Things that seem meaningless to you are of great significance to your children!

I was chatting with a friend recently, and she talked about something about her 7-year-old daughter, which was very interesting. One night, after dinner, my daughter asked me if she could play with plasticine, and I said yes. At this time, her father spoke: She is already in elementary school, and she is still playing with plasticine. What fun is there? Come, let\’s learn the words together. My daughter refused and said: I don’t want to read now, I just want to play with plasticine. Her dad was a little angry: What’s the point of playing with plasticine? ! I was just about to say something to my daughter, but my daughter said loudly and loudly: This matter has no meaning to you, but it does mean something to me! At that time, I really wanted to kneel down for her. This kid told the essence of the matter in just one sentence. For a moment, my mother and I looked at each other and laughed. His father, on the other hand, was speechless and silent. After listening to this, I couldn’t help but sigh, today’s children are so smart and independent! When we were young, we didn’t dare to talk to our parents like this even if we had the guts! Rooney said something similar. Not long ago, when we went to a maternal and child store together, he fell in love with another toy. I refused and asked him, \”What\’s so fun about this toy?\” Then he told me word for word. It made sense: \”You don\’t think it\’s fun, but I think it\’s fun! Now I want to buy toys, not you.\” After hearing what he said, although I still didn\’t buy it for him, I felt that what he said was very meaningful. reason. Some things that seem meaningless and not fun in the eyes of adults are very meaningful and fun for children. If we only use adults\’ eyes and pragmatism to measure children\’s activities, It will kill the child\’s happiness and interest. Let’s talk about reading. Children’s early reading enlightenment is mainly based on fun and interesting picture books, so that children can feel happy when reading and fall in love with reading. The most important thing is to develop the habit of reading. But some Parents always want to teach their children knowledge or principles through reading, turning the originally joyful reading into a burden for their children. Not long ago, I wrote an article on how to choose good picture books (for details, see Stay away from junk books! Five principles to teach you how to choose good picture books!), and a parent left a message: Some of the current picture books have no central idea. Even adults can’t understand it, so what do you want your children to learn by pointing at it? Is a picture book that has no central idea and does not teach children any knowledge a meaningless book? Teacher Cai Chaoyang, known as the \”Spicy Chinese Teacher\”, once pointed out that what children need is precisely \”seemingly meaningless\” children\’s books. Children\’s literature critic Liu Xuyuan also believes that the focus of children\’s books should be pleasure. \”Happiness is what children before the age of seven or eight need most. Children do need cognitive readings, but parents don\’t need to pay too much attention. For some concepts, At a certain age, children will naturally understand. There is a critical period for the development of imagination (2-7 years old). The early childhood period is an important period to stimulate imagination and improve the spiritual level. The \’meaningless\’ in the eyes of adults, It may be very precious to children.\” \”Ross the Hen Goes for a Walk\” is probably the classic masterpiece of \”meaningless\” picture books. The whole book is just 44 words: Rose the Hen goes for a walk, She walked across the yard, around the pond, over the haystacks, past the millshop, through the fence, through the bee house, and back home in time for dinner. From the text, it only tells the story of Rose the hen walking in the yard, which is unremarkable. However, after carefully observing the pictures, we find that it is a story of ups and downs of a fox chasing its prey. But what is the central idea of ​​this story? Can you teach your children any knowledge or principles? When some adults interpret it, they may use this to educate their children: like a fox, the more ill-intentioned and impatient the person is, the more they break the wall; and like Rose the hen, the more heartless and pure and chaotic the person is. , the more blessed you are. But such an interpretation is somewhat far-fetched. If we tell children such an answer directly, will it deny other possibilities and imprison the child\’s thinking? Does this interpretation make sense? I think when children read this book, they feel pure humor and joy. I believe this is the author\’s original intention in writing this book. She is undoubtedly a person who understands the psychology of young children. It is this senseless joy that inspires children\’s unlimited imagination and creativity. When reading this book, every child can re-weave the story through his or her own language and experience. Einstein once said: \”Imagination is far more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited, but imagination summarizes everything in the world and drives progress. Imagination is the source of the evolution of knowledge.\” Return to the beginning of the article Are stories, children\’s meaningless play in the eyes of adults, really unimportant? I remember that when Rooney was one or two years old, I taught him how to build building blocks, but he always pushed down the building blocks I built and had a lot of fun. I really couldn’t understand what was so fun about this. After playing the knock-down game for a while, he finally started trying to build blocks. He always couldn\’t master his balance at first. I tried to teach him, but he pushed me away and continued to explore in his own way. After countless attempts, the blocks he built became taller and more complex. ! I finally understood that it was through countless experiences of knocking down and rebuilding that children felt the concept of balance of objects and learned how to stack building blocks together stably. This ability was by no means acquired through oral teaching. . All kinds of learning in children\’s early years seem to be meaningless and disorganized games. For example, when listening to music, the child\’s body movements are not in sync with the rhythm of the music, and the children\’s singing is not in tune; when drawing, they scribble lines, shapes and missing images whose meaning we cannot understand; when writing, the children\’s emotions are It feels like \”drawing\” words, drawing some circles, writing some messy and split \”words\”… All of these, these seemingly meaningless and disorganized behaviors, contain great value. They are children\’s The building blocks to further development. Teacher Cai Chaoyang said: \”Games are the most important part of children\’s lives. Games are not games. For children, they are life itself, work itself, and the meaning itself. And among these seemingly worthless games , imagination is galloping, and creativity is bursting. These useless moments provide children with a strong psychological drive. Even if this moment never appears, it will shine at a certain moment in the future.\” It is also through various experiences.In games, children will form cognition only when they have emotions and feelings. The richer this experience, the more they can integrate and accept various cognitions to form their own world view, outlook on life and values. As for adults, we always want to teach our children all their knowledge and principles directly, because we can\’t stand their children\’s ignorance. The result of this, teacher Sun Ruixue said, \”will definitely not only affect the child\’s psychology and the process of creating self-awareness, but also affect his cognitive development, and will also strand his life in psychological or cognitive problems.\” level. For children, their acceptance of the world and themselves must first go through feelings and psychology, and then flow to the cognitive process. This process is correct, rather than jumping directly to the cognitive level.\” Therefore, I do not advocate such educational behavior for children: when a child does not have enough independent listening and feeling for music, expect him to use his body to express the rhythm and melody of music well, or even send him to an interest class for intensive training; Before the child has enough observation and feeling of nature and no experience of free graffiti, let the child copy and teach him painting skills; when the child has not experienced the stage of \”drawing words\” and the small muscle groups of the fingers are not developed enough, let the child copy. Require the child to write neat words; wait until the child is three or four years old and think he can play with building blocks better before letting him play with them;… In the only precious day of childhood that cannot be copied, when the child seems to How much meaning of life is contained in meaningless activities or even doing nothing? No one can tell. So, please don’t casually say to your children: “What’s the point of what you’re doing!”