Is it advisable to raise children poorly? Allowing children to grow up to be people with strong values is the core of parenting

Southern Weekly

2024-05-17 05:00Posted on the official account of Guangdong Southern Weekly

Many people have heard the phrase "poor children and rich daughters", but they are not very clear about the outcome of poor children. And this ambiguity in the middle is precisely worthy of serious scrutiny. This is because some parents make the decision to raise their son poor without thinking about the consequences. In their hearts, they are full of the imagination of their son who was raised in poverty and became a pillar after being tempered. Unfortunately, this imagination is made up of soap bubbles.

A netizen told the story of a college senior, which is thought-provoking. The senior's father is a financial officer, and his mother is a teacher, such a family, the economic conditions are quite good, but his parents deliberately support him. He had no pocket money since he was a child, and he rarely bought clothes, all of which were worn by others. There was only one bed in my own room and almost no toys. When he was in college, his family only gave him 500 yuan a month for living expenses. He doesn't have a computer, and his mobile phone is left over from his parents. He went to work part-time to earn some money and took his parents to eat, but his parents said that since this is the case, he will no longer give living expenses. During his four years of college, he worked part-time in various catering enterprises. In order to save tuition, he didn't dare to enjoy himself, and the daily meal money was controlled within 20 yuan, and most of the shoes he wore were stalls, and the shoes were glued with glue when they were opened. Ironically, he lived a life of poverty but did not qualify as a poor student.

People who know him say that this senior has low self-esteem and has no friends. In his senior year of internship, he entered a company, and the female leader directly under him took a fancy to him, often took him to enjoy food, took him on business trips to Sanya, and fought for various benefits for him. After graduating from college, the senior became a regular and got a marriage certificate with this leader. His parents made a big fuss, but to no avail. The senior is only responsible for the alimony of 300 yuan per parent per month, and basically does not go back to visit his parents.

This story attracted a lot of followers from "people of the same kind". Some people, whose families are engaged in engineering, go to primary school in other places by themselves, have to take a hard-seat train for one night, from primary school to university, and the living expenses are accurately calculated, and there is no more. There are people whose parents have their own businesses and are very rich, but they often can't afford to eat at school. Some people can't get a McDonald's if they want to eat it, and they don't know the taste of McDonald's until they are 28 years old.

After reading these stories, I can't help but sigh that the sentence on the Internet, "Raising a boy in poverty destroys three generations", is really quite reasonable.

People's family circumstances are roughly divided into poor and rich, which is an objective condition, and children have no choice. The family conditions are very good, but the children are deliberately made to suffer, and they can't even meet the desire to eat McDonald's and buy a new pair of shoes, which is a big problem. In fact, as many netizens reflected, many people who grew up in a poor atmosphere have a big problem with their character development. Some people conclude that poor children have low self-esteem and even distorted hearts. Some people self-evaluate themselves as indecisive and irresponsible in the face of major decisions, and even when they are adults, this core has not changed. In the end, it is the child's mental health that is wrong.

A netizen said to himself that after experiencing poverty, he became very neurotic and often screamed. Some netizens said that they didn't dare to socialize, and no one even said what was in their hearts, and in front of people, he was a complete bar.

Why? Unrealistic and "off-the-beaten" poverty often makes children lose their sense of security, leading them to become materialistic and often engage in revenge consumption and activities to compensate themselves. In addition, the extreme depression brought about by poverty may make children become extremely selfish and self-conscious in order to survive and protect themselves, and they do not hesitate to take extraordinary measures for their own selfish interests.

In fact, there is no harm in sharpening the mind and making the child grow up, such as letting the child work part-time, go to the countryside to experience life, learn to do various housework, and have one or two skills. It's just that some proponents of the "poor" theory have turned "grinding" children into "tormenting" children, deliberately making children "suffer", messing up logical lines and concepts from the beginning, and causing the process and consequences to change. This is a heavy lesson.

It's not good to be poor, but it's good to be rich? Of course not. The family conditions are very poor, but they believe in "rich support", provide good material conditions for children beyond the standard, and cultivate little emperors and princesses, which is equivalent to directly feeding and abandoning, this issue is also worth reflecting on.

It can be seen that whether it is poor or rich, there are fatal problems, and neither is feasible.

Under normal circumstances, in fact, there is no need to define poor and rich, as long as it is normal. In other words, the family lives under whatever conditions, and neither deliberately raises the standard nor arbitrarily lowers the standard. When I was young, my father was the only one in the family who earned money in the hospital, and my mother worked as a farmer. Our family usually opens meat once a week, and on weekdays, we have coarse tea and light rice. Since our children knew that their parents had done their best to provide for their materials, they did not complain, but learned to pick up scrap copper and rotten iron on the road and pick herbs in the field as a living allowance since primary school.

Of course, parents bring their children who don't like to learn to the construction site to endure some hardships, and "force" them to know the joys and hardships of life, so as to dispel their willful thoughts, and this kind of education and guidance does not belong to "poor support".

In my opinion, parents and children face the truth of the family economy, live a life that meets the conditions of the family with a natural and tenacious attitude, and experience all kinds of trials of life, which is the most simple kind of home education. "Plain is true", children who grow up in this family atmosphere have a sense of boundaries, know how to advance and retreat freely, and are not easy to be radical and disorderly, so they are more conducive to their own growth.

Jumping out of the cognitive framework of poverty and wealth, we should see that the living conditions given by parents are only necessities for children in the stage of growth, and therefore cannot be blindly and permanently demanded.

In life, there are good and bad ones. Neither good nor bad is for nothing. If you want to live well, you must have ambition, courage, and hard work, not rely on your family. Eyes only staring at the pockets of their parents, only thinking about lying flat and consuming enjoyment, this kind of person is unlikely to have a good future.

Only by establishing the value of "being responsible for oneself" as soon as possible, being brave, self-disciplined, actively exploring, and always maintaining a high fighting spirit in the face of wind and rain and setbacks, can a person step out of the family's one-third of an acre, step out of his comfort zone, go to the real world outside, and grow into a towering tree. This should be the core of parenting.

(This article is only the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Kari-chi-hsien

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin