, learn how to educate children, which is very necessary, but at the same time, I want to remind that if you want to love children better, then first you have to be able to love yourself, if you want children to be happy, then you must first be a person who has the ability to be happy.
You may have such an experience, when you were a child, your parents told us: I am all for you, I am not divorced, it is all for you, I quit my job, just so that I can take good care of you.
Then you can recall that when we hear these words, we are not happy inside, and we feel a lot of pressure. Because if our happiness is based on the pain of our parents, then neither the child nor the parents will be truly happy.
So only when we ourselves have the ability to pursue happiness will our child have the ability to pursue his own happiness. In other words, if you can't do anything, how can you ask your child to do it?