What shall we do? The Indian philosopher Puldman has a thought-provoking proverb: "Sow an action and reap a habit; Sow a habit and reap a character; Sow a character and reap a destiny. " I think this just reveals to us the truth that education guides children. As parents, we should not only help children design and grow up, but more importantly, whether our execution and subtle influence on children are enough. It is not our goal to turn children into learning machines.
Parents often complain to me that "children are particularly disobedient at home, but what teachers say is more useful." Sometimes, I even get a phone call from my parents on weekends, asking me to help them persuade and educate their children on the phone, because children only listen to their teachers. As parents, we have no choice but to find ourselves losing authority in the family, especially in the eyes of children. After further in-depth understanding, I found that parents may sometimes fail to honor their promises to their children in the trivial matters of living with their children, and sometimes make some concessions to their children because of heartache and distress, or fail to honor their promises in advance as agreed, which is inevitable. After a long time, children often lose their trust. So I think: we must treat children equally with us, what we can and can't do, why we should do it, and we must patiently explain it to our children. We should first be reasonable people ourselves, and let our children learn to be reasonable people. Only in this way can persuasion education gradually move towards a virtuous circle. In addition, appropriate reward and punishment measures are also an external force to ensure positive guidance for children. The biggest problem for many children now is that they can only accept praise and can't stand criticism. Our children need frustration education very much. It is impossible for every child to grow up smoothly in the future. Teaching children how to face well-meaning criticism and education is a very important lesson, which can never be omitted or ignored. If our children are willing to accept the advice of their parents and teachers and take responsibility for their own growth, they can learn to study hard and live happily.
Our parents often fall into the misunderstanding of family education:
1. Learning is the only important thing in a child's life.
This type of parents often only pay attention to their children's academic performance, ignoring their other needs and hobbies, so they often get counterproductive results. Nowadays, children begin to have rebellious psychology at the age of 8 or 9, and it is inevitable that puberty will be advanced. There are more and more precocious "little adults", so their education has become complicated. What parents say casually at ordinary times may be the reason why children oppose or refute us. They are also very reasonable and begin to have their own unique observation and understanding of things around them. From this point of view, our children are getting smarter and smarter. This is a happy thing, but it also makes our education more difficult. Only when children know "why should I study" can they have subjective initiative. Therefore, I think that the best way to guide children to learn and study is to cultivate them to set up lofty ideals from an early age. The "idealistic" education we advocated in the past really shouldn't be abandoned. Especially in this era of better and better economic conditions, children can get almost anything they want easily, so why study hard? The most powerful motivation is that in order to do what we want to do most in the future, "realizing our dreams" will always be the source of our diligent study. Therefore, when we pursue academic performance, don't forget to tap the inner strength of children. Let children read more books, broaden their horizons, increase their knowledge, take them out to visit museums, watch performances, travel, experience life and find their dreams in the vast world. I have always thought that "reading thousands of books and taking Wan Li Road" is the only way for a person to grow up. During my home visit, I am glad to find that many children have started to own their own books at home, which shows that many parents have begun to realize the importance of reading to their children. I always think that the best gift for children is the books they are interested in, which can take them into the ocean of knowledge. Never think that doing these things will delay time and study. Let's take a long view and spend our time and energy in these places. I believe there will be unexpected gains. How can a knowledgeable and mentally sound child not be an excellent student? The "sunshine reading activity" carried out by our school for many years has benefited many children. Students have cultivated important oral expression and writing skills through a lot of reading, which has laid a solid foundation for their study and life. Why not do such a good thing for the benefit of future generations?
Second, exam-oriented education is eager for quick success and instant benefit.
This is a typical traditional family education model. Parents think that bringing up children is school, that is, studying hard, and getting higher education is success. Coupled with the pressure brought by the social environment of exam-oriented education, many parents and teachers have to increase their children's learning pressure, and various cram schools have replaced their children's game time, and the homework burden is not small. Faced with such a learning and growing environment, many children have already begun to be tired of learning in primary school. A child who doesn't like learning is forced by his parents to regard learning as a task or a burden. How can they experience the fun of learning? Then it is difficult to make long-term progress in learning. The mistake we often make is that we are too purposeful and forget that children themselves are the main body of learning.
