Don't chicken babies now, wait for your children to gnaw old in the future, right?

As a parenting blogger, I have always been a chicken baby, but recently, a few friends talked about the topic of "middle school entrance examination diversion", as soon as I heard that I was not a chicken doll, I was anxious, and I said: Now I am not a chicken baby, I can't get into key high schools in the middle school entrance examination, and I can't pass the university exam, so what should I do after that? Waiting for the baby to gnaw the old?

I can't get into college...

To be honest, I really couldn't accept that Little D didn't go to college a few years ago.

But the work of parenting bloggers also prompted me to exercise my "thinking constitution", and when I realized that I "absolutely could not accept" this matter, I reminded myself to ask a few more "whys" and try to sort out the real reasons behind it.

After a few years of thinking about it (yes, I thought about this question for a long time), I updated my bottom line of "absolutely unacceptable": I can accept that Little D will not go to college in the future, but I definitely cannot accept her gnawing at the old.

01

Distinguish between goals and means

Looking back at the process of asking myself:

Why do I have to go to university?

You can't go to college, you can't get a good job -- so why do you have to get a good job?

If you can't find a good job, you can't support yourself -- oh, what I can't accept is that my daughter "can't support herself."

Does that have to have a good job to support yourself? --The probability of having a good job to support yourself is higher

Can I definitely get a good job after going to college? -- Well-educated and more likely to find a good job 

Oh, what I really care about is not "going to college", but her ability to be independent in the future

Of course, the real thinking path is longer and there will be repetitions, but it is in these inquiries that I slowly figure it out myself.

When I say "it is absolutely unacceptable for children not to go to college", it seems undoubtedly categorical, but in fact I am confusing the goal and the means.

Why is it important to distinguish between things?

Because if we make it our goal for children to "go to college", then all our focus is on exams and grades, as if all efforts can be ended as long as "going to college", short-term and utilitarian.

Once education becomes such a "simple and crude" thing, we will be anxious, only concerned with "scores", but neglect "learning", in other words, we may unknowingly sacrifice something more important in the long term.

"Getting into college" is not a goal, just a means, and only one of the means, in fact, in the end, we all hope that children can be independent.

After you understand your goals, you have to ask yourself, how can you make your child have the ability to be "independent"?

02

Take responsibility for yourself

As long as you watch the social news, you will always hear the words, "Parents worked hard to provide you with education, you are now at home and do not work."

Gnawing the old used to be a rare phenomenon, but now it seems to be increasing, which is also a reminder that we should not default to "going to college" is equal to "self-reliance". Graduates of prestigious universities also rely on their parents when "giant babies" are "giants", which is really not what I want to see.

Ultimately, we need to help children learn to "take responsibility for themselves" from an early age.

Building self-disciplined children is a bit clichéd, but few people really understand what the opposite of self-discipline is?

For me, it is not laziness and lack of self-motivation, but "other discipline", I cannot decide anything, and I am managed and supervised all the time.

We are afraid that the child will not be conscious and unmotivated, so we adopt the method of "staring at people" to arrange the child's life to the fullest.

There are also such mothers around me, as long as they see their children "idle", they are uncomfortable; After completing the homework, you must continue to do it with additional weight; From the age of 1, it is "step by step" and has designed a "hard" path for children.

Such a path may indeed allow children to be admitted to college, or even good universities, but once external forces retreat, their "motivation" is likely to disappear.

"I've been admitted to college according to your requirements, what do you still want from me?"

When such words come out of the child's mouth, he is actually not wrong, the fault is that we mistakenly regard the "means" as the "goal" from childhood to adulthood.

"Child, we want you to have the ability to take responsibility for your own life."

When we take "independence" as the goal, then from eating when the child is young to accompanying homework, to the final college choice, we will always be vigilant and let the child realize that this is his life, and he needs to be responsible for himself, which is the key.

As a parent, I clearly understand that self-control is a scarce resource, and I have allowed Little D to do a lot of things since I was a child, not to overconsume self-control in daily small things, and waste the opportunity to really do big things.

At the same time, I also let Xiao D understand that he can do everything he wants, but there are "results" and "costs" behind every choice.

The specific method is so amazing, these three senses make children spontaneously want to get better

03

Self-awareness

Chen Jining, former president of Tsinghua University, once put forward a point that I am still deeply impressed by.

