With so many interest classes for your children, it’s time to make a choice.

Some time ago, a mother in the WeChat group asked: \”Is it necessary to enroll your child in an abacus mental arithmetic training class? I heard it can improve the child\’s calculation ability?\” My answer is not necessary. The future era is the era of artificial intelligence. No matter how much people\’s computing power improves, how can they surpass machines? If you have this time and energy, you might as well read more and exercise more. Immediately, someone retorted: \”Will artificial intelligence be used in the college entrance examination? Without computing power, there is no way to get high scores in mathematics, physics and chemistry.\” I believe many mothers agree with this view. But I think that mastering basic computing skills is enough to cope with the exam. Maybe you can bring a calculator to the exam in the future. Even if you spend a lot of time and energy to improve the speed of abacus and mental arithmetic to a level that surpasses that of a computer, it is just It’s just a bunch of number games, and it’s far from the essence of mathematics. In fact, the key to getting high scores in mathematics, physics, and chemistry is to improve children’s problem-solving thinking ability, not calculation ability. Maybe learning abacus mental arithmetic does have some benefits, but no one can tell how useful it is to the development of children. If you let your children learn abacus mental arithmetic with the mentality that it can improve their performance, the effect can be imagined. , it must be worth the loss. Nowadays, there are so many training courses that can stimulate children\’s interest, and there are so many rich experiences in the world, why should we limit them to numbers at a young age? Our energy is limited, so it’s better not to do things like this where input and output are obviously not directly proportional. Nowadays, there are probably not many children in the city who don’t attend interest classes, right? I know a mother who enrolled her daughter in English, dance, painting, piano, Go, calligraphy and other interest classes when she was four or five years old. According to her, her current life is not about shopping for groceries. On the way, on the way to send the children to interest classes. I asked her why she had so many arrangements for her children, and she said: \”Isn\’t this the case now? Girls need to develop all-round development in music, chess, calligraphy and painting.\” \”But you have enrolled your children in so many classes, and they still have time to play. \”?\” \”It\’s better to learn more if she\’s just playing around all day. If you don\’t hurry up and let her learn more now, she won\’t have time when she goes to elementary school.\” I don\’t know what this mother does every time. How to persuade her children to go to class, and how to arrange time, I just saw endless anxiety and exhaustion in this mother. Rooney is now six and a half years old, and I have only enrolled him in three classes: online English, taekwondo and piano. After school is over at 4:30 every afternoon, I spend 5 to 10 minutes to finish my homework, then go downstairs to play with the children until 6:30, go home and have dinner, then record an English reading video and practice piano for an hour. I have a 25-minute online English class every night, then play some games, and finally I brush my teeth and take a shower. It’s almost ten o’clock. Finally, I have to read a book and listen to a story. I usually don’t fall asleep until half past ten. Just by doing that, I already feel like I don’t have enough time. Every night when I watch the clock ticking to ten o\’clock, while Rooney is still playing reluctantly and refusing to take a shower and brush his teeth, my heart feels like there are countless ants scratching at it, and I am so anxious that I want to hit the wall. To be honest, I saw other children learning Go and drawing., calligraphy, even Lego, programming, etc., I am not in a hurry. I have thought about it several times and almost signed up for Rooney. But as long as I calm down and think about how much I have to worry about every day, If I can\’t finish something, I give up. I simply don’t have that much energy to take Rooney to these classes, and I don’t have that much patience to urge him to keep studying, especially after having a second child. At the same time, I also have to consider the child\’s personality and receptive ability, and respect the child\’s opinions. For Rooney now, what he needs most is a companion. Because he has an extroverted personality and needs friends very much, he is happiest when he can play with his friends every day. For an extroverted person, contact and communication with others are the source of energy for him. Confining him in a small space and attending classes in a disciplined manner is a great test for him. Take piano playing as an example. After sitting on the piano bench for 10 minutes, his body will start to move. Sitting for half an hour will literally kill him. After understanding this personality trait and facing his frequent requests to go downstairs to play with friends, my mentality changed. In the past, when he asked to go downstairs to play, I always said no. Seeing him get carried away and unwilling to go home, I always felt anxious: \”If we continue to play like this, we will have no time to play the piano, no time to read, and we will have to go to bed late again.