If there is a problem with the child's body, who is most anxious? It's often mom. If the child is always unwell, the mother, out of the instinct of maternal love, feels anxious for the first time and takes careful care of the child, which is completely understandable. Of course, in some families, the father plays this role, but it is relatively rare.
However, as the child grows up, if the parents do not have the consciousness to reduce this anxiety, and still take care of the child's living and eating in every detail, overprotective, the child is prone to mental and psychological problems, being teased for "Ma Bao Man", "Ma Bao Girl", and even gender dysphoria, sexual orientation non-mainstream and other problems may occur.
The other day, we launched a video that analyzes this phenomenon and offers several suggestions.
In the video, we mentioned a junior high school boy we saw who was weak and sick, a frequent visitor to the hospital, and his mother broke his heart for his health. Coupled with his short stature, his mother was worried that he would be easily injured if he played with boys, so she asked him to play with girls more.
Coupled with other negative factors in his growth, the boy's personality gradually became timid, sensitive and suspicious, and many classmates laughed at him, and even several boys bullied him very seriously. His mother did not help her son deal with these conflicts in a timely and effective manner, but always turned big things into small things, and asked his son to ignore them.
The boy gradually developed severe depressive symptoms and deliberately curried favor with others in order to avoid bullying. He also gradually developed gender dysphoria, a great dislike of his reproductive organs, and a desire to be a girl because then he would no longer be bullied by boys.
Image from the Internet
But even so, his parents still did not understand him, and while continuing to overprotect him, they accused him of thinking of "wanting to be a girl", and the parent-child relationship was seriously broken, and his condition became more and more serious.
Therefore, as parents, we must have the awareness of "guiding children to enhance their self-care ability". As children grow, parents must also grow up in the way they educate their children, and they can no longer be as all-encompassing as when children were infancy.
In fact, the vast majority of parents have this sense of "letting go". However, some children have a lot of illness when they are young, parents are afraid all day, and parents are anxious and eager to settle things as soon as the children have any wind and grass. Some parents lack parental attention and care when they are young, isolated and painful; So when they had children, they secretly decided that they couldn't let their children suffer like that again.
This part of parents should be aware that they have a certain superimposed psychological trauma, forming an "obsession" that "wants to protect their children and help their children settle everything", which is a pathological conditioned reflex. After being aware, rationally analyze what things must be gradually taught to learn to do by themselves, such as dressing and folding quilts, doing a good job of personal hygiene and other self-care; What are the situations that are controllable, can respect the child's wishes, let them deal with it on their own first, and learn lessons in practice; And which are more critical and need parental leadership and assistance.
Many children do not have problems in the day school stage, because the living and eating are still helped by adults, they only need to study. However, when they enter boarding school, they are very uncomfortable at once, and if they fail to solve the problem, they are likely to develop into adjustment disorders.
And the interpersonal relationship in the boarding school is more complicated, and the children at this stage are relatively more evaluated in the unexpected world, if the child has poor self-care ability, appears unassertive or relatively naïve, it is easy to be ridiculed and bullied, and then secondary learning disabilities, depression and other mental and psychological disorders.
The junior high school boy we talked about above, he was often bullied by several male classmates, one of whom was bullied for 2 hours, and those male classmates even urinated on him and insulted him with his genitals. Since then, he has become extremely disgusted with male genital organs, including his own.
In addition, many teenagers are now exposed to "LGBTQ+" culture from an early age, and they are not resistant to homosexuality and transgenderism. When they themselves have the idea of becoming gay, or wanting to be another gender, they don't think it's abnormal, on the contrary, they search for a lot of materials and information, thinking about how to achieve the goal.
Like the junior high school boy above, when his parents brought him to us, he had already had a homosexual experience and tried to take estrogen in the hope of preparing for sex reassignment surgery. His parents were shocked and completely unacceptable.
If parents are always overly anxious about the safety and health of their children, there may also be a situation - the children themselves are prone to excessive anxiety in these aspects, always uncontrollably worried that something bad will happen, feel that there is danger everywhere, and if the situation is serious, it is likely to appear obsessive-compulsive disorder.
In addition, some children are very sensitive to safety, and it is possible that they have experienced major traumatic events when they were young, such as physical injuries, privacy leaks, etc., and the patient we have seen is a typical example.
Of course, if the child is indeed weak, weak in self-care ability, and frequent situations, it is difficult for parents to be anxious and want to ignore it, and it is unrealistic to let go all of a sudden, but it may cause the child to suffer greater psychological damage.
This part of the child needs to really enhance physical fitness and immunity, and enhance self-confidence. Parents can consciously guide their children to establish one or two sports hobbies, which not only exercise physical fitness, but also cultivate the spirit of hard work and tenacity.
In 2012, the education method of "Eagle Dad" He Liesheng was hotly debated on the Internet, and he let his 4-year-old son "run naked" in the snow at minus 13 degrees, and many netizens criticized this extreme education method. Later, the eagle father explained that his son was born prematurely and had many complications at birth, and the doctor said that the child may have cerebral palsy dementia in the future.
"Eagle Dad" He Liesheng, the picture comes from the Internet
According to the thinking of many parents, children are born weak, then the day after tomorrow should be more cared for, don't touch the injury. But Eagle Dad's thinking is completely different, he has developed a series of "fierce" education plans, educating children in an almost cruel way, hoping to stimulate the child's potential, especially to make up for the child's congenital lack of physique, running naked in the snow is one of them.
To be honest, I don't approve of his extreme education method, but his awareness of cultivating children's independence and enhancing physical fitness is worthy of recognition.
I hope that parents who are always anxious about their children's health and safety should solve the root causes of anxiety in time, master more rational and scientific education methods in time, and do not inadvertently "harm" their children because of "overprotection".