In this world, perhaps many parents treat their children with the right path. Parents summarize their own life experiences from the pits they have stepped on in life and the pain they have experienced in growing up. In the treatment of their children, do their best to help them not make mistakes, and hope that their future will be smoother and happier.
However, everyone has their own cognitive limitations, which often come from the environment in which they grew up, from the life they experience, and from genetic inheritance. There are no two people who are exactly the same, and when we think according to our own ideas, we take it for granted to our children, but we don't know, sometimes, we make a big irreparable mistake.
The novel "Silent Confession" tells such a story. It is the debut work of the American writer Wu Qishi, and as soon as the novel was published, it swept through the lists of Europe and the United States. In the novel, the protagonist and his wife are highly intelligent and harmonious families, and they try their best to raise their daughters, but in the end, they end up in a tragic failure, which makes people sigh endlessly.
The first sentence of the novel reads: Lydia is dead. Bring people into suspense at once. The novel tells the story of the events. Tell us that everyone has their own life path to go, and parents' excessive attention and expectations for their children will often be a heavy burden for their children. At the same time, when parents shift the center of gravity of love to a certain child, it is often all the children in the family who are hurt.
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The novel covers the growth and change of mother Marilyn and father James in a large area, so that we can understand one thing: everyone is inevitably affected by the original family and the environment in which they grew up, which in turn affects the way they treat their children. If Marilyn is most influenced by her native family, James is most affected by her surroundings.
Marilyn is an American, and at the age of 3, her father left her mother, who had to go out to work as a home economics teacher in a secondary school and raise her daughter alone. In her mother's life, her ideal is to take good care of her husband and children, which is the value of her entire life. When Marilyn fell in love with her teacher, James from the East, when she was in college, she was so strongly opposed by her mother that she did not interact with her mother and daughter for eight years. Eight years later, her mother died. The mother had placed her hopes for happiness on her husband and daughter, but in the end, the husband slept next to other women, and the only daughter did not contact her for many years, and she died alone. As Marilyn describes her mother in the novel: "She is like a poor fly trapped in this empty little house".
James is an Oriental, harvard graduate, and he worked as a teacher at an American university. When he was a child, his father came to the United States to work odd jobs in the name of others, at the bottom of society. James has excellent academic performance since he was a child, but because of his oriental appearance, he has been ostracized and suppressed by the people around him everywhere, which is the most unbearable memory of his life. After getting married, he hopes that his daughter Lydia must integrate into the surrounding environment, must follow the current, and only then will he have a sense of security and the happiness he wants.
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First, the mother is missing, so that the daughter's sense of security is lacking
After the death of her mother, Marilyn gave her the opportunity to rethink herself. After the funeral, she decided to stop focusing on her husband and children like a mother, and she wanted to revive her youthful dream of becoming a doctor. She studied medicine in college because she got married and didn't finish her studies. Now, she's going to continue her college homework. After renting the house, she did not leave a word for the family and disappeared. However, after eight weeks of running away, because of the incomparable longing for her husband and two children, coupled with the discovery that she was pregnant again, her physical discomfort had to give up her ideals and return to a warm and repressive family.
The disappearance of her mother has made her daughter Lydia feel insecure. She was a well-behaved child, and in her opinion, her mother left the family because she did not do well enough in many aspects, which made her angry. So, when her mother came home, when happiness came back to her, she cherished it so much that she vowed not to make her angry again, and she wanted to fulfill all her wishes. To everything her mother had arranged for her, she would answer: yes, yes, yes. This led to her long time can not really communicate with her parents, parents do not understand the heart of their daughters at all.
When a child is a child, if the relatives who take care of him leave, it will form a great insecurity in the child's heart, and sometimes, this insecurity will last a lifetime. For many parents, they think their children are small, don't know anything, and don't think there's anything wrong with them doing so. Marilyn in the novel would never have thought that when she ran away once, her daughter learned to suppress her heart, and did not dare to express her true thoughts in front of her, so that they lost the opportunity to communicate.
Second, the parents' excessive expectations are the straw that crushes the children
Lydia inherited her mother's blue eyes and her father's black hair, while her brother Ness and sister Hannah looked like her father, so Lydia became the darling of her parents. The parents are convinced that Lydia will be able to achieve the dreams they could not achieve when they were young, and become their most proud child. They gave all their best love to Lydia, and Ness and Hannah were insignificant in their eyes.
The mother, who disappeared and returned, no longer willing to be a housewife, wants to help her daughter achieve her ideals, the novel reads: "She will devote the rest of her life to guiding Lydia, sheltering her, like nurturing ornamental roses, helping it grow, supporting it with a wooden stick, and making its stalk perfectly shaped." Unlike Marilyn's ideas, James wanted Lydia to go with the flow and fit in—two different demands stemming from a major flaw in their lives.
They do this, like many parents in life, what they lacked when they were teenagers, wanted their children to get; their own unattainable ideals, wanted their children to complete. They hope that the tragedy they have experienced will not be repeated in their children, and that children should have a more brilliant life. However, the wrong perception of life leads them to a wrong path.
Third, other children who are neglected are equally miserable
When their parents focused on Lydia, they had no time to take care of Ness and Hannah, nor did they understand the whole process of their inner ups and downs. The lack of love brings a different reflection to everyone. For his part, He was anxious to leave the family to pursue his dreams, to leave everyone and everything behind. For her sister Hannah, "years of thirst for love have sharpened her, and she's like a hungry dog, constantly raking her nostrils to catch even the faintest aroma of food." ”
For a person who lacks the love of his parents since childhood, there will be a big gap in his heart, and the pursuit of love will become the ultimate goal they will chase in their lives. This kind of girl is particularly prone to form a "sucking physique", and a little love from a man will make them grateful and satisfy them. They need to feel secure in love, and when they grow up, they need to constantly ask for love from the relationship, and once they don't get it, it will be very painful.
When a child who lacks love grows up, he will form another opposite trait, that is, the rejection and resistance to love. Because in the process of growing up, they did not feel the feeling of love, could not understand love, and could not show love. In the face of love, it is often sensitive and suspicious, and in other ways it is prone to rebellion, self-reliance and emotional instability.
Write at the end:
Everyone grows up in a different environment, the experience is unique, in some ways, cognition is affected and constrained by their own growth environment, and sometimes, abandoning this mistake, but making another mistake. As a parent, we must constantly reflect on ourselves, communicate with our children as much as possible, understand their voices, and respect their ideas.
In the novel, the parents lose their minds in anger after their daughter commits suicide, and the husband and wife hurt each other. However, after painstaking reflection, they realize their mistakes and realize that the other party seems to be strong, but in fact they have a vulnerable side. Life goes on, there is no otherwhere but to move forward. They need to soothe each other, heal each other, rely on each other for warmth, they need to heal both sides with love, and with love, to make up for the mistakes made in the other two children.
Yes, reflecting in pain, being born again in despair, man, is slowly maturing in this way. It's just that sometimes, the mistakes made in parenting are difficult to turn back once they are cast. What we have to do is to get out of the cognitive limitations formed over the years, get out of the harm brought to us by the original family and the growth environment, improve ourselves, and treat children and love them with a new cognition.