These "post-80s" rural women return to their hometowns from the city in exchange for their economic functions and freedom, hoping to help their children gain the ability to settle down and live a life through education, and live a better life than their parents. But the complexity of life cannot be completely solved by education; and the complexity of education cannot be completely solved by their persistence and experience.
A hidden corner
It is not very big to the county seat in the east. This Anhui county town located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River has a flat terrain. If you ride an electric bike in a straight line, passing through the real estate and hotels newly developed in the past 10 years, it only takes about 15 minutes to stroll from the south to the north.
Wang Yanhua relies on different schools to outline the appearance of this small town. She came from the countryside to study with her mother in Dongzhi County. To her, the new and western-style buildings such as Capital City, Yayuan, and International Hotel were not as familiar as those old schools. Wang Yanhua can quickly sort out the distribution of schools in the city: there is a technical secondary school in the south of the city, surrounded by mainly clothing stores and jewelry stores; in the middle of the city, east to the No. 2 Middle School and the No. 3 Middle School, two provincial key middle schools and the county experimental primary school, the distribution In three directions of the roundabout. This is an important education area in the county, and it is also an area that is often congested. There are many large and small food markets, stationery stores, daily necessities stores, and small workshops around the school. Rental housing is "hard to find"; further north, there is another The second most important location is from to the east of No. 1 Middle School , the junior high school of No. 2 Middle School and another primary school.
Around primary and secondary schools, without exception, there are a large number of mothers who accompany them. They rush to the county town from the village or town, rent a small house near the school, and accompany their children to study. In addition to taking care of their children's food and daily life, many people also work an extra part-time job to supplement their family income or occupy their free time after their children go to school.
In recent years, the stage of accompanying students has been advanced, and more and more mothers have been accompanying students since elementary school (Photo taken by Shibufa in July 2018/Photo courtesy of Visual China )
In the past 10 years, sociological researchers have paid attention to Go to the "Study Moms" group. Yi Zhuo is a doctoral student at the China Rural Governance Research Center of Wuhan University and has been studying the phenomenon of accompanying students since 2018. Initially, the starting point of Yi Zhuo's research was the gender division of labor and family economic patterns in rural families. After the rise of the working economy, the typical division of labor model of peasant families is "half-working and half-farming based on intergenerational division of labor" - the young and middle-aged labor force in the family works outside the home, while the elderly work at home and farm. This division of labor model can maximize family economic income and maintain healthy interaction between urban and rural areas. At that time, there was even a slogan in the countryside: half-worker, half-peasant, you will never be poor in your life.
After actually getting involved in the investigation, Yi Zhuo gradually discovered that "reverse population flow" has occurred among young rural women - under the control of economic laws, the population mainly flows from the central and western regions to the east. However, in order to accompany them to study, women returned from the eastern coastal cities where they worked to the central and western counties. They are mainly those born in the 1980s. Most of them have a junior high school education and have worked in factories in Jiangsu, Zhejiang or Guangdong. During a survey in several counties in Hubei Province, Yi Zhuo found that the proportion of accompanying students has reached 40% to 60%. This result surprised him. "Education, as a variable factor, can so profoundly change the labor division model of peasant families." After all, in the working economy, the impact of the lack of a labor force on the entire family economy cannot be underestimated.
After a large number of mothers accompanying students poured into Dongzhi County, the appearance of the city was also quietly changing. The most direct change Wang Yanhua felt was the "house". She rented a rental house 15 minutes' walk from her son's school. The rental house is in a four-story self-built house built around 2013. It is not old, but the interior space is like an early guest house, with four single rooms of about 30 square meters separated on each floor. There is a small bathroom and kitchen in the house. Wang Yanhua put two single beds, a dining table and desk, and a cabinet, basically using up the limited space.The rent for this small single room is about 5,000 yuan per year. Wang Yanhua remembers that starting about 10 years ago, many similar private houses were built around the county school. "Some of them are like dormitory buildings, all facing one direction, and they are specially rented out to mothers who accompany them to study."