There are many "A-type students" on Tsinghua campus, but the "X-type students" that the future society needs most are "X-type students".

The so-called "A-type students" refer to those "good students" in the traditional concept, and their grades can always get "A".

Unlike "Type X" students, their grades are not necessarily top-notch, but they are willing to take risks of innovation and have the courage to try new things.

In the end, creating a "Type A student" for many adults is to satisfy their false sense of security. We ourselves are anxious about the future, and we can only cling to what we think of as "certainty".

If parents take "admission to college" as a certainty, they firmly grasp it, but this standard is not actually "perfect".

The iron rice bowl of a decade or two ago, many are now in danger, and the piano grade 10 certificate we had when we were children and the gold content now are no longer the same.

Can we imagine that 90% of the jobs that children who are currently in elementary school will not have now?

Every parent wants their children well, and rightly so. But when we talk about making children "excellent", we need to define the criteria of "excellent" first.

For me, a person's real "excellence" is a clear self-knowledge, without the need for external references, because there are better universities when admitted to college, better companies and better companies when they go to good companies, and there are millions of annual salaries.

"Self-awareness" is very abstract, and it is three sentences at the specific level of implementation:

When well done, look outside

When you do poorly, look back

Whether it's good or bad, ask yourself, are you comfortable and happy inside?

Such a child will not be arrogant, let alone self-eficious, "work hard for what he wants to do", this drive can last a lifetime, not just to "get admitted to college".

For specific methods, see Children with a big pattern, from an early age to establish a frame of reference perspective

04

Learn to learn

Harari, the author of A Brief History of Mankind, once said that the future of humanity should be prepared to reinvent itself every 10 years, throwing away its outdated knowledge, skills, experience, assumptions and connections, and starting over.

The same applies to education, where the world is changing and it is no longer possible to expect a definite path.

But no matter how the future changes, one thing is certain, people with the ability to learn will never be eliminated.

Learning to study, not learning to take exams, is something I particularly value.

Some time ago, I knew a teacher of an English tutoring class in Jiangsu, and she smiled and told me that she could not speak a word of English, but she had the ability to help junior high school children improve their English test scores.

I asked her how she did it? She said it was very simple, analyzing a large number of English test papers, dismantling each test point into formulas/recipes, teaching the recipes first and then cooperating with the brushing questions.

She said that she could not guarantee that the children she taught would have good English, anyway, the English test scores would definitely be high.

Although this example is extreme, we can also see shadows in our daily life, for example, we only care about how many questions the child brushes and how many books he reads, but he doesn't care about the question "will it be" and "understand" the book.

Little D is slower to learn new knowledge, and it seems that it takes longer for her to understand than other children can understand it.

I used to be anxious, always trying to catch up. But when I realized that I could accept Little D's "not going to college," I found that my focus changed.

What I am more concerned about is her learning strategy when learning this new knowledge point, whether her so-called "will" is true or false, and whether she can retell the methods she has learned.

Yes, this is very slow, parents also need courage, many times even teachers think, your family is okay, continue to move forward, but I often say, review again, consolidate again, it's okay to fall behind for the time being.

What I hope is that when my daughter faces those new technologies and technologies independently that even I can't imagine in the future, she can not panic, she can take her time, and she will always have that confidence in her heart:

I can learn, and once I learn it, I have a firm grasp, and it is no problem to fall behind for the time being.

For specific methods, see The difference between "learned" and "learned" is the difference between "learned" and "learned"

05

Write at the end

As I wrote this article, I was also thinking, is my answer related to "money"?

It is undeniable that for the baby in the mountains, killing thousands of troops, crossing a single-wood bridge, and being admitted to university may still be the fastest and most certain way to rewrite fate. To say, completely unrelated to "money", certainly not.

For most of our public readers, I am not writing this article to say that we don't want to go to college with small D, our children don't have to go to college, but I hope to remind each other that "how to do it" may be more important.

The real topic of education is how to help an ordinary child live a worthwhile, independent, self-consistent and happy life;

How to let children know "who I am", understand their abilities and passions, and then make "their own" choices.

Compared with standardized brushing questions, sending cram schools, pursuing grades, and being admitted to university, this requires wisdom and patience.

But I believe that as long as we define the real goal, we will have the confidence to say: "The world is a road, but we have to choose our own steps".