Doctors couldn't save the girl who was suffering from depression: Chinese children had changed, but their parents hadn't kept up

Social change is changing rapidly, and we must also look at the growth of children with a developmental perspective.

Not long ago, I saw an in-depth report on the public account about a high school girl suffering from depression.

The protagonist's name is not mentioned in the text, and for the sake of narration, we will call her M for the time being.

M is a very good girl, attending the province's no. 1 key high school, just one step away from the coveted key university.

However, at this juncture, something went wrong...

The child suffers from depression.

Source: Dr. Lilac

Title: "Mistake Depression for Rebellion, I Almost Lost My Daughter"

I've heard a lot of moms or teachers complain, I don't know what's wrong with the child now, why it's so hard to bring.

In fact, our time itself has changed, and children have a lot of stress and distress.

Today's article was written by Chen Mo, a special senior counselor appointed by the Psychological Counseling Center of East China Normal University.

It explores the growth trajectory and psychological state of the children now, and it is worth sharing with everyone.

What is the difficulty of family education today?

Difficulties in our education have too many paradoxes and problems to face.

Parents, let me ask you a question, do you know the children now?

I have a lot of say in this because I've been exposed to about 8,000 family cases in the last 20 years.

What's going on with today's kids? Who are today's children? We have to grasp it in essence.

If we can't grasp it from the essence, school education or family education will not be on the point.

01

Today's children are different from what we used to be

Why?

Because now we don't have to worry about eating.

When a nation eats without worry, what will we worry about?

Our needs are starting to change:

People's needs for people are different, parents' needs for children are different, society's needs for people are different, and people's needs for society are different.

You can try it, and in the spring, buy a newborn chick, keep it, give it good food and drink, and see if the chick will die in two weeks, because the chick will be lonely.

Today's children come into this world with a natural sense of loneliness.

Image source: The movie "Red Balloon"

So what are the troubles of loneliness?

People are lonely, gratuitously sad, and inexplicably shed tears.

As soon as a person is lonely, his thinking ability becomes very strong.

So trouble comes, and without thinking about eating or wearing, he prematurely thinks about an ultimate question, the supreme philosophical question—what is the point of my existence?

Our current children, even four-year-olds, would be there in a daze, and you don't know what was going on in his little head.

Once a person has such a problem, suffering accompanies him.

So the problem with our education is that we have to know who our children are in order to have direction.

02

Today's children are carrying it

A heavy emotional burden

Back when we were young, most people lived in multi-child families, and it was difficult for parents to devote too much attention to a single child.

But what are kids like now?

In a city like Shanghai, when a child comes into this world, there are six people around him, and these six people will give him the best.

So six people love a child, can you feel the feelings of this child?

Do you know the inner world of this child?

Do you know the bitterness in his heart?

In fact, people have an instinct, who is good to himself, he will repay the favor.

I saw a four-year-old say to grandma:

Grandma, I'll make money for you when I grow up.

It was because he felt that Grandma was too good for him.

But when he was a teenager, he figured it out, he couldn't repay this favor, why?

Because these adults don't want his money in return, they want their children to go to prestigious universities.

Image source: TV series "Little Joy"

But there are only a few famous universities in China, why do you go to your children?

Every year, seniors from all over the country come to me for counseling, and all their symptoms are the same:

In the third year of high school, I did not devote myself to studying, and I read my mobile phone all day and read novels all day.

You ask him if he wants to go to college? He replied, thinking, and had to do well.

So why not invest? Because they are anxious.

I just had to say one word and they would shed tears, I said:

"You may not get into the university you think you want, and then you will feel really sorry for your parents, they are too good for you, right?"

The children burst into tears as soon as they heard them.

The kids are so pathetic.

I said to these kids:

"Who told you that you are responsible for the happiness of your parents?"

Children, no one in this world can be responsible for the happiness of another person.

