The parents' discouragement behavior is heritable, and "lying flat" is the child's inner awakening and protest
Recently, "why are my parents so discouraged" has aroused heated discussions, from young people in their teens and twenties to middle-aged people in their forties and fifties, everyone seems to have been discouraged by their parents. Some people say that the strange thing about Chinese parents is that sharing happiness with them will disappear. Talk to them about their troubles, and their troubles will be doubled. This phenomenon reflects the contradiction between young people and their parents, and also exposes the parent-child relationship that is full of pain and helplessness in some families. Tencent Parenting's "Children Are Not Depressed" series invited Mr. Li Haoying, Vice President of the Education Innovation and Evaluation Branch of the China Future Research Association, Director of the China Family Education Association, and Lin Ju, the founder of the original family of Huajing, and Teacher Lin Ju, who specializes in treating children "lying flat", to conduct in-depth discussions on the Chinese-style parent-child relationship.
Core Ideas:
Parents are disappointed by maintaining the mindset of previous eras, seeing their children as tools that must be developed.
Parents will bring the trauma of the original family to their children, and to improve the parent-child relationship, they need to heal themselves first.
In the era of material development, spiritual needs are getting more and more attention, and parents' educational concepts need to be changed.
Parents should generalize learning and focus on the development of other traits such as their children's thinking, rather than focusing only on homework and grades.
It is a habit to be easily discouraged when speaking, and parents need to develop new habits if they want to change, consciously adhere to it.
There are two tools for emotional management, one is to record your mood every day and continue benign emotions; The second is to perceive your emotions and adjust them through deep breathing.
Q: From life choices to eating a meal and dyeing your head or wearing a piece of clothing, you may be subject to unconscious scrutiny and comments by your parents, and many of these comments focus on negative evaluations. How to view the phenomenon of discouraged parents? Why do our parents habitually send such negative information to their children?
Li Haoying: There are many parents who love to be happy. Take my personal experience, two days ago, I also became one of the parents of the disappointment. Our children participated in the performance of the opening ceremony, and after the performance, they were very happy to take photos and take photos with us. I wasn't so excited at the time, and the child could definitely tell that I wasn't as excited as her. I think this is the most typical performance of disappointment, can not empathize with others, this can be called numb disappointment. Other parents show a kind of strangulation. For example, my niece's child finished reading a book and wanted to share it with her, said that she interrupted the first half, and accused the child of doing something else before finishing his homework. This will cause the child to not communicate with the parents later, which will also cause a barrier to parent-child communication.
We like to pick thorns because only when we can point out the shortcomings of others can we satisfy the superiority of being a good teacher, obtain spiritual satisfaction and self-affirmation. The previous generation of parents has this habit, so only after parents have this habit, will they feel that they are elders and have a strong sense of superiority. Shaped by this combination of physiogenetic and environmental factors, the learned evaluations we obtain become negative.
If you want to get rid of this negative evaluation, you need to practice in reverse. Nowadays, most people will make negative evaluations, which are shaped by personal factors, including genetic factors, learned factors, and the negative evaluation environment of the whole society. For example, as soon as he entered the door, he was said "Oh, why did he come back so late today", in fact, what he wanted to express meant "I will worry about you if you come back late", and they did not express his feelings in a positive way, but in a way of accusation and complaining. Therefore, we must first maintain an objective attitude to accept, everyone has a negative evaluation, and no one should blame anyone.
Lin Ju: With the rapid development of the economy, we have no worries about eating and drinking. However, some parents have not healed the trauma of their original family, and still live in an era of material poverty and spiritual poverty. In those days, man had only one goal - to live. Work hard and study hard to survive, other things don't make sense. So we all become tools and don't enjoy life. We always judge others in a negative way, and this has to do with it.
In the age of material poverty, people have to provide for their families, and the instrumentalization of people will force children to precocious and demand children by adult standards. In the past, the family was very poor, and the child had to feed chickens at the age of two, farm at the age of four, now he has to memorize a hundred Tang poems at the age of six, and he has to take the first place in the exam at the age of ten, and this thinking is continued. So where does negation come from? The child is only two years old, but the parents hope that he can do the work of six years old at the age of two and the work of sixteen years old at the age of sixteen, which is why we make people instrumental and alienated, and demand people in the direction of precocious maturity, so denial becomes inevitable.