\” , but what should I do? \”Now I will think: Just play, children of this age need to establish good peer relationships. In fact, there are many benefits to playing with a companion. For example, if you want to play with a strange child, you have to be able to strike up a conversation, which requires courage; when you want others to play the game you came up with, you have to explain your reasons convincingly, which requires expression and Communication skills; if you have a conflict with someone in a game, you have to understand them and find a way to reconcile with them. This requires empathizing with others from their perspective; when you get tired of playing a game, you have to find a way to come up with something different. A new game, this requires your creativity… In this way, in the process of playing with peers, children slowly learn how to express themselves, how to communicate with others, how to deal with conflicts, and how to cooperate with others. I have exercised my courage and improved my sensitivity and creativity. These abilities are essential for children to survive in the future society, but they can never be learned in well-behaved interest classes. Every time I take an interest class, I hope that my children can continue to learn, instead of giving up and switching to another one after learning for a while. However, Rooney had just started Taekwondo not long ago, and I didn’t really realize that it was necessary to transfer one interest to another. How much effort does it take for parents to continue learning? Now, more than a year has passed, and I have slowly come to realize how frustrating it is to coax, coerce, or induce a child who loves to play by nature to go to class again and again! How many parents have been helplessly defeated in the battle of wits and courage with their children? How many parent-child relationships will be destroyed? I don’t know how others got here, but I was tortured to the point of exhaustion. However, through constant conflict and running-in with my children, I have gained a better understanding of Rooney’s character and my own limitations.My desire to control my children is getting weaker and weaker. No one knows what the future world will be like. How can I use my little knowledge to arrange everything for my children and restrict their development? Knowing that my abilities are limited and my time is limited, I begin to make choices. I am no longer keen on following the endless interest classes. If my children like and can persist, I will continue to learn. If my children do not like and I am not capable of doing it, I will continue to learn. Just give up decisively. Cultivate one or two specialties or hobbies, so that children can appreciate an art or subject from a higher perspective, let them experience the higher level of happiness that systematic and professional learning brings to them, and let them develop lifelong learning This is what parents can do, but what he can do in the future is not something we can decide. In today\’s society, there is an overflow of information, which has caused a lot of interference to us and unprecedented anxiety. In order to prevent our children from losing at the starting line, we are always running around, going with the flow, and reporting this to our children. Class after class, they are learning this and that, but few people calm down and think seriously: What does my child need? what can I do? Why do this? What can I do to better help my child? It\’s time to do some subtraction for your kids. Recently I joined an online education column school and got to know a mother whose parenting methods are worth pondering. She entered the online school in 2012, when her child was in first grade. Like many parents, she also experienced a period of anxiety and panic about her child\’s learning. At that time, she felt that there were too many things to learn, including Chinese, mathematics, English, etc. Science, I have a lot of eyebrows and beards, but I always fail to grasp the key points and often conflict with my children. In the end, she learned from the painful experience and focused on cultivating her children\’s writing skills. So she cut off all the miscellaneous interest classes one by one, including simple English classes and simple musical instrument classes. She also helped her children with their usual copying and copying homework, freeing up space. Time is devoted to accumulating real talents and learning in thinking, reading, and writing for children. Nowadays, many people who read articles written by children cannot believe that they were written by a sixth-grade child. Not long ago, the child won the title of Reading Star of Guangdong Province. In the preliminary round of poetry competition at school, she scored 90 points, while the second place only scored more than 30 points. However, we usually only see how good other people\’s children are, but never think about how their abilities are accumulated bit by bit. Instead of asking around and asking your children to learn this and that, and just scratch the surface, it is better to find a point of interest for your child and delve into it. Not only must you do subtraction for yourself, but you must also learn to do subtraction for your children. Subtract those things that look beautiful and sound tempting, but are not definitely beneficial, and invest more time and energy into those things that are definitely beneficial, or To a great extent, beneficial things will come up. Recently, I am also considering focusing my energy on my children\’s reading, improving their thinking level and practicing piano. As for English and Taekwondo, I just go to class and no longer spend time practicing after class. When I focused on studying how to improve children\’s reading and how to improve children\’s thinking level, I found that there are many things to do in this aspect alone.Do, for example, how to make a reading plan for the child, how to arrange time, how to guide the child to observe and think, how to discuss the content of the book with the child, how to connect the knowledge in the book with the child\’s life so that he can better understand Wait, this is also a great test for myself and requires me to relearn a lot of things. Take your time, I told myself, and believe in the power of continuous accumulation.