Some small garment factories and luggage factories that were originally opened in villages also followed the footsteps of mothers and moved to the vicinity of the school. It is said to be a "factory", but in fact it is more like a small workshop. The boss rents a suite in a residential building as the venue. The factory has flexible working hours and piece-rate wages, and generally employs less than 20 employees. With their experience working in coastal cities, most study-accompanying mothers are easily qualified for this job. Wang Yanhua works as a sewing worker in a luggage factory. She works from about 7 a.m. to about 9 p.m. every day, except for lunch and dinner. Depending on the difficulty of sewing, the labor cost for each bag ranges from 5 to 10 yuan. Wang Yanhua can make two to three thousand yuan a month.
In July 2020, mothers accompanying students are installing instrument accessories. Many people choose to work part-time jobs while accompanying students (Photo by Wang Xuhua/Photo provided by Visual China)
"Accompanying students" has given the county more vitality and fireworks. Yin Jingjing, a doctoral student in at Fudan University, once did research on accompanying students in Dongzhi County. She often heard local people say, "The money in the entire county is the money earned by accompanying students." It can also be seen locally that in the county, in addition to some government public service departments In addition, the most important industries are real estate, teaching aids, clothing and luggage processing and other industries that have developed around education and accompanying students. A popular saying among mothers is that "when winter and summer vacations come, the entire county is half empty.".
Although the group of accompanying mothers is large, it does not attract much attention in the county. It is like a group of "beach people" hidden in the corners of the county. French writer Patrick Modiano described the image of "beach people" in his novel " Dark Store Street ". He spent 40 years of his life at the beach or poolside, chatting with summer vacationers and wealthy idlers, appearing in a bathing suit among thousands of vacation photos. But no one could name him, couldn't tell why he was there, and no one noticed that one day he disappeared from the picture. The only traces he left in this world were his footprints on the beach for just a few seconds.
The accompanying mothers live quietly in the county. During the day, they were absorbed into rented houses or factories. At 11:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m., they left their sewing machines, put down the leather bags and bags in their hands, and filed out of the residential buildings, rushing to the vegetable market and rental houses, leaving many hurried figures on the road. Every summer, a group of stay-at-home mothers leave the rental houses, but new arrivals quickly fill the empty houses, covering the traces left by the previous residents. The family structure that once separated young parents from their children in the working economy has now been changed in the name of "education" and "accompanying students." These "post-80s" rural mothers gave up their possible economic gains in the city and returned to their children, acting as a hub to reconnect separated parents and children, and endured the anxiety and stress of being caught between urban and rural areas. tension.
On June 25, 2019, in Lu'an City, Anhui Province, a mother accompanied her child to guide her children in their homework
Between urban and rural areas
Most of the interviews with Wang Yanhua were conducted amidst the sound of the sewing machine "ta da da da, da da da da", from time to time. It was interrupted by some voices coming to check and deliver goods. Her hands never stop, and these sewing movements are like muscle memory. Even if she is distracted and chats with reporters, she will not go wrong.
Tracing back to the starting point of her career as a child, Wang Yanhua set the time in 2006, when her 3-and-a-half-year-old son first entered kindergarten. It was from that year that she ended her life of working outside, returned to her hometown, and began to focus on her children.
"There are few children at home now, and they are very precious." She mentioned repeatedly.Wang Yanhua, who was born in 1981, has an older sister and a younger brother. When she was a child, her family of five relied on her parents to do odd jobs and farm a few acres of land, and the family of five lived a tight life. When Wang Yanhua was in junior high school, her mother was diagnosed with heart disease and could no longer do heavy work. The family's financial resources were tight, so Wang Yanhua had to drop out of school in the second grade of junior high school, even though her grades were always at the top of the class. "Although my brother's grades are not very good, as a boy, he must study a little bit in junior high school." She always emphasized that she had no regrets about dropping out of school, but she couldn't help but add, "There is nothing I can do about it. The family conditions They can’t afford us, that’s all the people of that generation” .
html At the age of 116, Wang Yanhua started working in a big city. She followed the villagers to a garment factory in Zhejiang. Life in the factory was hard. Initially, there was no air conditioning in the workshop and it was as hot as a steamer in summer. She had to work from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., with two days off a month, and several of her fingers were calloused. But young Wang Yanhua feels happy, "spending the money I earn just like college students who have just graduated now."