There is a saying that the children of the poor will head the family early, and we still think this is positive, in fact, China's GDP has developed rapidly, but our spirit is still stuck in the era of the original family. We still regard children as tools to get into good schools and get good jobs, so we are negative for children. We were not allowed to grow up slowly, nor did we think about whether children could become "waste" in the secular definition, we believed in our bones that children must become talents and become good tools. We grow up in denial, so when we grow up, we get used to this mode of thinking: first, people must be tools; Second, according to the standards of tools, if the child is unqualified, it must be denied. Now many children lie flat, lying flat is a protest against being used as a tool, which is also the awakening of children.
Q: What kind of educational anxiety do parents reflect behind this phenomenon? What to think about this educational anxiety?
Li Haoying: If serious study is regarded as a tool for survival, it is obviously a matter of life and death. We say that by learning the Guangzong Yaozu and flying to the top, it is limited to one road. We are now at this stage where only great material abundance can we change our mind-set and see work as a secondary means of acquiring material things before enjoying life's leisure life.
It is particularly easy to narrow learning and call school culture classes learning. Learning the usefulness theory and learning the uselessness theory is also a manifestation. If we understand learning in the way of Confucius, that is, people are learning every day, and we now also advocate lifelong learning, going to learn square dance after work, and not queuing up at the University for the Elderly, which shows our enthusiasm for learning. If our children can understand from an early age that learning is the improvement of intelligence, the growth of rational thinking, and the cultivation of curiosity, rather than the improvement of grades, then we can expand the definition of learning. Learning can train you to become a whole, independent person, able to survive independently, contribute to others and society. And if you narrow the definition of learning, it is easy to fall into anxiety. Just staring at the roll score is a few perfect scores, which is also a kind of destruction for children.
Lin Ju: The survival rule of having a good education and a good job has been deeply solidified in our minds. This survival rule was useful in the eighties and nineties, and the college entrance examination acceptance rate is much higher now than it was then. The development of artificial intelligence will also cause many people to lose their jobs. Many of our current educational concepts are backward and lag behind the development of productive forces by a large margin. Now the development space of individuals is larger than ten years ago, but our thinking is still stuck in that only reading is a way out. Therefore, we still feel that we must read well as a survival concept, and think that education is to serve the survival of the present.
Children suitable for social development after 20 years are not necessarily children who read well, but often "lying flat" children, these children have healed themselves, enriched themselves, cultivated themselves, and have more room for development in the future, and can move forward with long-term motivation. In the days to come, people's mental health is an increasingly important issue. If the child is pushed forward by the "chicken baby" and has no intrinsic motivation, then he will also lie flat in the future. There is no existential crisis, what way to educate children, if it is always a way of intimidation and threat, one day the child finds that civilization has advanced, the survival crisis is lifted, people do not have to work hard for survival, but for their own inner needs, then they will suddenly find that the inner world is barren.
Q: What are the main aspects of the impact of parents' unhappy behavior on the parent-child relationship or the growth of children? What advice can you give to parents who love to be disappointed?
Li Haoying: We must maintain respect and awe for children's thoughts, and look at children's growth with a developmental perspective, and children are an independent and increasingly flourishing life. Never look at your child qualitatively. If you use this negative emotion to communicate with your child, you will label your child. Once labeled, it is the Rosenthal effect, which qualifies the child's lifelong cultivation.
Parents should reflect on whether they want to cultivate self-esteem and confidence or children with low self-esteem when they say things to blame. In addition to frequent provocations, parents also have conditions, which are actually threats to intimidate children and destroy their sense of security. If the child has learned helplessness and low self-esteem since childhood, and is worried that his parents will scold and be hated by others, this will affect the child's social interaction, future mate selection and work.
Don't forget your original intention. As parents, you should think about the moment of joy when your child is born, think about whether you want to cultivate an independent, optimistic and confident child, or a child with a timid and pessimistic inferiority. If you set your own mission and educational goals, you must think twice and control your mouth. The mouth cannot be opened casually, especially with emotions, the parents' mouth greatly affects the family atmosphere.
Q: Many times it is the discouragement caused by the parents' failure to heal the trauma of the original family, can parents realize that it is because of the impact of this series of relationships or the tension of the parent-child relationship?
Li Haoying: It is extremely difficult for people to achieve self-consciousness in the production of various emotions. There are three ultimate philosophical questions: Where did you come from, where are you going, and what are you going to do? A person's whole life is a process of finding himself. If you can realize that it's your problem, then everything will be fine. But it is not a simple problem that is easy to find, and it is also extremely difficult to cultivate. There are many social problems that stem from the family, and parents must be soberly aware that children not only inherit height, appearance, but also IQ, emotional intelligence, mental abundance and pathology.