For example, when two people are in love, a man says to a woman, 'Marry me, I will give you the happiness of a lifetime', and the result is that it is not three days before the quarrel is over.

Children, you remember that happiness is your own subjective life experience. ”

03

Happiness is not something that others can give

There was a mom who had raised a PhD son, and this postdoc came to be a diplomat.

Everyone envied this mother, but she was taking antidepressants every day.

There was also a mother, her son was just an ordinary worker, but we saw this mother dancing in the square every day.

Therefore, happiness is not something that others can give, but a subjective experience of oneself.

Parents should tell their children not to carry this burden, light and forward, this is to give children positive energy.

To say a sweet word, we bring our children into this world, you have to remember, not he is coming, if he wants to choose may not choose you, you are a one-way choice.

What I often say to my son is:

"Son, let's have a mother and son, don't dislike each other, you don't hate me, I don't hate you."

The child does not have this burden, he can go forward lightly, so that he will not be anxious about the exam.

We can see that today's children have unprecedented academic pressure, which is only explicit.

The hidden thing is that children spend all day with people at high risk of anxiety, who are the parents and teachers of children.

If you think about it, if the child has to face a group of anxious people at school and at home, everyone will pull a rubber band on the child.

Teachers in school constantly emphasize exams and study.

When the child returns home, the parents are also emphasizing the exam and study, and the child may be finished.

With anxious people, we will be exhausted, and the pressure that our children encounter is not available in the world.

Image source: TV series "Little Parting"

04

Today's children have a say in the right to speak

Very demanding

Now the second characteristic of children is that they have very high requirements for discourse power.

This is definitely a very special phenomenon.

Why?

First of all, people's environment is different.

When we were young, we were taught to "talk to adults, don't interject children", and we think it is a matter of course.

Now the child's life is like this, he has no brothers and sisters at home, talking directly to adults, why can't I talk when you talk?

On the other hand, our current school educators still adhere to the old way.

We can often see that when some middle school students are educated by the teacher, the teacher is training him, and this middle school student is like this:

"You're done, you're almost done, right?" Can I get into the classroom? ”

He won't listen to you at all, why?

Because you don't understand that his voice is very demanding, you are not giving him an equal dialogue.

I was once approached by a boss who said he had an intern at a prestigious university who was in charge of taking notes during meetings.

At the meeting, the boss finished speaking, and the intern said, "I will also speak." ”

The boss said, "How come it's your turn?" ”

He said, "Why can't I talk about it?" I know it too! ”

So the boss couldn't understand it.

I told him that you have to understand that their right to speak is very demanding, if you don't let him have the possibility of speaking, he will go to the Internet to say, you can't block him.

So folks, if you think about it, how come a nation with this demand for equal discourse power is not progressive?

This is a challenge to our thousands of years of culture, and you have to face how our cultures are connected.

Only after connecting it can the child make a smooth transition without being suppressed by his predecessors, which is the problem we encounter.

The world that this generation of children is facing is no longer the original world, and I sincerely hope that parents and teachers can understand this generation!

05

Today's children have a wide range of knowledge

Teachers, don't be angry, the current child may not come to you to receive knowledge.

Many lessons have CDs, and he can buy CDs to watch for himself, and they are all taught by famous teachers.

Today's teachers have no authority, unlike when we were young, if there was no book at home, the teacher was the Wanbao Encyclopedia, and now there is no such teacher.

Don't expect you to be such a teacher, or you may not get the feelings of such a teacher.

Teachers who do not understand this will hit the students and deny that the current students are inferior to the students of the past.

In fact, this is the characteristic of the times, if you can't keep up, it's the teacher's problem.

In Shanghai, some children have already traveled half the world when they are in junior high school.

The teacher spoke about Canada in the classroom, and the student said:

"I've been in Canada for a long time, teacher, have you been there?"

So guys, how is this book taught? I'm talking about very practical things, and education needs to be addressed to these issues in order to be useful to future students.

