The key to children's mental health development is mainly reflected in

Be able to truly express your feelings, dare to trust outside support, and be able to live with "imperfections".

I just received a first-grade girl last week. When her mother dragged her in, she had a sad look on her face. She said that her child had been biting her nails recently, so much that her fingertips bled, but she didn't say it hurt. She also had to leave blank questions that were clearly required in the exam. When asked her anything, she just shook her head and said "I don't know." After playing with her three times in the sandbox, she used a small dinosaur to create a "criticized scene". She said that the last time she told her mother, "The math teacher was too loud in class and I was scared." Her mother said back without even raising her head, "What's there to be afraid of?" The teacher lectures loudly so that you can hear clearly, you kid is just being pretentious." After that, when she encountered something unhappy, she stopped talking about it and kept it inside, turning it into a petty behavior of biting her nails.

Regarding this situation, different schools actually have different interpretations. The psychoanalytic school will think that this is "impaired verbalization ability of emotions"-the child's negative emotions cannot be accepted, so they can only express them in a somatic way.； The behaviorist school would consider this to be "an extinction reaction that occurs after the behavior that expresses negative feelings is repeatedly punished." To put it bluntly, "it's useless if I say it, and I will get scolded, so I might as well not say it." But no matter which school you belong to, the requirements at the practical level are the same: don't deny the child's feelings. I have seen one of the best fathers. The last time his son angrily told him, "I hate grandma the most," he didn't immediately jump up and scold his child for being unfilial. Instead, he knelt down and asked, "What did grandma do today to make you so angry?" ”Later I found out that the grandma gave away all the limited edition Ultraman Cards he had saved up for half a year to the children of relatives who came to visit him without his consent. You see, catch the emotion first, and then things will surface. Always forcing your child to be "sensible" will only push him further and further away from you in the end.

At this point, some people may ask, if I obey whatever the child says, will I spoil him to such a degree that he will be unable to withstand any setbacks when he enters society? In fact, just the opposite. Last month, I was walking in the community and saw a little boy playing skateboard. He lost his balance and fell on the cement floor. His knee was broken a lot and his pants were bleeding. Instead of sitting on the ground and crying, he got up and limped to his mother next to him. As he ran, he shouted, "Mom, I fell!" My knee hurts so much, please help me blow it! ”Do you think he is not afraid of pain? Of course he is afraid, but he is sure that when he screams in pain, someone will answer him. This sense of certainty that "there is someone behind me when I need it" is the real core of resistance to frustration. In the past few years, "frustration education" was particularly popular. Many parents believed in "deliberately setting up obstacles for children so that their needs cannot be met in time, otherwise they will not be able to withstand problems when they grow up." However, long-term follow-up research conducted by our industry in recent years shows that children whose emotional needs are responded to in a timely manner between the ages of 3 and 6 are 62% less likely to develop anxiety and depression in adolescence than children who receive "deliberate frustration education." Of course, it doesn’t mean that you have to satisfy all your child’s requests 100%. For example, if you are cooking and your child comes over and asks you to build blocks with him, you don’t have to just throw down the shovel and go, and don’t yell, “Don’t you see I’m busy? Let's play together." and said, "Mom will come to accompany you as soon as she finishes cooking this dish. It will take about 5 minutes. Can you build a small house by yourself and wait for me? ”By delaying but not ignoring, children can still feel that they are valued.

A while ago, a mother came to me, her voice trembling with anxiety, saying that her son, who was in third grade, got a score of 98 on the math test. He went home and locked himself in his room and cried for two hours, saying that he was so useless that he could even get calculation questions wrong. Do you think this is because the child is motivated? Not at all, it’s the signal he has received since he was a child that “you must be perfect, otherwise you are not worthy of being loved” – when he scored 95 points in the last test, his father said, “Why are you so careless? Xiao Ming next door got a score of 100, why can't you compare to them? ”Over time, he didn't even dare to make any mistakes, and couldn't accept even a little "imperfection". I always make an analogy to parents, raising children is like planting saplings. You cannot ask for every leaf to be shiny and smooth, without wormholes or yellow edges. That would be a fake tree. There is a small flaw, it's a little crooked, it just needs to be trimmed, it's normal. Nowadays, many people talk about "fault-tolerant education", and there are also many objections. They say that fault-tolerance means indulgence. If the child makes a mistake and doesn't care, he will not be able to go to heaven in the future? In fact, this is simply a misunderstanding. Tolerance is to first accept that "making mistakes is normal" and then work with the child to make amends, rather than scolding the child as soon as he comes up. For example, if a child accidentally breaks a bowl, don't yell, "Why are you so stupid? You can't hold a bowl steady?" first ask, "Did you hit your hand?" Hold the bowl tightly next time, come on, let's sweep up the debris together." Next time, he will not dare to help you because he is afraid of being scolded. Instead, he will know that "even if I do something wrong, I will not be abandoned, as long as I change it."

Oh, by the way, a grandma asked me before, saying that my grandson is cheerful every day and smiles when he sees everyone. Does he mean he must be particularly mentally healthy? Not necessarily. Some children's "happiness" comes from pleasing people. They have known since childhood that "as long as I smile, adults will praise me for being sensible." Therefore, even if they are wronged or unhappy, they dare not show it. Children who are "habitual to please" are more likely to have psychological problems. To judge whether your child is really happy, you can see if he behaves, rolls around, or has a tantrum in front of you. If he dares to cry, fuss, and tell the truth in front of you, then he truly feels safe.

In fact, when I usually chat with parents, they always say that they don’t have to look at their children every day to find problems. They like to do little things in class, and occasionally get angry and don’t want to go to school. These are all things children should be like. Just look at three small details: whether you are willing to talk to you about school trivial matters when you get home from school, whether you will cry to you immediately when you are wronged, and whether you will take the initiative to tell you if you failed in an exam or got into trouble. Really, these three points are enough. Mental health is never about "no problems at all". If you have problems, you know who to go to and know that you can handle it. This is better than anything else.