2.5 Help children build a sense of inner order

Before you criticize the world, tidy up your room.

Hello parents!

Welcome to the "Good Parents of China" series of courses.

The topic we are studying in this issue is "Resilience", and today we start to study The 5th Lecture, which is "Helping Children Build a Sense of Inner Order".

There is a sense of order in human society, a sense of order in space, a sense of order in time, and so on. When the child is in the family growth environment, he hopes to be able to control this, so that the child's heart will feel stable and safe, which is crucial to the improvement of the child's adaptability.

Establishing an inner sense of order, it covers a very deep and wide concept, but today, what we call "establishing a child's inner sense of order" refers to an attitude of life that allows children to remain sober, not blindly following, and not escaping. However, due to space limitations, we will focus on how to establish an "inner sense of order" from the "operational level".

Let's start with the first point: help your child organize and clean up their hearts.

First, encourage your child to say what he or she thinks most deeply. A friend of mine said to me happily the other day, "Our daughter did a super cute thing today. When the two of us came out of the mall after eating, we found it raining outside, and I said you stand at the entrance of the mall and don't move, I will go to the car to get an umbrella and come back to pick you up. Then she actually ran out with me in the rain. I said: Don't you wait at the entrance of the mall, you see you are wet. As a result, the child said: Mother, you are not the person I love the most, the person who loves the most must be difficult to be with! I laughed with her, what a cute little girl.

But as a psychologist who loves to reflect on everything, this matter also gave me another side of thinking. Sometimes, children do become "little angels" and say some words that make adults blossom in their hearts, because children know that these words will make adults happy, this is the jungle survival skills that children have learned from a young age in order to adapt to society, but what we need to pay attention to is that when children say good words, we habitually give "positive feedback", that is to say, they are very happy and sometimes praise children, which motivates children to say more words that make adults happy. The risk of such a cycle is that the child will get farther and farther away from his true feelings.

It may be safer to continue to ask more questions about their feelings and thoughts after encouraging your child's "high emotional intelligence" language. It's like my good friend laughs and says to the child: You're so cute. In fact, she can also ask the child, when you just ran out with your mother in the rain, what else did you think? The child may say that I have just been alone in the doorway a little afraid, of course, this is just a possibility, we need to pay attention. But, you see, at this time, the child has the opportunity to speak out his true feelings. So, as long as we ask a little more, the real child hidden in the flowery language, the socialized personality begins to slowly emerge, what good is this for the child? This will allow children to have more contact with their true senses of self, resulting in a healthier psychological environment.

In addition, another important way to help children sort out and clean up their hearts is to help children replace bad habits with good habits.

This is a very wonderful method, because the beauty and horror of habit are the same, which is that it will make us act without thinking. So, if we work with our child to build a list of "good habits and bad habits" and practice it for 100 days, it will help the child reconstruct his behavior and thought patterns. We can spend ten or twenty minutes sitting with our children and discussing the bad habits they want to break, as well as the good habits they can replace, and to complete them with practical actions. For example, if a child is used to playing with his mobile phone before going to bed, and he himself does not like this habit and wants to change it, so you define "playing mobile phone before going to bed" as a bad habit, and replace it with the good habit of "reading books before going to bed". Of course, in the early stages, children will definitely feel uncomfortable and uncomfortable, but slowly, our brains and bodies will adapt and get used to this change.

Okay, that's the first way to help children build a sense of inner order, and we can do that by helping children organize and clean up their hearts.

Next, we talk about the second method, which trains children to build their own harmonious relationship with their surroundings.

From my personal experience, the simplest and most effective thing is to tidy up your room. About 10 years ago, I was an exchange student in Taiwan, and I happened to see a book in the library, which has a sentence in it, which still affects me to this day, to the effect that in the limited space of our own, we need to let ourselves be accompanied by things that will really bring us pleasure.

