Children’s mental health training experience

Children's mental health work has never been about "fixing" children with problems, but about catching up with the unspoken needs behind their behaviors. At the same time, we don't have to be obsessed with the "political correctness" of a certain school. Methods that can really help children are good methods.

The first case at the beginning of the training left a deep impression on me. He was a little boy in third grade who tore up the textbooks of his deskmate for half a month. The school’s psychology teacher initially used behavior modification methods. If he did not tear up the books for three days, he would give him a red flower. If he did not tear up the books for three days, he would be deducted from the activity class for the week. After a month of tossing, he only got worse and worse, and finally even tore up his own textbooks. Later, when I had an in-depth chat with the child, I found out that his parents were getting divorced during that time and would quarrel every day when they met at home. Only when he got into trouble at school would the two of them temporarily stop arguing and go to school together to "handle his problems together." There was also a simulation scene during the training that day, where everyone present stood in front of the stage and played the role of the child, and listened to the people around them taking turns to accuse "Why are you so ignorant" and "You are the only one who causes trouble for the teacher every day". Several teachers who usually work with children were red-eyed. They said that the feeling of everyone only focusing on your faults and no one asking you why you did it made your chest hurt.

What’s interesting is that when we talked about intervention ideas that day, the practitioners present were clearly divided into two groups: Most of the teachers who work in campus psychology are biased towards behaviorist logic. They feel that children’s problematic behaviors have affected the normal teaching order and even harmed other students. They must first correct the behavior and then slowly dig out the root causes behind it.； The counselors who provide case consultations are more inclined to psychodynamic thinking, saying that if the root needs are not solved, even if the child tears up the book, he may bite his nails, skip classes, and bully other students as substitute behaviors, which is tantamount to treating the symptoms but not the root cause. The teacher who gave the lecture that day did not take sides, and only gave another case: a second-grade child who had just been diagnosed with tics. He always winked uncontrollably during class. He was nicknamed by the whole class and now refused to go to school. At this time, if you spend two or three months digging into his family conflicts and growth trauma, the child may have developed severe social avoidance. It is better to use relaxation training through behavioral intervention to reduce the frequency of tics first, so that he can return to school normally, and then slowly talk about the stressors behind it.

I've made black and white mistakes before. When I was volunteering in the community, I met a 6-year-old girl who suddenly refused to sleep on her own. She would run to her parents' room crying every night. At that time, all I could think about was "giving her a sense of security." I chatted with her about my feelings and read picture books with her every day, but even after half a month, there was no improvement at all. It was only after this training that I figured out that there was no need to worry about "empathize first or correct first". While I was chatting with her about whether she was frightened by the ghost story grandma told her last week, I used the small step desensitization method. In the first week, I turned on a night light to sleep, in the second week, I moved the night light to the living room, and in the third week, I only left the door crack open. In less than 10 days, she was able to turn off the light and sleep all night. There is no absolutely correct method, whatever is suitable for your child is the right one.

Oh, by the way, this training also corrected a misunderstanding I had before: empathy does not mean bottomless accommodation. I have encountered children who deliberately snatched other people's toys and hit others. I always thought of asking him "if he was unhappy" first, which blurred the boundaries of his behavior. This time the teacher said it very honestly. There is nothing wrong with emotions, but the behavior of hurting others must be wrong. You can say, "I know you really want to play with this toy now, but the behavior of grabbing it is wrong. We can ask the children together if they can take turns to play with it." This not only catches his emotions, but also does not give him the wrong hint of "I can hurt others as long as I am unhappy." Nowadays, many parents either think that "the child has any psychological problems, just give them a spanking", or they are overly anxious. If their children occasionally have a tantrum, they think there is some mental illness, and they don't even dare to say a harsh word. In fact, they are going to extremes.

To be honest, the longer I do this, the more I realize that in many cases there is no need for any high-level theories at all. Last week, I compiled several common cases in the training into a small popular science manual and shared it with parents in the community. Yesterday, I received a message from the class teacher of the boy who tore the book, saying that his parents had agreed not to quarrel in front of the child and to take him to the park together one day a week. The last time he missed his parents, he took the initiative to talk to the teacher and never tore the book again. You see, as long as you can squat down to look at the child and understand what he has not said, it is more effective than anything else.