Lin Ju: There is a very popular word called path dependence, and path dependence is the greatest attachment of human beings. It is particularly difficult to get rid of path dependence, which is the first need of human nature from the perspective of human nature, and it is difficult to break the sense of security.
Q: Recently, the "only daughter of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai" has also been the object of heated discussion on the Internet. In the understanding of netizens, the "only daughters of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai" have a good life, grow up with the support of their parents' wealth and emotions, and have a smooth life. The envy of the "only daughters of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai" to some extent reflects some of the lack of parent-child relationships. How do you view this phenomenon?
Lin Ju: I don't think we can look at the problem from the surface, they are materially rich, but whether they have kept up spiritually is a problem. Many children are actually orphans with both parents, although there are parents and parents, but parents do not understand the child's heart, and always pay attention to the child's behavior. These children are indeed well-fed, but their hearts are still barren. Spiritual abundance and material abundance are two concepts. From the point of view of education, the most important thing is spiritual prosperity, not material prosperity.
Li Haoying: Now there is a kind of envious gaze in society, which is more than a manifestation of people's worship of money or advocating wealth. I have seen many children who really live in such a family, in fact, their mental deprivation, including why they are particularly willing to find Chinese after going abroad, willing to buy famous brands, live with boyfriends and girlfriends, etc., in fact, he does not have independent living ability or even independent emotions. So we don't evaluate why society is envious, I only tell you with such an individual case: only you know whether the shoe fits or not.
Q: We see many "unhappy" scenes, parents often ignore their children's actions due to work exhaustion, and sometimes bring the work difficulties to the family, can you provide parents with some tips for emotional management?
Li Haoying: First of all, on the issue of emotional transfer, each of us parents must first test whether they are adults, and the sign of maturity is to be able to control their emotions and behaviors. If you bring home the emotions of work, then it is a giant baby state. If you realize that you are not mature, you need to develop yourself first.
There are two good tools for emotional management, one is to record your mood from morning to night every day, and recall the three good things that happened in the day before going to bed every day, and derive a continuous benign emotion; The second is to perceive your emotions, if your breathing increases, your heartbeat increases, and your brain is hot, you have to know that I'm going to start going crazy. Learn abdominal breathing and practice deep breathing. Under normal circumstances, our breathing is about 17 times a minute, and if we breathe deeply, it is 4-6 times a minute. When people want to be angry, it takes 4-6 seconds from emotion to language or behavior, and deep breathing takes about 10 seconds. When you realize that you want to get angry, take a deep breath and cut off the neurotransmitter that wants to get angry, and then the mood is calm.
Family education is a complex science, there are no systematic teaching materials, professional teachers, assessment standards, and parents need to practice carefully. One of my books is Good Habits Reshape the New Brain. Mr. Ye Shengtao has a saying: "Education is actually very simple, it is to form habits". It is actually a habit to be easily discouraged, criticized, and blamed when speaking. As long as you are determined to change and let new habits develop, the brain will be reshaped. This requires daily practice, habits, and conscious perseverance.
Lin Ju: It is very common for parents to come home feeling very tired and annoyed and do not want to pay attention to their children. But to remind everyone that when you are in a good mood and in good health, you also don't want to pay attention to your child, such as accompanying your child for twenty minutes and panicking, and you have to find a stubble to look at your mobile phone. This reflects the parents' reluctance to connect with their children, and the parent-child connection is empty. Probably because the previous generation was busy and did not connect since childhood, such a continuation was produced. True connection is heart-to-heart. The child lies flat and does not connect with anyone, reflecting the trauma left by the parents' native family. The child loves us very much, but we don't really understand him. As long as the child's heart is together, healing happens instantly. You change one point and the child grows one point, and if you change ten points, the child grows ten points. When the connection of your heart is no longer empty, your children will change and your family will change with it.
Guests of this issue:
Fang Ling|Roundtable host, lecturer of science popularization of the Chinese Psychological Society
Li Haoying丨Vice President of Educational Innovation and Evaluation Branch of China Future Research Association, Director of China Family Education Society
Lin Ju丨Founder of the original family of Huajing, specializing in treating children "lying flat"
Finishing: Liao Xi Mian
Reviewed: Cai Juan