06

Today's children are kind

All of our parents of children after 1993 will say that their children have shortcomings of one kind or another, but one thing is that children are very kind.

That's where China's hope lies.

Here's why:

You are on the road, but whenever you see a beggar, the child's footsteps are a little out of step, he will drag his mother as slowly as possible, in fact he wants his mother to donate some money to this beggar.

The child is kind because he has love.

He grew up immersed in love, he grew up in an era of material abundance, and such a person must be kind and loving.

Love is not empty, love is conditional.

Now the child has the basic conditions, so he has compassion, he sympathizes with the weak, he loves others.

So his level of moral judgment is much higher than that of our generation.

Because of different lineages, the moral standards of the two generations are different.

So I feel very confident that the young people behind them will get better and better, and this generation of children is hopeful.

We as parents must not fail them, they are all good children.

07

Children in today's cities

The sense of reality is very weak

The very weak sense of reality of children in today's cities is also the result of education.

Our children have been replaced by all the realities from childhood to adulthood, and they only know how to study well.

And our school does not offer children the possibility to handle affairs, and there are no other activities except for studying and making up lessons.

Children live in the modern computer world, and the sense of reality is very weak.

They experience a sense of reality in the virtual world, and there is a sense of virtuality in the real world, which is their characteristic.

For example, today's middle school students are playing "handmade", and the proportion of the number is about 1/4.

What is hand-made?

"Handmade" are those dolls made based on Japanese anime.

He was playing with the dolls alone.

A boy plays until he falls in love with the doll and then tinkers with realism in the virtual world.

They communicate online as if the doll were a living person, and in the end he has a sense of virtuality in the real world.

After the two people chatted online, they were ready to meet, sat together, and actually had no words, and the result said:

"Let's go online and say goodbye."

Just go online and talk about it.

There's a scene where there are a couple of four- or five-year-olds who are in a room with no adults.

If we look at it with common sense, this room must have turned upside down, and the ground was full of water, making a mess.

But the reality is that as soon as the door of this room is opened, there is no sound, and every child is quieter, quieter than the old people's home.

This is our children, who are "not afraid of death, and second, they are afraid of suffering."

If you tell your child that if you don't study well, you will live a hard life in the future, and he will tell you:

"Impossible, if that day I will die."

What are people afraid of even if they are not afraid of death? How do we educate?

If there is a principal in charge of moral education reading this, please consider:

What should we do in our current moral education activities in primary and secondary schools?

Because the children's sense of reality is very weak, the school should provide this kind of help, moot court, mock supermarket, simulated community ... Go get this stuff done.

Image source: The movie "Goodbye to Our Kindergarten"

Once, there was a student at a key middle school and high school, and she brought us a mobile phone to show, and she said:

"Teacher, we're playing with this stuff."

I was shocked at the sight.

What to play? Is it fun to cut oneself with a knife?

How do we understand this behavior?

This is the manifestation of the lack of realism, and he must be able to find his true existence in this way.

Unfortunately, we educators are completely unaware.

We only know that his grades have gone up or down, and there are too many factors in the results.

We must understand our child, these are some of the pain points in his heart.

Moral education is about educating people, not instilling something.

You have to raise him to be a healthy person, otherwise a person without a sense of reality will have problems with his personality later.

Image source: The Book of Henry

08

Today's kids are right

Personalized living is very demanding

They also have a characteristic that the personalization requirements are very high.

When we were young, we were taught that "you are a drop of water in the sea, you are a grain of sand in the desert".

Now the child is "I've been here, the goose has been over, how can you not know that I have come?" ”。

He has to show his personality.

So is our education allowed? Have you designed a platform that allows him to show his personality? Is our class meeting provided?

A kid came up to me and said he just had to have long hair and wear flower clothes, and he took off his school uniform when he got to the door.

As a result, the director of education told him not to come unless he cut his hair.

