Can you imagine how much a child can bear in order to make friends, how humble it becomes?
An online post:
One mom said her daughter is 4 and a half years old and especially likes to play with other children. But the mother could clearly feel that the daughter was always trying to please other children. In order to make other children accept themselves, even if they are a little wronged and eat some losses, it doesn't matter.
But what the mother did not expect was that the daughter was so humble that she willingly knelt on the ground and learned to bark while riding other children.
The mother quickly pulled her daughter up and asked, "Why are you doing this?" ”
The daughter said, "If it weren't for that, they wouldn't play with me." ”
In our minds, the friendship between children is pure and beautiful, but this living example makes us have to realize that even between ignorant children, there is a poisonous friendship.
How to identify around your child
Hidden "Poisonous Friendship"
From the age of two or three, children begin to enter the stage of identity, and they need to affirm themselves through external evaluation.
In this early childhood, the desire for friendship is very large, in order to establish and maintain friendship, or in order to be able to join the group game, children will often make compromises and concessions.
Dr. Erin Leonard pointed out in the American Psychology Today that if children have the above characteristics in their interactions, children are caught in "poisonous friendships", and they may actually be bullied, bullied, excluded and hurt under the cloak of "friendship".
In fact, a sentence: if the child's new friends are more hurt than happy, and bad behavior is more than progress, then it can be judged as a poisonous friendship.
In the Korean movie "Our World", Lee Sun and Han Ji Ya were originally good friends who did not say anything.
But Zhiya, who lives with her grandmother, has her own careful thoughts, and when she sees that Li Shan has a happy family and a mother who can be spoiled, she becomes jealous. As a result, Zhiya gradually alienated Li Shan out of jealousy, and later even betrayed their secrets to each other, fighting together in front of the whole class.
It is said that children's interactions are simple, but school is also a "small society", and there will also be conflicts, jealousy, and exclusion. If the parents of both sides can find out early, there will be no such contradiction between the two girls.
The child's oppression and harm caused by "poisonous friendship", under the pain, the child may also lose control of emotions and behave out of line.
Such a poisonous friendship is not harmful to the child's behavior and character building. Parents must intervene in time to get their children out of the misunderstanding of dating and get better growth.
In the eyes of adults, the friendship between children seems to be family, simple-minded, like the new and tired of the old, a moment to turn the face and a moment to reconcile, it seems not to be tight, but these "pediatric" friendships are exactly the key to helping children's minds mature.
At present, there is a consensus in the fields of child psychology, behavior, and pedagogy on the positive impact of friendship on children's development in three ways: providing opportunities for other children to learn social skills, alleviating the pressure of social competition, and forming a sense of community belonging. Therefore, cultivating children is not only about their academics and conduct, but also helping children cultivate a healthy view of friendship is also one of the important lessons in life.
So, are the friendships between children all "plastic flowers"? What is a healthy and correct view of friendship? What is the impact of friendship on a child's development? What can parents do to foster a healthy view of friendship?
Don't use "please"
In exchange for "friendship"
There is a hot search on Weibo call for #How much love is lacking in flattering personalities," which has triggered a heated discussion among 40,000 netizens.
The most essential problem of people who are accustomed to pleasing is to base all sense of self-worth on the outside world.
They can't recognize their true and imperfect selves from the bottom of their hearts, they don't believe that they can give themselves affirmation; they rely heavily on the approval of others, and only when they get the evaluation of "you are a good person", "you are great" and "I am very optimistic about you" from other people, they will feel that they are good, capable, and worthy of being loved.
But once their flattery is not appreciated and recognized by expectations, they may enter a state of self-aggression, and may continue to curry favor even harder, sacrificing themselves to fulfill the interests of others, thus stepping into the abyss of losing themselves.
The cause of all this may be that the child tries to "save a friendship" for the first time when he is young, and even many parents will take the initiative to let the child "sacrifice himself" in exchange for the "popularity" of the child. But the "welcome" exchanged in this way is not really friendship, but a kind of flattery with purpose.
Therefore, when children encounter obstacles in the social process and send "help" signals to parents, do not ignore perfunctory, let alone belittle scolding, or let children sacrifice at will.
Only with proper guidance can children navigate social interactions.
Children's friendships are also graded?
The older you get, the more "serious" you get!
Robert Selman, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and an expert in child behavior, provides a five-layer framework for the development trend of child friendships based on systematic interviews with children of different ages:
Friendship Level 0 – 3-6 years old:
Children before the age of 6 see their friends as playmates for a while, and their friendships are built through play. Children at this stage do not have the consciousness of "others", only "self", daily behavior is easy to change instantaneously, are not good at becoming reliable friends, and often say: "You are not my friend today!" Such words.
First-degree friendship – 5-9 years old:
Children at this stage care a lot about friends, but define friends as just people who are good for them, such as sharing gifts and asking him to play with their toys, but they don't really think about what they have contributed to the friendship.
But they'll try to use friendship as a bargaining chip, like "If you do, I'll be your friend" or "If you do, I won't be your friend!" ”
Friendship II – 7-12 years old:
Kids over 6 are very concerned about fairness and reciprocity, but they think about these issues in a very rigid way, and if they do a good thing for a friend, they want that friend to do something good for them at the next opportunity. If it doesn't happen, the boat of friendship will tip over.
They begin to care about the "rules" and evaluations of their peers, such as minding that they are ridiculed for not having a haircut similar to their peers. It was this period that "small groups" and "secret clubs" among children began to form, and these groups included elaborate rules and a lot of discussion about who or was not included in the membership, but often difficult to maintain for a long time.
Level 3 Friendship – 8-15 years old:
At this stage, friends help each other solve problems and are willing to share their private thoughts and feelings. They know how to compromise and begin to genuinely care about each other's feelings; however, if a good friend chooses to be with another child, they will feel deeply betrayed.
Level 4 Friendship – After age 16:
At this stage, children place a high value on emotional intimacy with friends. They can accept and even appreciate the differences between themselves and their friends. They will be much less possessive than in the previous stage, and they can accept friends and other friends. If separated, mature friendships last for a while based on trust and support.
Knowing Professor Robert Selman's analysis, we can better understand the "friendship problem", and the "plastic friendship" between children is the only way for friendship to mature.
The first step in coping with a crisis is to first teach children to recognize "toxic friendships."
An article by Dr. Erin Leonard, Published in Psychology Today in July, "Is Your Child in a Toxic Friendship?" summarized some of the typical characteristics of toxic friendships:
For example, children are often unhappy or even cry; self-confidence is weak; they lose interest in activities they used to like; in order to make their friends happy, they are ridiculed and despised; the ideas they put forward are always not valued; they have not made progress in a friendship; and they have the idea of disgusting themselves.
In the face of "poisonous friendship", the correct approach for parents is not to simply and rudely let their children break off and isolate, which does not prevent them from falling into "poisonous friendship" in the future. There are 3 key things for parents to do:
Carefully monitor the social media or various channels that your child is in contact with to determine that they have caused harm to your child;
(Emphasis) Ask the child "Would you do this to anyone?" ", let the child understand the pain caused by the poisonous friendship, but also let the child understand that he should never do this to avoid harming others;
Help children create an environment to expand their "connections" and build friendships in different social circles, so that they do not rely on children who produce toxic friendships.
I once saw a saying: Life without friendship is just a wasteland, which is enough to show the importance of friendship in life. Parents who only care about their children's "hard strength" must not forget the softness of their children's hearts, where small flowers of friendship need to bloom.
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