Stills from " Love of Mountains and Seas "
At that time, compared to doing farm work, this job seemed much more modern. "Although I'm not as good as teachers, doctors, and nurses, I don't have to go to the fields anymore. We have people picking tea leaves there, and they're exposed to the sun. I definitely can't do it." She has good skills and popularity, and "does well in the factory." ". Once, the factory did not settle wages on time, and the workshop team leader was an old man who didn't like to take care of things. Wang Yanhua was elected by seven or eight girls in the same group and went directly to talk to the boss. "The boss wasn't angry either. After I was about to leave, he said he liked a cheerful person like me." After get off work in the evening, even if she had been tired all day, she would still find time to read a few pages of romance novels - there was a romance novel not far from the factory. In a small bookstore, after applying for a card, you can rent a novel for only a few cents.
That was the most comfortable time for Wang Yanhua. Later, someone introduced that 25-year-old Wang Yanhua married a man from the same village and soon gave birth to a child.
’s interest in reading novels was submerged in the tedious life, and her life position also shifted from the city back to the countryside. After the child was born, Wang Yanhua went out to work for a year. "I wanted to make some money before he went to kindergarten so that I could build a new house for my family when I came back." She went out on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and worked hard until the end of the year before returning home. During that meeting, the son was no longer as well-behaved as he was on the phone. He hugged his mother's legs and cried non-stop, "Just let dad make money alone. Don't leave, just stay with me at home." Wang Yanhua looked at her little son and said, "I feel very sad. Forget it, let's work at home."
Strictly speaking, Wang Yanhua was not a study mother at that time. Her son finished elementary school in a village primary school not far from her home. During those six years, even if she did not actively search for him, the experience of accompanying him came to her from all directions. She works in the village, also doing garment making, and her income is half what it was in Zhejiang. Sitting in the factory, Wang Yanhua often listens to the mothers who work with her discuss enthusiastically how far in advance they need to rent a house and where the house price is lower. Every school season, one or two mothers in the village always "disappear" and re-enter the city from the countryside.
Everything is so logical. In the hearts of young rural mothers, "study accompanying" is a path that everyone must embark on. The only difference is the time.
Stills from "Studying Children"
After Yi Zhuo's research, he found that one of the reasons for the rapid expansion of the group of mothers who accompany students to study is that parents pay more attention to education. "This generation of parents got out of their isolated hometowns through working and saw the outside world. But life on the assembly line is arduous, boring and depressing. They have suffered a lot and have vaguely or clearly realized that education is the key to change. An important pathway to living standards and family social status.”
Yin Jingjing also felt the changes in the concepts of young parents during the interview: One father told her that when talking about business outside, he would be deceived because of his lack of education; another father made some money in business and used it for his business acumen. He was complacent and didn't quite understand that his cousin spent more than ten years studying, but he later discovered that his cousin's salary was much higher than his own after graduation. "The 'post-80s' generation is a generation that has witnessed the results of academic differentiation. Using the people around them as a reference, they found that different levels of education profoundly affected everyone's life trajectory. "
The last resort
has become the goal of most families to move their children to a better school. A rural primary school teacher in Dongzhi County told this magazine that after 10 years of employment, the students' current The number is nearly half of what it was then. In fact, the conditions of the village’s primary schools are getting better, and new teachers are joining every few years, all of whom are graduates of regular undergraduate colleges. The school’s physical facilities are also improving, including desks, chairs, and Dormitories and multimedia equipment are updated in batches, "but they still cannot retain people. Parents are afraid of falling behind when others go to the city."
