The reality is that even if we are willing to participate in learning, there are often no people around us who can trust and learn.
So how can we become a qualified, even high-quality parent? The Practical Guide to Quality Parenting gives a pertinent answer.
Erica Rachael, the author of this book, is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology/Human Development of the University of Chicago, a former consultant of McKinsey, and a member of the "Happy and Healthy Baby" advisory committee. She has published a lot of articles about family education in authoritative magazines such as Psychology Today and new york Times Atlantic Monthly, and can be regarded as a senior child education expert.
Moreover, since she became a mother herself, she has set up popular parent education seminars at the University of California, the Habito Children's Museum and other schools. It can be said that if parents are really regarded as a profession, these seminars are veritable induction training courses.
In the Practical Guide to Quality Parenting, Erica Rachael carefully assembled the educational theories, real cases and private practices involved in the seminar, comprehensively introduced 75 hot topics about children's emotional and social abilities, such as discipline, communication and emotional intelligence, and proposed that to be a quality parent, only three principles should be mastered-"acceptance", "restraint" and ".
0 1 accepted
What is acceptance? Erica believes that acceptance is unconditional love. Only in the unconditional love of parents can children learn to constantly adjust their behavior and gain the courage to overcome setbacks, so as to learn from their mistakes and grow up. Therefore, the first condition for good parents is to accept their children.
Maybe you will find it easy to accept children and give them unconditional love. Or feel like you've done it.
It's not inevitable. Acceptance is a seemingly simple thing, but few people can really do it.
Imagine, if you are a father with excellent athletic ability, when you find that your children are naturally uncoordinated in sports, can you still express your love and appreciation for your children from the heart?
To accept, we must first accept the child as he is. A child is a unique individual with his own abilities, pursuits, preferences and thinking, among which there must be some parts that parents don't like or even tolerate.
Some time ago, 985 Shuobo's parents just gave birth to a scum baby. It is said that Xueba's parents tried their best to change their son's grades, but in the end they succeeded.
Just when I was about to despair, my mother unexpectedly found that the child had his own unique feeling in treating people. He won the position of class life Committee member by almost unanimous vote. It was this accidental cashback that made her understand that every child is unique. Only by truly accepting children can she discover their unique advantages.
Acceptance also means accepting children's feelings and ideas. Most parents will refuse to accept or even humiliate their children once they find that their feelings and ideas are different from their own.
For example, in many families with two children, when the boss says he doesn't like his younger brother or sister, parents may directly deny their children's true feelings and educate them on the principle of brotherhood.
There is nothing wrong with educating children, but people's feelings are actually beyond their control. Directly denying the child's feelings will only make the child hide his feelings from you, and will not play a role in counseling.
Of course, accepting a child's feelings and thoughts does not mean liking and agreeing with all his actions. The key point here is to separate the child's "person" from his behavior. In other words, let the child realize that no matter what feelings and thoughts he has, his parents love him and can communicate with them, but at the same time, if he makes a wrong behavior, his parents will also discipline him.
Take the second child as an example. Parents can fully understand and accept the feelings that children don't like their brothers and sisters. At the same time, you can also express your feelings, communicate with your children, and slowly guide your children into the role of your brother. But if children really turn their feelings into actions and make behaviors that are unfavorable to their younger brothers and sisters, then we should also intervene and punish them in time.
02 restrictions
Establishing clear boundaries to restrain children is the second key point to be a good parent.
Some parents may think that restricting their children will constrain their nature and have the opposite effect. In fact, clear and reasonable boundaries will not only bind children, but also bring them a sense of security. Only when children have a full sense of security will they be interested in exploring the unknown world.
When establishing boundaries, we also need our parents to do the following three things:
First, respect children, care for children, be kind to children, and ask children to treat themselves like this.
If you want to do this, I suggest you use a more polite expression. In family life, it is a common situation that we seldom use polite language with children. This is probably because of too familiar reasons, or because we feel that as parents, we have the right to direct our children.
