The main contents of children’s mental health education

Emotional awareness and expression ability, self-identity and social adaptability, frustration response and boundary awareness, the guidance of all subdivided scenarios ultimately points to the implementation of these three directions.

I have been doing psychological intervention in public primary schools for almost three years, and I have met too many parents who immediately ask, "Is there a psychological problem with my child who doesn't like to talk?" and "How can I change his temper?" In fact, most of the anxiety stems from the narrowing of mental health education to "correcting character shortcomings." Take emotional ability as an example. Last year, I met a third-grade boy named Xiaoyu. When he couldn't solve a math problem, he threw his pencil and cried, "I am the stupidest person in the world." The class teacher always advised him at first, "Why cry over such a trivial matter? A man must be strong." This made him even more violent. In fact, the child couldn't listen to the truth at this time. He couldn't even figure out what his current emotions were. He only knew that his chest was congested and uncomfortable. There is no unified standard answer to this part of education. Psychoanalytically oriented counselors will advocate "naming" the emotions first, squatting down and asking him, "Are you feeling particularly frustrated and a little anxious now? ”, first help him anchor his vague feelings. ； Teachers with a behaviorist orientation may be more accustomed to using the "calm corner" and "emotion cards" in the classroom, allowing them to choose whether to sit with a doll for 5 minutes or draw a picture of their current mood. Both methods are effective. The core is to let the children know that "it is not wrong to have emotions. You can express them instead of venting them by smashing things or hurting yourself."

Many parents tend to equate mental health education with "making children become cheerful and outgoing." In fact, what is more important than being versatile is whether children can accept themselves stably. Last week I received a little girl in fifth grade. She had scars from burns when she was a child. She had to wear long-sleeved school uniforms all summer. She even made excuses to take time off from physical education classes. Her mother was so anxious that she always said, "What's the big deal? No one will notice." This only made her feel even more inferior. Different schools have different entry points for this part of self-identity cultivation: Humanistic counselors will emphasize giving "unconditional positive attention" to the child. Even if she just cares about the scar, don't deny her feelings. First tell her, "It's normal for you to feel embarrassed. If you were a mother, you might be a little concerned."” ； Intervention based on positive psychology will be more focused on guiding her to find her own strengths. Later, we greeted her art teacher and praised her illustrations. Within two months, she took the initiative to wear short-sleeved shirts to attend class, and also took the initiative to give small cards she drew to her classmates. When others asked about the scar, she could smile and say, "I had perms when I was naughty, and now it is my exclusive mark." You see, there is no standard for "must be cheerful". As long as he can feel from the bottom of his heart "I am good", no matter whether he is introverted or extroverted, he is healthy.

There is another piece of content that many families and even schools miss, which is the establishment of a sense of boundaries. I have seen too many kindergarten teachers encounter children grabbing toys. Their first reaction is to persuade the older ones, "You are the older brother/sister, you have to let the younger siblings." It seems that they are teaching the children to be sensible, but in fact they are forcibly breaking the boundaries of their property rights. Traditional collectivist education always emphasizes humility as a virtue, but now the consensus in the field of child psychology is to first establish the boundary of "I have the right to decide what is mine" and then talk about voluntary sharing, so that children will not grow up to become a pleaser personality who dare not refuse others. A second-grade mother came to me before and said that her child always gave away his stationery to his classmates and didn't dare to ask for it back even though he didn't have enough. Later, we taught her to play the "exchange game" at home. If she didn't want to give a toy to others, just say "This is mine, and I don't want to give it to you yet." After less than a month of practice, the child dared to ask for his eraser back from his classmates. In fact, he had more friends in the class. After all, everyone knew where the bottom line was for getting along with him, so he didn't have to guess. It was very comfortable.

As easy to be misunderstood as the sense of boundaries is education in dealing with setbacks. Nowadays, many people advocate "frustration education", deliberately making children suffer, deliberately scolding them for being useless when they lose in games, deliberately not giving them what they want, and euphemistically calling it training the ability to withstand stress, but in fact it completely reverses the cause and effect. The core of dealing with setbacks is never to make the child suffer more, but to let him know that "even if I mess up, I will not be abandoned, and I can still find a way to solve the problem." I once met a little boy in first grade who threw away the whole Lego set after he made a mistake in putting it together. He cried and said, "I can't do anything right." Later, we asked his parents to accompany him to play with him. There are also different voices regarding this part of intervention. Some scholars believe that children should be allowed to explore their own solutions and parents should not interfere. Others believe that parents should serve as "scaffolding" and support children when they really can't hold on. In fact, there is no absolute right or wrong. It depends on your child's personality - for children who are inherently strong, give them more buffer space, and for children who are prone to shrinking, give them more encouragement.

In fact, after so many years of front-line child psychology work, my deepest feeling is that mental health education has never been about using a standardized scale to determine whether a child meets the standard, nor is it about raising a "perfect child" who never has negative emotions or makes mistakes. To put it bluntly, all the content is to provide support for children: let them dare to laugh when they are happy, dare to speak when they are sad, dare to fight for what they want, and dare to reject what they don’t want. Even if they fall down, they know that it doesn’t matter if they can’t get up. There will always be someone beside them to help them. That's enough.