Six standards for children’s mental health

Emotional expression and regulation abilities are age-appropriate, self-perception is clear and stable, social behavior conforms to the rules of the environment, flexibility is sufficient to adapt to environmental changes, cognitive function development is in line with age/age baseline, and age-appropriate curiosity and intrinsic motivation are present.

Many parents always regard "obedient, sensible, and good grades" as the gold standard for their children's mental health. To be honest, I have seen too many children who meet this "folk standard". When they sit in the consulting room, they have chewed-up pencils hidden in their pockets. They have to look up at the faces of adults before they can even say "I'm unhappy." This is the case with the third-grade boy Haohao we received last week. His mother said that he has been well-behaved since he was a child. He can sit still in class and never rolls around like other children. As a result, during the sandbox assessment, he filled the sandbox with monsters and said that he was afraid of "getting scolded for doing something wrong" every day. Those unexpressed tempers turned into small actions such as chewing pencils and waking up in the middle of the night.

Regarding the standard of emotional regulation, counselors from different schools actually have different focuses of judgment: Psychoanalytically oriented counselors will be more concerned about whether children dare to express negative emotions in front of people close to them. After all, suppressed emotions will not disappear, they will only appear in another way.； Interventionists with a behaviorist orientation pay more attention to the adaptability of explicit behaviors - it is normal for a 3-year-old child to cry for half an hour after dropping a toy, but it is only when a 10-year-old child slams the door and goes on a hunger strike if he fails in a test that you need to be vigilant. There is no need to pursue children who are always happy. Children who can cry and dare to say "I'm angry" are mentally healthier than "good children" who are always smiling.

When it comes to self-awareness, many people tend to go to the other extreme: they think that in order to give their children enough encouragement, they have to make them feel that they are "number one in the world." A little girl in second grade came to me before because she was supported by the whole family and never received any criticism. Once she scored 80 points in the Chinese language test, she hid at home and refused to go to school, saying, "I can't be so bad in the test. The teacher must have made a mistake." In fact, the circle of developmental psychology has always been controversial about the scale of "positive self-perception": one group believes that low self-esteem is the source of many psychological problems, and it is necessary to give children positive feedback as much as possible ； The other group believes that "false self-confidence" that is divorced from reality will turn children's self-perception into a bubble that will burst when poked. A truly healthy state is actually when children know what they are good at and what they are not good at. They will be happy when they are praised, and they will not feel rejected when they are criticized.

Many parents also regard "introversion" as a psychological problem and always force their children to perform in public and take the initiative to say hello to strangers. In fact, it is completely unnecessary. The core of social health has never been "social bulliness", but conforming to the rules of the environment, not hurting yourself or disturbing others. Last month, a mother brought her 5-year-old daughter here. She said that the child was too introverted and would never perform at the kindergarten party. As a result, I observed for half an hour. When doing handicrafts, the little girl would take the initiative to pass glue to the children next to her. When chatting with familiar friends about Ultraman, she talked more than anyone else. She was just a little slow to warm up to unfamiliar people, which was completely in line with health standards. On the contrary, some children who seem to be particularly "troublesome" will grab other people's toys and please teachers to gain attention. This is essentially a sign of lack of security and requires intervention.

Adaptive flexibility is something that many people don’t notice at ordinary times, but it is actually the indicator that best reflects a child’s psychological toughness. After all, everyone's family will undergo changes: moving, transferring to another school, having a second child. It's normal to get a little emotional when encountering changes. However, if after half a year you still cry every day and refuse to go to the new school, can't sleep, can't eat, or even exhibit regressive behaviors, such as a child who can feed himself and starts to pee his pants again, then it means there is something wrong with your adaptability. Colleagues who do trauma research often say that adaptability is a "cushion cushion" for children's psychology. If the cushion is thick enough, no matter how big things happen, they can slowly recover. If the cushion is thin, small things will easily leave marks.

As for cognitive function meeting the age baseline, it really does not require children to be in the top three. For example, it is normal for a 6-year-old child to be able to recognize numbers within 10 and distinguish left and right. If he cannot even distinguish between red and blue, don't rush to label the child as "developmentally delayed". First, check whether the child has never been taught at home and rule out environmental factors before making an assessment. When we did screening, we saw too many children raised by the elderly. No one usually taught them how to read and count. As soon as they arrived at the kindergarten test, they were told that they had "developmental problems." In fact, it was just a lack of guidance. They could quickly catch up by adjusting their parenting methods.

Finally, let’s talk about curiosity and intrinsic motivation. Don’t think that children who love playing with mobile phones have no motivation. Even if normal children love playing with electronic devices, they will also be interested in other things: they may like to squat on the ground and watch ants, they may like to dismantle old remote controls at home, and they may even like to study all the skills of Ultraman. If a child can't get excited about anything, and is unwilling to go out to play except for watching short videos and sitting in a daze, then he needs to be vigilant. There is a high probability that the inner desire to explore has been suppressed or exhausted.

In fact, these six standards are never a scoring chart for parents to use to check their children. Just like adults, they may also have emotional breakdowns, don’t want to see people, or don’t want to do anything. It is normal for children to occasionally deviate from the standards. If we really use these criteria to benchmark children's words and deeds, it will easily create unnecessary anxiety, which completely violates the original intention of the assessment - the purpose of our making these standards has never been to screen out "perfect children", but to help those children who are really stuck in trouble to be seen as early as possible.