However, we cannot easily change the social environment. After all, key middle schools and universities are still attractive, so we should change ourselves to adapt to the environment. This is not a mistake. No one can be isolated from the world. This reminds me of my teacher, a kind and caring old man who has his own persistence in educating children. He has always hoped to give children a relaxed and happy golden childhood through quality education. Therefore, he never put any pressure on his children academically. It was not until their sixth grade graduation that he found that their academic performance was really unsatisfactory, and he was anxious to find a way. On the phone, he lamented and even regretted not paying attention to cultivating children's study habits. I have time to help the teacher's children with their homework, but it is really difficult to improve their grades in a short time. Why do our good wishes always fail in the face of reality, and how to grasp the gap between ideal and reality? I think: children with good academic performance are not necessarily unhappy, and children who don't like learning are definitely unhappy. Correctly guiding children to fall in love with learning is the real purpose of our education. Then we must find ways to mobilize children's non-intellectual factors and cultivate good study habits. "Man is a slave to habit." Plato once said to a young man, "Once a habit is formed, it can never be changed." This is indeed a fact. Psychologists also believe that "we are creatures of habit", and 95% of human behavior is formed through habit. If we pay attention to cultivating children's good study and life habits and will quality from the first grade, then in the senior grade, we will not worry about their bad habits, nor will we worry about what children will do when they face graduation.
Third, arrange for the replacement of the child's nanny.
Some parents put their children under their supervision and management for 24 hours. Anything that happens at school, even a little contradiction with my classmates, is solved by my mother with the teacher. From young children to teenagers, children form a habit, and whatever they do is arranged by their parents, which makes them feel dependent. Over time, parents became more and more tired until they were overwhelmed. I often hear children say "My mother forgot to put the book in her schoolbag" when explaining to the teacher why she didn't hand in her homework. I often ask them, "Don't you ever tidy your bag yourself?" This practice of shifting the responsibility to parents is actually the result of parents' arranging instead. There is a slogan in the corridor of our teaching building "It is better to teach people to fish than to teach them to fish". We take pains to arrange schoolbags, stationery and daily necessities for our children every day. Why not teach them to do it themselves? Since the first day of teaching, I have to call my parents two or three times almost every day to ask them to send stationery, books and even lunch boxes and cups to their children. I have wasted a lot of time and experience on these trivial things, which also makes me very distressed. To this end, I launched an activity called "What's in the bag" in my class. Check one or two children's schoolbags randomly every day, let them tell me what's in their schoolbags, and encourage them to learn to organize their stationery. The effect is very good. However, it is inevitable that a few children will still forget things, and the phenomenon of messy bookcases also exists. I often jokingly say to them, "You are so young, how can you be as forgetful as the old lady?" Hearing me say this, the children smiled shyly. Therefore, I think it is very important for parents to teach their children the basic skills of life and let them have the ability of self-management.
Spoiled children, spoiled bad habits can not be cleaned up.
At present, it is very common for only children to be spoiled at home, especially grandparents, grandparents, grandparents who live apart, and children can buy whatever they want and promise whatever they want. If the child's demands were not met, he cried and made a scene, which made the whole family restless and finally had to give in to the child. The whole family is child-centered, which makes children develop many bad habits such as willfulness. Some children have been in school for a year, but they can't enter the student state. They don't attend classes, do their homework seriously, do whatever they want, and even beat and scold their classmates at will, forming a very overbearing character. Parents realize that this is not possible, but it is already difficult to manage. In the process of children's growth, there is no management and no rules, which misses the goal of adult growth in early childhood, but spoils bad psychology and bad habits, which directly affects the growth of children in primary school. If it is not corrected in time, it will damage the child's life.
I often hear many parents complain helplessly that they will encounter interference from the elderly at home in the process of correcting their children's bad habits. I think the disunity of the whole family education concept is the direct cause of this phenomenon. This is what we parents should think of and reach an agreement in advance. What impressed me most was that a mother once told me that although she sometimes disagreed with her father's discipline, she never argued with his father in front of her children, but asked for advice behind his back. I am very much in favor of this mother's wise practice. Nowadays, children are very smart and are good at excusing their mistakes from the point of view of adults. So you must pay great attention to what you say in front of children. Our words and deeds have a subtle influence on children. But we can't ignore this ubiquitous influence. People say that "parents are children's first teachers". This sentence is absolutely correct. The initial formation of children's values and outlook on life comes from the observation of parents and teachers. What kind of people we see in children's eyes often determines what kind of people children will become in the future.
