A child's sense of security comes from building a secure attachment relationship with his or her parents. With such a sense of security, children will dare to actively explore the outside world, and children who are insecure are prone to psychological problems.
Studies have shown that if the relationship between husband and wife is tense and often quarrels, it will affect the child's ability to read, understand, calculate and logically think. In this way, the child's ability will be worse than that of his peers, which is more likely to have psychological problems such as anxiety, inferiority, and stress, and serious social barriers and even violent tendencies.
In October 2014, Hunan Satellite TV launched a refreshing and heart-wrenching program "First Grade". Through the window of "First Grade", we can fully observe the thrilling life of children. After obtaining the consent of the parents of primary school students and the school, the program team installed more than 100 cameras to photograph the children's lives for 24 hours, so there were many unexpected discoveries.
The show aired to the third episode, Ma Moumou is undoubtedly the most attention-catching child. In my opinion, Ma Moumou is the one who wants to be the best and most eager to be recognized among many children, but why does he end up being the child who creates the most problems, the least liked by his classmates, and the most headache for teachers? The fundamental reason may lie in the lack of the necessary sense of security and value in his heart.
Psychological research has found that children who lack inner security often have strong aggression, and Ma Moumou is undoubtedly a more aggressive child in the program, and his aggression is reflected in two aspects: language and body movements.
In the first episode, he called his classmates "fools", "crying faces", "a bunch of idiots", and even called the teachers "ugly" in the infirmary; in terms of body movements, he often competed with his classmates for things and fought. In the third episode, he also used a rolling pin to punch Li Haoyu's head out of a bag.
On the surface, he is arrogant and domineering, but in fact, his heart is weak and uneasy, the most direct embodiment is that in the second program, when he was in the language class, Ma Moumou had a plastic bag on his head, and his reason was afraid of his classmates sneaking up on him. When Ma Moumou always gets along with his classmates around him with this vigilant gaze, it is easy to think that others are unfriendly and want to hurt him, and he needs to protect himself by attacking others and eliminate his potential danger, which is actually a manifestation of insecurity.
Ma Moumou's lack of value in his heart is also the psychological reason for his growth problems, and his performance in this regard is also obvious. For example, when he was looking for treasure in the first episode, he lost himself and kept saying, "I've lost, everyone else has found a lot of things." When he was a little teacher in the third episode, he said nervously: "Anyway, no one is on the same team as me..." Stupid to die, sure enough, just like me.." It's all a sign of not being confident, feeling worthless, and not being good enough. This sense of worthlessness also prompted him to have the mentality of being competitive and winning everything, because he needed to fill the void of valuelessness in his heart with various successes, so he was afraid of failure and calculated gains and losses.
Why does Ma Moumou have such a problem? In addition to the factors of his innate temperament, we should pay more attention to his family education. In the program, Ma Moumou's mother said that in the time when her son was born more than a year ago, the family changed six nannies, which is actually a serious harm to the child's sense of security. Because security requires stable attachment relationships and attachment objects, and the nanny is like a marquee changing back and forth, the child constantly experiences the anxiety of separation from the familiar nanny and the pain of adapting to the strange nanny, how can a sense of security be established?
Ma Moumou's mother attributed the reason for changing nannies to the naughtiness of the child, and the real reason may be that she herself is an insecure mother, which can easily lead to her distrusting the nanny, just as she suspects that the class teacher Chen Xuedong does not like her son and will definitely abandon him.
Similarly, the problem of Ma Moumou's sense of worthlessness can also be found in his mother's body. For example, in the third program, she emotionally blamed Chen Xuedong emotionally, she knew the problem of Ma Moumou, but she could not accept the blunt words of the intern class teacher Chen Xuedong. As she put it, "The way you express it makes us feel like we can't even lift our heads in front of you." "Ma Moumou's usual performance is actually the same as his mother, when he is frustrated, experiences failure or is denied, he often shows anger, aggression, emotional loss of control and other behaviors.
Although many people on the Internet do not like Ma Moumou's behavior, we need to know that his heart is actually panicked and weak. What touched me the most was that when he was a little teacher in the third program, he said nervously: "I will only tell scary stories..." How much fear should a child who can only tell scary stories have in his heart!
In real life, there are many children like Ma Moumou, who need to be understood, empathized, and given the right love and education.
How can I help my child build a sense of security?
This requires parents to be able to feel, understand, and respond positively to their children's inner needs.
Children who grow up in a harmonious family have a stable sense of security, a sense of belonging, an optimistic personality, self-confidence, honesty, and will take a positive response to difficulties. Children whose parents are tense, have many family conflicts, and even have broken family relationships may lack inner needs such as warmth, warmth, happiness, and happiness.
This article is excerpted from Sun Yunxiao's book "Parent-Child Relationship : 12 Ways to Make You a Good Parent in the Eyes of Your Child"
Sun Yunxiao
Chief expert and researcher of family education at China Youth Research Center
Vice Chairman of the Family Education Guidance Committee of the Ministry of Education
Distinguished Professor of Capital Normal University
The Feeling of Life