Correctly understand "love"
Reporter (hereinafter referred to as reporter): Children's education has always been the top priority of the family. We usually see that parents pour all their material and spiritual energy into their children, but have children become successful? Instead of becoming successful, some children have some extremely vicious behaviors, such as Yao Jiaxin's murder and students studying in Japan stabbing their mothers to death. These vicious incidents not only aroused widespread concern in society, but also caused people to reflect on the current family education in China. Some people say that family education has become a big pain in China society. What do you think of this?
(hereinafter referred to as Sun): In my opinion, school education and social education are public education, and family education is private education. School education is carried out by teachers trained by the state, with unified teaching materials, reflecting the will and policies of the state; Family education is a personalized education led by parents, which is very different. Generally speaking, school education focuses on knowledge education, while family education focuses on emotional education, including moral education, life education and personality education. If family education is condensed into one word, it is "love".
Reporter: How should we understand the word "love"?
Sun: Families are born of love, and children are the crystallization of parents' love. The development of human society needs the inheritance of love, which is the biggest secret of education.
How to understand "love" has two levels: First, parents should give their children real love and let them feel it. The most unforgettable memory of a person is not the truth taught by his parents, but the feelings between himself and his parents. This intimate life experience is also the most understandable feeling for children. Secondly, parents should guide their children to learn to love, from loving themselves and others to loving the collective, society and country.
However, love can easily get out of control. Every animal instinctively loves its offspring, and human beings are no exception. If our love for children only stays in the love of animals for their offspring, we will easily get out of control and fall into the misunderstanding of love. Now many parents keep saying that they love their children, but they don't know how to love them. In other words, they fall into the biggest misunderstanding of love-they don't give their children real love.
Rousseau once said, let children live like children. I quite agree with this view. If you make your child live like a king, it's not normal. People have different needs at every stage of their growth. For example, when a child reaches a certain age, he will say "I'll do this", indicating that he has independent needs. Do not meet the needs of children, but also blindly spoil, but do everything, in fact, deprive children of the right to grow and develop. This kind of love can only love a loser.
I have always believed that no matter how rich a family is, it should not be overly satisfied with its children. We should consciously cultivate children's temperance and dare to say "no" to their unreasonable demands. This is especially important when children are 2 to 4 years old. Because this is the fastest time for children's language ability to develop, he began to establish a sense of rules in his mind. If children at this stage have some bad behaviors, such as hitting people, swearing, eating candy before going to bed, etc. Parents should resolutely not let their children cry. Slowly, children will know that it is impossible to do so.
Reporter: Many parents think that loving their children means meeting all their requirements.
Sun: Parents believe that children will be happy as long as their requirements are met. Actually, it is not. An over-satisfied child is not necessarily happy, because happiness comes too easily and he takes it for granted.
A doctor of psychology in Australia did a "candy experiment". He randomly selected dozens of children aged four or five from Australia and China, and put two pieces of candy in front of each child, one more and one less. Then, he gave the children two choices: if you want to eat candy right away, eat the small one; If you can wait 15 minutes, you can eat the extra part. As a result, 70% of children in China ate candy before 15 minutes. More than 66% of Australian children can wait until 15 minutes before eating more candy.
This difference reflects the potential crisis of children in China today, especially the only child who is spoiled by his parents. Relevant research has proved that those children who can withstand the temptation are often more tolerant, independent and more successful in the future than those who have no self-control. However, it is hard for a spoiled child to resist temptation and desire. He could not resist the temptation of candy when he was a child, and he may not be able to resist other temptations when he grows up.
"Love" cannot be simplified and formalized.
Reporter: Nowadays, parents seem to be more concerned about the cultivation of their children's test-taking ability and talent.
Sun: Yes. The study found that more than 80% parents of primary and secondary school students put their children's academic performance first, while putting their moral quality in a relatively backward position. Many parents' requirements for their children are "as long as you study hard, nothing else matters". Most of the children educated in this way have become exam machines that don't understand emotions. Yao Jiaxin is an extreme example. On the surface, his family education is quite successful. Children are admitted to the university and are polite to others, but parents have not cultivated their children's healthy personality, which is the most important thing for a person. This defect is usually invisible, but it will be exposed at a critical moment. After hitting someone with a car, a normal child's instinctive and wise response is to send the victim to the hospital immediately, but Yao Jiaxin's first thought is "it is difficult for rural people." He doesn't know how to respect and care for others, and even thinks that he can hurt others to save himself. So I said, this is a "lost child".
Perhaps parents have difficulties: now the social competition is fierce and cruel, and children are under various pressures. Parents naturally want their children to study more, learn more and be better than others. I can understand this expectation and helplessness, but improving competitiveness cannot violate the law of children's growth. How can parents who really love their children not care whether their children's psychological and personality development is perfect?
Nowadays, middle schools with primary education and primary schools with early childhood education have turned early education into "premature destruction". Many parents tell me that their children are "prodigies" with extraordinary intelligence. Even if the child's intelligence is not extraordinary, send the child to receive training, convinced that "prodigies can be cultivated." In fact, some studies show that the proportion of gifted children is generally 1% ~ 3%, that is to say, genius cannot be cultivated the day after tomorrow. In the pre-school stage, the best way for children to learn is games and sports. It is absolutely unnecessary for children to learn knowledge and master skills too early. Because on the one hand, children study hard, on the other hand, you will find that when children reach a certain age, these knowledge and skills will naturally be mastered.
If parents violate the law of children's growth, the result may be counterproductive. In our investigation, we found that preschool children account for more than 30% of children who are tired of learning. Early intervention in knowledge education may cause children's intellectual hemiplegia. Why is this happening? This stems from a wrong logic. This logic holds that children who are happy in childhood must be unhappy in adulthood. Therefore, in order to be happy in the future, we have to let our children suffer in childhood. As the saying goes, "Young people will be sad if they don't work hard." In fact, this sentence needs to be correctly interpreted.