Later I called his homeroom teacher and I said:

"You know what? This kid's anime knowledge, I don't even deserve to be his elementary school student.

You give him a class meeting and let him show him a good PPT, and I believe he will change from now on. ”

This is another characteristic of our current children.

If you're going to suppress him, he's going to fight.

The way to fight is different, some children fight with you, we call it rebellion.

Why rebel? The rebellion is because you don't allow him to grow up.

Reverse has the form of "hard resistance", that is, you say that the east must say the west, you say that you must study well and go to high school, he will tell you to go to vocational school.

Then the "hard resistance" is better, if the "soft resistance" is troublesome.

If the teacher and parents are "incomparably powerful" and "invincible", the energy of the child's resistance is all transferred to it, and all kinds of mental problems come out, resulting in a high incidence of neurosis in children after the age of 15.

It is very important for us to cultivate the health of our children, so to fully satisfy his personality display, our school moral education activities should have such awareness.

09

Today's kids

Live in the "third cage"

Finally, I would like to conclude that the child now lives in the "third cage".

Suppose, we have such a cage, let a mouse in the cage, the cage outside a door, if the mouse accidentally stepped on this door, after the door opens there will be a food will come in, this mouse stepped on it, the food will come in, step on it, the food will come in, what will the rat do?

Will always step on.

If the second cage were like this, the rat stepped on it, the electric shock, the step, the electric shock, with the intelligence of the mouse, what would it do?

Don't step on it.

If the "third cage" we designed it this way, it is food when it is stepped on, and then it is an electric shock when it is stepped on.

The rat doesn't know whether to step on it or not, and the rat will struggle to death inside.

The child comes into this world and the parents are too nice to him, like food.

But at the same time give him pressure, like an electric shock, and the children are like rats in the third cage.

Image source: The Movie "The Sixth Sense"

Every family longs for their children to be successful, and their mouths do not speak, but their hearts think so.

All walks of life, everyone who can succeed has a common trait:

These people must be people who can afford to lose, and when they lose, they win in the end.

And our current education, you only let him succeed, do not let him lose, parents see their children go home the first sentence asked is:

"Baby, how many five-pointed stars do you have today?" "One."

"How many have Bob got?" "Two."

"You're going to overtake him tomorrow, you're going to get three."

As a parent, do you play chess with your son and he will lose? Is he willing to lose?

Nine out of ten children will not lose, and some children will smash their mother's head with chess, and he will be anxious if he loses.

How can this be?

You want him to succeed, but you don't let him have the quality of success, and if you don't cultivate this quality in the first place, isn't he the rat in the third cage?

In addition, each of us longs for our children to be able to fight and persevere when they see mathematical problems and physics problems.

We hope that children willpower and control are very strong, but do you know where willpower and control come from?

In Shanghai, parents from the primary school to find the best school for their children, junior high school, high school has been a good school, and after the college entrance examination, and then help the child to find what kind of professional to study in order to use the relationship to find a job, wait until after finding a job, feel almost, buy a house for the child, mobilize relatives and friends to introduce the child to the girlfriend, and then take the money out to do the marriage for the child, the marriage is done well to raise the child, and finally help the child with grandchildren.

You have to control his whole life, and you also need him to have a kind of self-control to face difficulties, and this paradox is again.

Isn't this man in the third cage where he is?

In fact, he knows what kind of person he should become, very clear, but some families have too high expectations, which is not allowed.

Especially for the only child, if you don't tell him a very specific goal, this person is going to collapse.

In fact, high requirements are only for themselves, not for others.

The child knows very well where his goal is, but he also knows in his heart that he does not have this ability.

So if you think about it, isn't he tangled to death?

This is how the rat feels in the third cage.

That's what I'm going to talk about today, I hope that after reading this article, parents or teachers can re-understand what this generation really needs?

Of course, if you happen to be an only child in this era, you can also observe some subtle changes brought to you by the environment from another perspective.

END

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