So, I tidied up my dorm room at the time and almost threw 3/4 of my stuff away. I looked at my empty dormitory, took a deep breath, and felt more cheerful than ever. Since then, I have retained this habit. Now my home is still empty, and my friends joke that it is like a "model house" where no one lives. I think the biggest influence he gave me was that I was able to keep my life circle clean and decisive in the face of life's major decisions.

So, let your child develop the habit of tidying up the room, first of all, you need to throw away the things that seem useful, but you don't actually need it, so that your home is filled with things that make the family happy. In doing these things, we are actually sending a message that time and space should be reserved for the items that make you "behemoth". Imagine that when the child is at home, his eyes can see, his life is only those things that make him like to smile, then the child will definitely feel more happy moments.

The above is the second point to help children establish a sense of inner order and encourage children to tidy up their rooms. Next, let's talk about the third point, that is, to help your child build the most important relationship of his or her life— the relationship with books.

I know a father who, when his children were very young, said to his children: Your best friend in life is a book, and almost 99% of the confusion you encounter in your life can be answered in books. He said this sentence from the time the child was three years old to the current child was nine years old. Interestingly, his children have really established the "best partner" relationship with the book in the subtlety of this father. He once proudly told me: My children don't read textbooks, he reads comics, popular science books or whatever. I immediately gave him a thumbs up in my heart, but I still couldn't help but add: How is the child's academic performance? The father laughed and said that he was not the last few anyway.

Regarding the principle of letting children read more, I believe that all parents are very clear in their hearts, but parents and friends will still have a lot of confusion about cultivating their children's habit of reading books.

First of all, you need to establish the idea that children who love to read books do not necessarily have good academic performance, just like this father did. However, as adults, we must now understand that there is one more important thing than reading, that is, worldview and pattern view. Reading is the only way to cultivate a view of patterns, and please note that I am talking about the only way. Some people will say, it is not the saying: read thousands of books and go thousands of miles. But the premise of this sentence is to read ten thousand books, otherwise the books are read less, the scenery is seen more, and only the experience is increased, not the thickness of the thought.

Second, what book to read? Don't force your child to read books that "parents find useful", and avoid reading junk books. So what to do? As a parent, you can do the first screening, you can buy a variety of school teachers, child experts, and books that you feel like, but remember to be rich, and then let the child choose the books he wants to read.

Reading is like eating a lonely and hearty dinner. So children sometimes like this feeling, sometimes not, which requires us to help children develop a habit from an early age, the wonderful door of reading will definitely open, children will find wisdom in books, discover a broad world.

The above is today's content, a brief summary:

There are three key points to helping children build an inner sense of order:

The first point is to help children sort out and clean up their hearts;

The second point is to train children to establish their own harmonious relationship with the surrounding environment;

The third point is to train children to build a relationship with books.

In the next lecture, I will share with you the content of "enjoy the moment and improve resilience", thank you for listening, we will see you next!

Growth Mind Map

How to help children establish inner order?

How to train children to build their own harmonious relationship with their surroundings?

Knowledge chart card

Principle: The relationship between situations and people

The "Person-in-situation" of social psychology emphasizes that individuals who are "in a situation" are affected by many factors in their living environment, and that people's inner facts are often in a state of interaction with the social environment in which they live, so it is necessary to pay attention to human psychological factors and social factors.

Practice deliberately

Build a form with a line of "bad habits" and "good habits that can be replaced", and practice the power of habits with your child in the form of a 100-day punch card.

According to the child's age and development stage, make a list of at least 30 books, and let the child start reading from the book that interests him most, so as to establish the habit of reading, which can also be combined with 100 days of punching.

Resource recommendations

book:

"The Twelve Laws of Life" Jordan. Peterson

"Thrilling Life Tidying Magic" [Japanese] Marie Kondo

China Good Parents Public Welfare Growth Plan was officially launched

2.1 Why is "resilience" so important?

2.2 Develop children's resilience, starting with psychological flexibility

2.3 The core of cultivating resilience is to improve psychological tolerance

2.4 Two strategies to improve children's resilience