Parents around me hope that their children can learn more skills and improve their emotional intelligence. Even if I think my child is too young to understand, I hope to improve my mental state through various outward bound training.

However, the process of children's growth and brain construction is often inextricably linked with parenting styles.

Recently, I learned that Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, an expert in neurology and psychology at Harvard University, won the Pioneer Award of the National Institutes of Health and the Guggenheim Research Scholar Award 20 19 (only two people in the world every year).

In the book "Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain", she explained how the brain works with other people's brains in interesting and easy-to-understand language, so that you can experience everything you are experiencing now.

Recently, she put forward seven parenting suggestions on CNBS website, hoping to help parents build flexible thinking and brains for their children. Let's hear whether these suggestions have inspired you.

Being a good gardener is more important than being a carpenter.

Carpenters will carve wood into any shape they want, but gardeners will help plants grow by cultivating and fertilizing.

See the difference between the two? The former pays attention to the result of "carving", while the latter tends to the unknown harvest.

From the perspective of parenting style, some parents choose to arbitrarily force their children to participate in various interest classes, hoping to "carve" their children into certain types of talents, such as violinists who can play in the symphony hall in the future.

But if children are forced to study or are not interested from beginning to end, even the best music will be disgusted.

You might as well use the gardener's cultivation method. If you want your child to become a musician, you must first observe whether your child is interested in music. They usually like to fight and have a sense of rhythm. Or take them to various types of concerts and interested audition classes to help them germinate better after understanding the advantages of their own seeds.

Talk to children more.

Studies have shown that even if children are only a few months old and can't understand the meaning of words at all, their brains have already produced memories, laying a neural foundation for future language learning. Therefore, the more words children hear, the more vocabulary they will have and the better their reading ability will be.

Parents can start by teaching their children "emotional vocabulary", such as sadness, happiness, depression and so on.

By describing the feelings of others, talk to your child about the potential causes of emotional changes and how emotions affect others, such as "Did you see that boy cry? He fell and hurt his knee. He cried so sadly that he probably just wanted to get more comfort from his parents. "

Position yourself as an emotional guide and guide children to understand and accept all kinds of feelings in the emotional world.

Explain the cause of the matter

Parents may be unhappy when your child keeps asking "why".

However, as long as you patiently explain something to them, the door of a novel world will open to children and speed up the operation of their brains.

Avoid responding with "I said so", because children will help them manage their behaviors more effectively after understanding the reasons behind certain behaviors and things.

If they only know that "I shouldn't eat all the cookies, it will make adults unhappy and think I'm not good", it won't help them understand the meaning behind the behavior adjustment. It's best to let the children know, "I shouldn't have eaten all the cookies." Eating too much will hurt your stomach, and your brother and sister will be sad because they didn't eat. "

Give the child a clear explanation, and the child will realize the possible consequences of some bad behaviors and then make changes in time.

Focus on the fact/truth, not someone-business is business.

In terms of discipline and praise, parents should remember to pay attention to their behavior, not their children.

For example, when you see your younger brother hitting your sister on the head, don't immediately call him a "bad boy". You can specifically criticize "Stop hitting your sister! This will hurt her very much, so you should apologize to her quickly! "

Similarly, in the process of praising children, don't just praise children as "good children", but praise some behaviors of children, such as "My sister just did a great job and didn't fight back with my brother". This detailed explanation of the behavior itself will help the child's brain to establish a more beneficial concept for itself.

Another suggestion is to explore the motivation behind the behavior hypothetically.

For example, it is better to say "he lied" than to say that someone is a liar. The former is aimed at people, while the latter is aimed at lying. Then discuss with the child, "Why do you think he lied? What will others think of him when they know, and will they forgive him? "

Through persuasion rather than "final decision", we can cultivate children's thinking sensitivity in real life, and even tell them that "he is not born to lie, but to protect himself under certain circumstances. In most cases, he may be an honest person."

Let children imitate you.

There are many ways for children to learn naturally, such as observing and playing with their peers, but the most important thing is to imitate the behavior of adults.

Imitation itself is an effective learning method, which can give children a sense of mastery. Therefore, parents can provide more educational opportunities, such as inviting them to imitate and help when doing housework.

It should be noted that children will want to imitate whether they are good or bad, and parents should try to avoid what children say without thinking.

Under the premise of safety, let children have more contact with people.

From the infancy of children, they can meet and get in touch with their relatives and friends or children of the same age, because this is a good opportunity to show diversity.

Previous studies have shown that babies often interact with people in different languages, which will help to preserve important brain connections and lay a solid foundation for learning other languages in the future.

In addition, frequent contact with different people in infancy will help them distinguish different types of faces faster in the future, which will be a good start for parents to carry out anti-racial discrimination education.

Encourage yourself to try.

Children like to try different things by themselves without the help of adults, such as dressing and puzzles.

Even if it seems inappropriate, the child's thoughts may just want to know what changes will be brought to people and things around him after that, such as blowing balloons or deflating basketball. Parents can appropriately allow them to satisfy their curiosity when it is confirmed that they are not intentionally disruptive or destructive.

When to intervene and when to allow it is really a challenge for parents, so Lisa Feldman Barrett finally suggested that it is the most ideal situation if parents can always be present, guide them and try to take care of their children's every need.