The imbalance in education between urban and rural areas is still a reality compared to villages and towns. Scholar Ge Yan analyzed the financial investment data for compulsory education from 2009 to 2018 in his paper. It was found that due to different economic levels, there is a clear imbalance in funding for compulsory education among different provinces, cities and counties. In Dongzhi County, the 2020 data shows that the gap also exists between the two key middle schools in the county. The financial allocation received is 2 to 3 times that of township middle schools.
What’s more, the village is no longer a suitable environment for children to grow up. “We used to talk about left-behind villages, but the overall situation is still relatively lively, with three generations of old, middle and young people. Interact frequently. "Yin Jingjing told this magazine that the situation today is different from before. What impressed her deeply was that when she visited different villages in Dongzhi County, the most permanent residents in the village were elderly people over 70 years old. "The left-behind people now are the 'real left-behind' people. . The social structure of the village is no longer complete. Children living in such an environment will lack the process of social training and education. "
Stills from "十三"
Even if parents are willing to leave their children to study in the village, the actual conditions may not satisfy them. At the end of 2014, when Wang Yanhua's son was in the second grade of elementary school, the village middle school had too few people. Being merged into the town. " withdraws and merges schools " is a reform started in my country in 2001 to optimize the allocation of rural education resources, merging resources of nearby schools with few students, so that students in the village can be concentrated into a small number. Town school. But the town middle school is 20 kilometers away from the village where Wang Yanhua lives. Dozens of families wrote a joint letter and submitted it to the town government, hoping not to withdraw the school. I can only rent a house to accompany me when I study, which increases the expenses. Moreover, the two-child policy of and has just been relaxed. In some families, the age gap between the two children is large. If the school is withdrawn, the mother will not be able to take care of two children at the same time, and one child will always have to transfer to another school. " Wang Yanhua said.
The joint letter did not work. After their children graduate from elementary school, mothers have two choices: let their children live in school, or rent a house to accompany them to study.
Like most young mothers in the village, Wang Yanhua also chose The latter. She was worried about letting her son live in school. When her son was in elementary school, his clothes, shoes and socks got wet on a rainy day, and he didn't know how to change out of the wet clothes when he got home. Later, he caught a severe cold and had a high fever. . "Today's children have poor self-care ability. They always get sick after living in school, so won't their grades drop? You are still picky about food at this age. Junior high school and high school are the time when your body is developing. If you are not good at studies, forget it. If you are not able to grow taller, it will be a lifelong matter."The junior high school in the town is equipped with student dormitories, but they are basically empty - there are more than fifty people in the class, and there are no more than ten dormitory people. By the third grade of junior high school, there are only four or five left.
Mom's World
There is no father-in-law or mother-in-law to help. , her husband traveled to Tianjin, Jiangsu and other places all year round to work as a carpenter. In the small world where she accompanied her to school, only Wang Yanhua and her children were left, and the children were the center of this small world.
The first thing Wang Yanhua learned was how to find a job that could work at the same time. Take good care of your son's job. When applying for a job, the most important thing is flexible working hours. Wang Yanhua worked part-time as a salesperson in a jewelry store. The get off work schedule in the store was very tight, and occasionally customers came during lunch and could not leave. . She also ran a pancake stall in the town’s commercial street, but after only a month, she decided to close the stall. In Dongzhi, people eat pancakes for breakfast, and Wang Yanhua needs to get up at five or six in the morning to prepare them. This is inconsistent with her preparation for her son. The time to prepare breakfast was conflicting. Later, Wang Yanhua gained experience and negotiated the working hours with her boss on the phone before meeting. She had worked at a courier point in the town for two and a half years and was responsible for sending and receiving goods in the store. Express delivery.
Her day is divided into three parts during lunch and dinner, which are then filled with housework and work. Every morning and evening, Wang Yanhua prepares a glass of milk for her son, who doesn’t like apples and pears, so she goes online. Buying newly launched kiwis, mangoes and other seasonal fruits is several yuan cheaper per pound than at fruit shops in town. After get off work, she rushes to the vegetable market to buy fresh beef, chicken, and sometimes local chicken. and fresh shrimps.
