Xie Gang, PhD in Psychology: How to let children win at the \”starting line of life\”?

The starting line for children’s mental health is harmonious family relationships. Let’s start with my own family. My brother and sister, who are four and two years younger than me, unfortunately both have severe mental health issues, both late-teenage onset, and still require care from others, unable to handle the stress of life, let alone It’s time to realize your personal potential. Summarizing the reasons for their situation really encompasses all the discoveries in educational psychology over the past few decades. First, their basic psychological needs were not met as they grew up. A child\’s first basic need is a \”sense of belonging\”, and a harmonious family is the source of a child\’s strength. An important part of mental health is the ability to \”handle the stress in life\”, which is also an important part of what we often call emotional intelligence. Every couple who can live in harmony not only has an emotional foundation, but also can think about problems from the perspective of others, is tolerant, patient, can communicate, and can manage emotions. We all get angry sometimes. Anger is neither good nor bad, but how we express it can be good or bad. Children living in harmonious families receive the most vivid \”mental health\” lessons every day. They know how to deal with stress and how to resolve conflicts. These are all children observe and learn in family life. My parents had small quarrels every day and big quarrels, and the quarrels were most severe during holidays. Living in a family with discordant parents: Repeated exposure to an environment full of conflicts and inconsistent demands will increase children\’s insecurity, weaken their ability to control emotions and behaviors, and make them more likely to feel fear, depression, and anger. Long-term conflict between parents, whether divorced or not, is positively related to children\’s anxiety and problem behaviors, and negatively related to health. The longer a child is exposed to conflict, the more negative emotions and corresponding behavioral reactions, such as aggressive behavior, will be; the intimate relationship in adulthood will be more fragile and divorce will be more likely. If there really is a starting line in life, the starting line for children is really the relationship between parents. My younger brothers and sisters and I had already lost at the starting line. I clearly remember that my younger brother became ill when he was 18 years old. It was at that time that my mother ran away from home due to years of conflicts with my father. I didn’t know where she went for several months. I went to the hospital to visit my younger brother. He had hallucinations and shouted \”Mom\” at the door. He also asked me: \”I just want the whole family to live together. Is this too much to ask?\” A bad relationship between husband and wife will also directly affect parents and children. Children\’s interactions. Like my sister, I also feel very sorry. My father favors boys over girls. My name Xie Gang looks like a boy\’s name because it was chosen before I was born. After I was born, my dad didn\’t bother to change it when he saw that I was a girl. When my sister was born, her father turned around and left when he saw that it was a girl again, without even giving her mother food. So when my mother saw her, although she took care of her physically, she didn\’t have that connection and she didn\’t have that love. We talk about how important the initial attachment between a child and his mother is. In your child\’s infancy, you not only feed your child, but every look you give to your child, words you speak to him, and hugs convey to him \”You are important, the world is safe, and I will always be by your side.\” \”. In this way, the child willTrust the world and be full of hope for the future. My sister is missing this. When my mother was pregnant with my brother, my sister, who was just over one year old, was sent back to my father\’s hometown for nearly two years, so the relationship with my mother has always been cold. She has always had a distrust of the world around her. When she was finally working, she always suspected that others were always speaking ill of her, and she developed symptoms of schizophrenia. If you deprive children of their sense of autonomy and achievement, you are depriving them of the foundation of \”mental health.\” In addition to a sense of belonging, a sense of achievement and autonomy are also children\’s most basic psychological needs, because these directly affect how much potential the child can develop in the future. My younger brother has had poor learning ability since he was a child. If a child encounters a difficult problem, such as being unable to do his homework, his first reaction is likely to be to avoid it. Therefore, when he was in elementary school, his younger brother said he had a \”headache\” as soon as he did his homework. My father likes boys very much, so As soon as he said \”Headache\”, my father asked me to do it for him. He has been escaping like this and has no sense of achievement at all in his studies. There is nothing I can do well outside of class to feel confident. If a child cannot find activities that make him feel a sense of achievement and autonomy in all aspects, his \”mental health\” will have no foundation at all. My sister, on the other hand, is just the opposite. She is naturally gifted in art. The copying of paintings she made without a teacher in junior high school is similar to the works of art students I saw when I was an undergraduate. She can do it on her own without