But in fact, it is very necessary to use polite language for children. Polite language can not only help children learn the correct way to communicate with others, but also help children feel the respect of their parents, thus establishing a good communication atmosphere.
Of course, while setting a polite example for your child, on the other hand, you should also restrain your child's willfulness towards you.
I have met many caring mothers. It can be said that empathy is very good, and children can understand all kinds of difficulties in time, but children show bad behaviors such as losing their temper with their mothers and interrupting adults.
This may be because parents don't pay attention to their children's behaviors, or they are used to these behaviors, or they may tolerate these bad behaviors as a sign of love. These need to be corrected as soon as possible. Not restraining the child in time will not only make the child develop bad habits at home, but also make it easier for him to treat outsiders in the same way.
Second, don't let go of your child's wrong behavior.
If you restrict children, you can't let go of their wrong behavior. When children take wrong behaviors, if parents don't correct them in time to make their responses meet their expectations, children will soon repeat these wrong behaviors.
Therefore, if you find a child's wrong behavior, you should correct it immediately. For example, when the child above yells at his parents, for whatever reason, we should immediately stop discussing the problem and remind him that the communication method is wrong.
If you continue to communicate with your child even if you tell him that his behavior is wrong at this moment, you will inadvertently teach your child that it is actually acceptable to make noise and shout.
Third, parents should have control.
Parents should also have control over children. Control means that you can not only exercise your parents' power well, but also give your children some freedom and share power with them.
In other words, neither authoritarian parents should have the final say in everything, nor do they blindly indulge their children to do everything.
The style of control requires us to constantly give children appropriate independent space according to their growth, and it is important to give them opportunities to make decisions and make mistakes.
To give a few counterexamples, these are not manifestations of control:
1. Parents know a rule, but children don't like it. In order not to make children angry or upset, they are no longer allowed to obey.
2. In order to make children do what you say, you used violent means.
In order to make the children quiet, parents do whatever the crying children say.
The correct way is to seek truth from facts, be well-founded, and give children a solemn warning on the premise of empathy.
03 consistency
This is the third quality that Erica Rachael thinks a good parent should have.
Consistency has two meanings. The first layer is that parents should keep their promises and keep their promises; Another meaning is that your behavior should be predictable and your words and deeds should conform to your style.
Consistency can prevent children from always challenging the authority of their parents and improve the effect of punishing children.
What children say to their parents always goes in one ear and out the other, which is probably one of the biggest headaches for parents. Is it really that children can't remember? Excluding the physiological development factors of the brain in terms of attention, children may also be testing the consistency of their parents.
In other words, children will find out the bottom line of the rules by violating their parents' warnings again and again. The external manifestation of this temptation is that it is easy to misunderstand that you can't remember what your parents said. In fact, it is because you remember them that you will do this.
In order to understand this behavior of children, you can imagine that if you are sent to the moon, scientists tell you that the gravity of the moon is one-sixth of that of the earth, and you can jump about 6 meters on it, then what will you do after you go up?
Do you want to jump a few times and see how high you can jump? If scientists tell you every time, you won't jump again. If you happen to be surprised to find that sometimes you can jump to 10 meter, then you will definitely continue to challenge this record and question the words of scientists.
For children, you are a scientist, and the laws of physics are the laws of life that you often tell him. If parents can't be consistent, it means that the gravity of the moon will change, and children will inevitably try and challenge.
Therefore, when children make mistakes, we should also reflect on whether our behavior is consistent. It is always difficult to match words with deeds, sometimes because we didn't notice it, and sometimes because of the limitation of objective conditions, which deserves our attention and attention.
Accepting children's true colors, limiting children of all ages and maintaining their own consistency are the basic concepts of parenting put forward in the Practical Guide to Quality Parenting.
Just looking up, we not only need to know the solutions to children's specific problems, but also need to accumulate the underlying thinking logic of parenting. Only in this way can we be confident and comfortable in actual operation.