The happiness of childhood is the source of a person's life happiness. A happy person's childhood must be full of love. Childhood misfortune is the beginning of a lifetime misfortune. Many adults with problems can trace back to their roots, and most of them can find that their bodies and minds were greatly hurt in their childhood. A large number of facts also show that academic success does not determine the happiness of life, but mental health and perfect personality are the main factors that determine a person's happiness.
Reporter: On Mother's Day, some schools organized students to kneel and wash their feet for their parents, which triggered different voices. What do you think of this?
Sun: I understand the organizers' good wishes, but I don't think it is appropriate to do so. It is proper to be filial to parents, but the "kneeling culture" is a slave culture and an unequal relationship that hurts personality. I once called on the society to change the name "parents" to "parents". What do you mean by "parents"? The head of the family is the head of the family and the person in charge of the children's fate. Such a title full of feudal autocracy has nothing to do with love and is contrary to modern education. How can we tolerate it flooding everywhere? Making children kneel to their parents means that parents have supreme absolute authority, and children must obey their parents. This positioning is problematic.
Reporter: So, what do you think the correct orientation should be?
Sun: We advocate that children "honor" their parents, rather than "filial piety" blindly. Children should respect their parents and elders, but they should not be completely obedient. Not everything parents say is right, and parents sometimes make mistakes. Children should respect their parents, but they can also express different voices and reserve their own opinions when they disagree with their parents. This is a human right. Kneeling to parents may give children the illusion that they will yield when they see authority, thus distorting their personality.
What is "filial piety"? Xia Zi asked Confucius, and Confucius said two words: "Color is difficult." Confucius' understanding is that it is the most difficult to keep a cheerful face and attitude towards parents. Don't think that supporting parents is filial piety. If you put food in front of your parents like a cat or a dog, is this filial piety? If children want to honor their parents, they should guide them to learn to care about their parents' needs and observe what help their parents need. Parents are tired and can wash their feet; In other cases, parents should be happy in other ways.
The starting point of school education to guide children to love and honor their parents is worthy of recognition, but we should pay attention to the ways and means that cannot be too simple and formal. "Love" is an abstract concept. Children may not understand what is too abstract, but we should teach children to learn to love, starting with loving their parents, and know how to observe the needs of others, care for others and care for others.
Be stricter than life and wider than study.
Reporter: As a father, how do you ask your daughter?
Sun: What I ask of her is eight words: be strict with yourself and be lenient with yourself.
In study, I am more tolerant of her. Once, I was on a business trip and received a phone call from my daughter at night. She said gloomily, "Dad, I failed one course in this exam. You have to be prepared! " "I immediately replied," It doesn't matter if you fail two courses. There must be a reason for failing the exam. "Hey, find a master to help analyze and correct it later?" Look at what I said easily, and my daughter will not be so anxious. In fact, I also hope my daughter will do well in the exam, but if I blame her at this time, what can I do besides making her nervous? Besides, my daughter has done her best. After returning home, my daughter and I carefully analyzed the mistakes in her test paper and helped her master the correct solution. Since then, my daughter's grades have improved significantly. I have paid little attention to my children's academic performance and exam ranking, and my daughter didn't go to a key school before she was admitted to Fudan.
Reporter: Then what do you value?
Sun: I value her happy growth and have my own hobbies. In the second year of high school, I was about to face the college entrance examination, and my studies were so tense. At that time, she was still doing a "comparative survey on the diligence of primary and secondary school students in China and Japan". I wrote a reportage "Summer Camp Competition" more than ten years ago. My daughter doesn't totally agree with me. She thinks that China students are better than Japanese children in many places. I said, it doesn't matter if you are not convinced, as long as you convince me with evidence. So, she took advantage of the opportunity to communicate in Japan and made a survey herself. Both Chinese and Japanese questionnaires and interview outlines were designed by her. Finally, she came to the conclusion that China children study harder than Japanese children. For example, when they encounter learning difficulties, most China children tend to think for themselves, while Japanese children tend to ask for help. But she also admitted that Japanese children are better than China children in sports and housework. I think this conclusion is more objective.
It took her about a year to do this research, which was entirely out of personal interest. I think it's good. Not only did I not stop it, but I also supported it. As a result, it was not easy for her to write this research report at the most tense stage before the college entrance examination.
Reporter: Do you have any regrets about your daughter's education?
Sun: Yes. When my daughter was half a year old, I sent her back to her hometown because of her busy work, and asked her grandparents to take her for a year. I have always regretted this and think it is my dereliction of duty.
Although it is very common that the "only second generation" is raised by grandparents in cities, some data show that the success rate of intergenerational education will not exceed 30%, because intergenerational education will bring many problems. For example, it is difficult for children raised by grandparents or without stable guardians to establish a sense of security and happiness, and interpersonal problems are prone to occur when they grow up. In addition, children cared for by grandparents have a higher obesity rate. Personally, children should not leave their parents for a long time before 12 years old, and children should be taken care of by their parents.
Reporter: Can you give advice to the parents of the "only generation"?
Sun: There are three one-child families in Beijing who have taken the initiative to unite. Parents of three families take advantage of the weekend to take their children into museums, countryside and nature in turn, and become independent families and small families for everyone. This is a new idea of family education for the only child, which gives the child great surprise and satisfaction and liberates the parents themselves.
We often say that "wisdom lies in the people". Indeed, many parents' practices in family education have strong reference significance. Therefore, although there are some problems in our family education at present, I am still full of hope and confidence in family education. Because love is the most powerful educational resource, and parents' love for their children is unparalleled.