being taught by anyone. But her parents did not give her the opportunity to further her education and arranged for her to attend a vocational high school and then work in a shopping mall. Teacher Yu Minhong is also saying today that no matter what job you do, as long as it is a job you like, you will definitely have a sense of accomplishment and happiness in life, but she did not, and she did not use her own talents at work. This was a huge lack in my sister’s development. When I started working in 2000 and finally had the conditions to support her in developing her hobbies, she had been ill for six years and had been in and out of the hospital several times. Without strong guidance around me, I couldn\’t even persist in a few months of design courses, and I still don\’t know how big my \”personal potential\” is. Therefore, children have their own natural abilities and personality traits, and they need the acceptance and respect of their parents in order to establish a sense of achievement and autonomy. Otherwise, their mental health will be in great danger. Are you feeding your child’s mental health “junk food” every day? When I was working in an elementary school in California, a 12-year-old child came to our home and was a classmate of my eldest son. My son had just finished practicing the piano, and I asked him to play too. He said no with a gray face, because he felt that he was not as good at playing as my son. I was very surprised because I knew that he played much better than my son. This kid is not being modest. He really feels that he doesn’t play well enough. Why? This child\’s father often beats his mother, and often hits and criticizes him. The interaction between parent and child is always negative. So children who are obviously excellent still feel that they are not good enough. No confidence. He views himself this way because he came to the conclusion from getting along with his father. Parents and children get along day after day, ultimately leaving an imprint on their children\’s memories. For example, I came to the United States in 1996, and it’s been 21 years now. Our family doesn’t celebrate Chinese New Year. Why?? Because when I think of New Year, I immediately think of my mother crying and my father shouting. I am still slowly overcoming it now. This is the power of memory. A student with a particularly high musical talent once told me: \”My sister and I will never touch the piano again in our lives. Because every time we see or think about the piano, what we think of is humiliation.\” Because their mother plays the piano. It was very good. Every time the sisters practiced, they could immediately tell something was wrong, so they were always looking for faults. This student\’s most profound memory is that one winter night, his sister refused to practice the piano despite being scolded, and was forced to stand in the cold yard by her mother. She was wearing slippers and very thin clothes. And she knelt in front of her mother, begging her to let her sister come into the house. This was her deepest memory of the piano. Although the mother’s intention in wanting her daughter to improve was good and she hoped that the child would persevere, the mother’s approach was wrong. Blind criticism and punishment will only make her daughter associate \”practicing\” with negative emotions. A large number of psychological studies have proven that whether it is teacher-student or parent-child interaction, children will be more effective when the ratio of encouragement and correction is maintained at 4:1 to 5:1. There is always something good about children playing the piano. If you point it out, child, you have been practicing such a difficult piece for more than a week. I really admire your perseverance. The child will be more willing and motivated to continue persevering. There is a father who says he cannot play the piano, but his two children really like playing the piano. Why? Because when they play the piano, the father will stand next to him, look at the child with envy and admiration, and then say that you play really well, and the child will like playing the piano. So we need to give our children as many positive memories as possible. How we treat our children every day, what we say, how we discipline them, how we look at them, etc., all become their memories and become food for their mental health. How to help children learn to face challenges and achieve success. Whether children can succeed in the future and fully realize their potential depends on resilience and perseverance in the face of difficulties. But when faced with difficulties and challenges, what affects whether children choose to persevere or give up, whether to fight for it or to retreat? Research by Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, shows that three reasons determine whether a child will be pessimistic or optimistic when facing difficulties and challenges: 1. When children grow up, they often hear and see their parents’ comments about Cause-and-effect analysis of daily life events In other words, if a child succeeds, parents always attribute it to the child\’s personal efforts or expertise, such as \”Your communication skills are so good, I am convinced by you!\” etc., and the child will slowly become better. An optimistic interpretation will be developed. 2. The way parents criticize their children when they fail. If a child fails, parents always attribute it to the child\’s personal mistakes and label him, such as \”You just have a poor memory!\”, \”Girls are not good at math!