I remember in a Chinese class, we learned the text "Cao Chong as an elephant", and the children learned that Cao Cao was an ancient official. I asked them, "Do you want to be an official?" Most children raised their hands. I asked one of the boys, "Why do you want to be an official?" Without thinking, the child said, "Because you can have a lot of money when you are an official." I asked him again: "Why do you get rich when you are an official?" The child touched his head and thought for a moment and said, "I don't know." I asked other children, and one of them, Dong, stood up and said, "If I become an official, I can help more people in trouble." How well you speak shows that the child has someone else in mind. Of course, I didn't blame or deny the boy in front of me, but enthusiastically expressed the girl's point of view. I think what we can do in front of children is to give them correct guidance instead of simple and rude denial and criticism. There will be a great distance between realism and idealism. Although small, I have begun to know the world and have my own ideas. It is our parents' responsibility to be the guide of children's life, give them good advice when they are faced with choices, help them make the right decision and be their mentor. It is really not easy to shoulder this responsibility. Being a parent is also an art of life full of wisdom.
5. "A dutiful son is born under the stick".
After investigation, it is the practice of most families that parents punish their children by beating them when their children are not good at exams, playful, disobedient or make mistakes. Should family education hit children? Can you hit the child? Which children should I hit and how? What kind of children don't have to fight? It has become the most controversial issue in the current family education research. I think, after all, a few parents beat and scold their children easily. But criticizing children may be commonplace. The poet Auden once said, "Those who are teased maliciously will repay evil with evil". If you were often criticized when you were a child, you will get along with others like this when you grow up. Many parents ask their children to do what they want, and many bosses often use criticism and blame as the main methods to control their employees. It is shameful not to know that such behavior will destroy the confidence of the other party. Really well-intentioned criticism is to make people suddenly enlightened and be more capable of doing things in the future. Well-intentioned criticism is not for venting or hurting, otherwise it should be completely avoided. Children often don't make mistakes on purpose, but don't know what to do right. As parents, we must patiently and calmly explain the truth to our children and tell them why it is wrong and how to do it right. Learn to control your emotions and try not to pass on your bad temper to your children. I know it's easier said than done. I am often tortured by naughty and stubborn children at work, especially when I fight alone without the cooperation of my parents. One of my colleagues once said to me, "Don't punish yourself with other people's mistakes". I often think of this sentence when I am about to collapse, so I say to myself in my heart, "Be patient, be peaceful, forgive and have great love."
Although some parents are willing to educate their children, I think I can understand them. After all, the pressure of life, work and family in modern society is too great, and one's experience is limited. Many parents leave their children with their parents or entrust their families to take care of them. I have encountered many such situations in my teaching career. Generally speaking, these children often have poor academic performance, showing more playfulness and lack of self-control, and their ideas are particularly big. Children in grade one learn to sign their own names, revise their notebooks and make other mistakes that only senior students make. After all, others' care and love are far less than their parents'. Based on this, I personally have always suggested that parents should accompany their children's growth and be as close to their lives as possible. Parents who wait until their children fall asleep often lack understanding of their children and miss many educational opportunities. It was too late when we found out that there was something wrong with the child. A parent once told me, "If I had known that my child would become like this, I should have given up my career in the first or second grade and concentrated on cultivating and educating him."
For all kinds of misunderstandings in family education, each family does not simply belong to one of them, but several kinds are intertwined. So, what's wrong with our family education? The mistake is that we have not mastered the correct educational ideas and methods. We must change the concept of education. Only by raising the practice of letting nature take its course to a regular understanding can we solve many special and thorny educational problems and make us no longer confused. Therefore, parents should purposefully read more books to educate their children, get guidance from theories and concepts, and learn some advanced and effective scientific education methods instead of relying only on old experience. Facing all kinds of new problems, we also need to keep pace with the times.
Parents are the objects that children imitate. People often say that children are angels. I think this is because in front of children, we are also learning to constantly improve ourselves. Yes, we found that behind a child who is often late, there must be a parent who likes to sleep late, behind a child who is often careless, there must be a careless parent, a father who scolds at home, and behind a child who bullies and fears hard work and laziness, there must be several spoiled parents. Every adult of us will have problems of one kind or another. Let's grow up with our children every day, correct our shortcomings, establish a more perfect personality and become an example for children to learn!