With the end of the final exams in primary and secondary schools around the country, children's favorite summer vacation has finally begun. Shortly after returning to the cage, the "divine beast" has been released, and parents have expressed their "great pressure". Ms. Ma, who lives in Beijing, told reporters that due to the resurgence of the epidemic, her fifth grade son only attended two weeks of classes at school this semester, and the rest of the time was spent online at home.
For the safety of the elderly, Ms. Ma did not ask her child's grandmother or grandfather to come to Beijing to help her share the pressure of taking care of the child. Since the outbreak of the epidemic, Ms. Ma has always been working alone from home while fighting against "divine beasts".
Ms. Ma and her son spent two weeks in a tug of war to make it a habit just by washing hands and soap for 20 seconds. Ms. Ma asked her son to wash his hands long enough to sing the birthday song twice, and to use soap to make a lot of bubbles. However, the playful and eager child ran away without using soap for 5 seconds. Ms. Ma asked him why he washed so quickly, and the child replied, "Because I'm lazy." "" At that time, my fire suddenly started to rise, "Ms. Ma said.
Ms. Ma said, "It may be a problem with the nature of young boys. They often do things perfunctorily. It's useless for you to say many things over and over again. You have to patiently repeat and keep saying them in order to make things clear. Only when you understand and agree with them can your child's actions change. However, during this process of saying things, you can't help but get angry and shout
Lin Xiuyun, a professor and doctoral supervisor in the psychology department of Beijing Normal University who has been engaged in family therapy for 16 years, once made relevant research. During the epidemic at home, children's and parents' emotions were easily provoked, leading to increased conflicts between the two sides. "Emotions played a very important role in parent-child relationship.".
Lin Xiuyun said that from the perspective of family therapy theory, children are actually very loyal to their parents, and they are particularly willing to make their parents satisfied. Once their parents are not satisfied, the child will be very concerned. If a child is often yelled at by their parents, they will be yelled at when they eat slowly, when they wash their hands and get their clothes wet, and when they do their homework slowly, they will also be yelled at... The child will feel that there is often a fire in their parents' place and dare not approach them. "This kind of child who has been yelled at for a long time will feel that they are not good enough, leading to cowardice, lack of determination, and a withdrawn personality, and they are not very good at dealing with social problems with others
Lin Xiuyun added that psychological research has shown that many problems such as children's aversion to learning and internet addiction are actually emotional issues, and children's emotions are greatly influenced by their parents. Once parents' emotions improve, children generally also undergo significant changes. Many times, parents bring their children to the consultation room hoping to correct their children's problems. "We have found that it is actually the parents who have the problem. It can be said that the negative impact on the children will be as great as the parents' temper.
Anger originates from negative mind reading techniques
Lin Xiuyun once specialized in a series of studies on children with oppositional resistance disorders, and interviewed over 40 related families, including one that left a deep impression on her. The children of this family are in the fourth grade of primary school, and like other children with opposition and resistance disorders, they are particularly prone to causing their parents to lose their temper. For other parents, even if the child is easily angered, they will say something when asked about their child's strengths. However, when Lin Xiuyun asked the child's mother, she was shocked by the answer: "Does he have any strengths? How come I didn't notice anything!" Lin Xiuyun said, "I immediately understood why the child is like this
Lin Xiuyun analyzed that parents' tantrums often stem from negative mental reading techniques, where "we tend to give negative evaluations of their children's behavior. Lin Xiuyun used a story as an example to illustrate that a mother saw two apples in her child's hand and told her child that she wanted to eat one, but the children took a bite on each of the apples. My mother's reaction is, little bunny, in order to prevent me from eating the apple, I took a bite each; And the child's real idea is to taste which apple is sweeter and give it to their mother.
In response to the problem of children procrastinating and not taking seriously in real life, which makes many parents easily angry, Lin Xiuyun explained that children's control and planning abilities are definitely weaker than adults. They do not want to be serious or not working hard, but only want to quickly complete this task and do what they are interested in. Procrastination and not taking seriously are actually the things they are not willing to do at hand.
Lin Xiuyun's daughter is 8 years old this year and has a poor sense of time. It's already late at 11:30 pm, and she still brushes her teeth slowly. The water needs to be collected bit by bit, and squeezing toothpaste can also create patterns. At first, Lin Xiuyun was also very anxious and would simply say 'I won't wait for you' or 'I won't talk to you', and then go to bed. Later, Lin Xiuyun discovered that the child actually found it amusing. After adjusting her mood, she only needed to urge her daughter to say, "This is really fun, but it shouldn't waste too much time." When the parents' tone becomes better, the child's level of cooperation will also improve.
Decimal multiplication is a common problem that Ms. Ma's son often makes mistakes in his homework. During the pandemic, during online classes, the teacher was unable to provide face-to-face guidance on these mistakes and could only record the correct solutions into a video for the child to understand and correct. Ms. Ma's son always writes down the correct answers and quickly corrects the wrong questions to go out and play.
Ms. Ma found out that her child had not learned at all, but had passed the exam. She thought of going out to play and couldn't help but get angry. However, the child was also very unhappy. She felt that she had already corrected the wrong question according to the teacher's video, so why should she still be criticized? Mother and son often argue about this.
Until the Final examination, the only two wrong questions in Ms. Ma's son's math volume were decimal multiplication questions. The child looked at these two wrong questions and felt very regretful. After reflection, he actively cooperated with Ms. Ma to develop an exercise plan for decimal multiplication problems. Ms. Ma told reporters that the vast majority of children are actually eager to make progress, but practice has proven that if the topic is not understood, no matter how angry it is, it is no use.