\”, etc. Children will gradually develop pessimistic explanations. I have met many parents at work. When their children make a mistake, they immediately exaggerate how bad the consequences will be in the future. For example, if a child just gets a math question wrong, he immediately says, \”If you build a house,Is it okay to make a decimal point mistake? It’s going to cost someone’s life! \”It is important to develop good study habits, but this reaction is too exaggerated! Do you dare to make mistakes again in the future? 3. Negative events occurred repeatedly in your early life, such as the death of a close family member when you were young, the divorce of your parents, or Venting negative emotions for a long time, etc. Without proper guidance, children will feel that no matter how hard they try, bad results will always occur and personal efforts will be useless, so they feel helpless and will be more likely to give up when encountering difficulties in the future. \”Learning for future growth\” or \”punishing for past mistakes\”? The two kinds of education are very different. When children perform well in all aspects, they usually do well. But after children make mistakes, they are already extremely sad, If we are afraid, disappointed, or frustrated, our children will be particularly impressed by our reactions, and the effect of discipline will be completely different. I remember that there were several boys in the high school where I worked who attacked a teacher on the Internet. After the school found out, everyone The parents of each student were called to the school to talk and were subject to suspension. When these boys were called to the office for a meeting, you could see that some of the parents were almost losing their composure. As you can imagine What will happen to them when they get home? But there is a father who is very calm. After the meeting, I asked him, why is your reaction different from other parents? He told me, who didn’t make mistakes when they were young? I talked to my children After this incident, he actually never attended this teacher\’s class. Just because other students were talking about this incident, he started to make fun of him. As a result, what he said was even worse and he got a more severe punishment. But The child has a very deep memory of this incident. He has learned to think twice before acting and not to follow what others say. So when a child fails, the attitude of the parents determines what the child learns from this incident. If we get angry, the child will If we want to resist us and argue with us, we will change our goal and focus on the conflict with our children, and we will miss the opportunity to learn from our mistakes. \”Learning for future growth\” or \”learning for the past\” \”Punishment for mistakes\”, different discipline concepts have a hugely different impact on children\’s mentality when facing mistakes or failures. The real free-range has a bottom line and no upper limit. Many parents ask me, are free-range children healthier mentally? I He said, it depends on how you view free-range children. A truly free-range child does not mean to just leave it alone. A true free-range child has a bottom line and no upper limit. For example, I give you the freedom to choose independently, but I have a bottom line. For example, I need you to be An honest person is a responsible person and a person who can persevere. With these bottom lines and no upper limit, this is true free-range care. The children raised in this way have stronger psychological quality because the children have autonomy. sense and freedom, and the right to choose. Imagine that someone is always monitoring you at work. When you do not do well, someone will immediately find out, point it out to you, and give you some criticism. In this case Could you be more motivated at work? Could you be more satisfied with your job? No way. Children need this kind of freedom too. They can’t control what time they go to school in the morning.We can’t control how much homework there is, so we should try to give our children as many things as they can choose in their lives. For example, his hobbies, interests, etc. You need to observe what your child likes and encourage him to try things that can bring out his strengths. Again, we have a bottom line. For example, children\’s health is very important, so there must be some kind of exercise, but what kind of exercise is it? Children can choose for themselves. Our pain often lies in the fact that we take too much responsibility for our children. Children have no sense of autonomy and cannot learn to take responsibility for themselves. To conclude, let’s return to the World Health Organization’s definition of mental health: dealing with stress in life, realizing your potential, working effectively, and contributing to the community. How do they apply to life? It is a husband-wife relationship that supports and cares for each other, and a parent-child relationship that respects each other. With these two things, the child will lay a solid foundation for mental health. Einstein once said: Education is what you retain after you have forgotten all the knowledge taught in school. Looking back, how much of the specific knowledge we learned during elementary school, junior high school, high school, college or even graduate school can we remember? What we ultimately remember are the mental health factors such as self-concept, stress reduction methods, and ability to withstand frustration that have the greatest impact on our present, future, work, and life during this process. I wish that our children can fully realize their potential, handle the pressures in life, and develop characters and behavioral habits that cannot be measured by scores as they grow up!