Wang Yanhua put more effort into her studies than many mothers. When her son first entered elementary school, he often couldn't understand the pinyin and math problems in class. When he came home, he put the exercise book on the table and shouted loudly. Call her. “At that age, the mother is like a superman in the eyes of the children, who can do everything. "This sense of dependence makes Wang Yanhua satisfied. She is a person who loves to laugh, especially when talking about the interaction with her son, no matter how small the details are, she can't help laughing. Wang Yanhua has long forgotten all the knowledge in elementary school. She took her Chinese textbook to the village primary school teacher and started learning Pinyin reading and writing again. "After 20 years, I finally learned the primary school knowledge systematically. "Every night, my son marked the homework questions he couldn't do and put them on the table. Wang Yanhua came back from get off work at around 9pm and worked on each question one by one. After he understood it, he explained it to his son at breakfast the next day.
Right The emphasis on academics also makes her often anxious. “Teachers will keep a close eye on students who have good grades and will notify their parents if they fall behind. I was very afraid of receiving a call from the teacher. I had never been so afraid when I was studying. I am also afraid that the teacher does not pay attention to the children if he does not call. "After entering junior high school, his son's grades often fluctuated. Once, because he bought a tablet computer to play with, his grades dropped by more than ten places in the class. Wang Yanhua was "so anxious that his hair turned white."
But the difficulty of the coursework in junior high school has exceeded After she entered puberty, the boy was no longer as close to his mother as before, and unlike Wang Yanhua's cheerful and enthusiastic nature, she focused more on communicating with her son. His son's personality is just like his father's, he is introverted and rarely talks about things at school. Once, Wang Yanhua mentioned at the dinner table that his son's physics scores seemed to have dropped by several grades compared with the previous semester, and he talked about himself. This semester, I have already become the physics class representative. “You see, it took me several months to tell me, just to refute my criticism. Mothers really have to take the initiative to approach their children. "
Stills from "Stars on Earth"
She follows seven or eight educational public accounts, "There are often articles posted by experts on them to teach you how to get along with adolescent children." One of the things she is most proud of is that she has successfully solved the problem. The issue of her son’s puppy love. At that time, Wang Yanhua was working at a courier delivery point, and students and parents often came to pick up couriers.After going back and forth, she heard that "all the students in the class are in love, and those who don't have a partner are very different." Wang Yanhua suddenly remembered that her son spent ten minutes in front of the mirror fiddling with his hair every day before going to school - ten minutes, which is a luxury for a junior high school student. After checking with several classmates, Wang Yanhua went home to "scam him." At the dinner table, she asked her son: "Do the girls in the class like to ask you math questions?"
The son was a little flustered and prevaricated: "It's okay, people seem to ask it often."
"That one is called ××× Do girls from around the world also like to ask you?" Wang Yanhua jokingly said the name of the "scandalous girlfriend."
"Occasionally, occasionally." The son blushed and just lowered his head to pick up the vegetables.
"At this time, study is more important. If your grades are not good, you will not be able to find a good job in the future, and you will be embarrassed to talk to girls, don't you think so?" Wang Yanhua ended the topic.
Neither mother nor son mentioned this topic again, and their son's condition and grades gradually returned to normal. Wang Yanhua is satisfied with her handling this time, "The official account said that it is better to clear up the situation than to block it. The more blockage, the more problems will arise." When she summarized her experience, she sounded like an education expert.
Stills from "小 giving up "
Wang Yanhua also feels tired in her busy life day after day. She once posted on WeChat Moments: "I really want to kick him into the university like a football." During the week of 's interview, she only had one slightly leisurely afternoon. That day, her father rushed from the village to the county town to see a doctor, and Wang Yanhua took a day off to accompany him. After lunch and putting her father on the bus back to her hometown, Wang Yanhua hurried home and washed her clothes, and finally sat down on a chair to relax for a while. In fact, she also had other choices in her life as a student. The boss of the factory where she once worked contacted her and asked her to return to the factory as a team leader. After a few more years of work, she could gradually rise to the factory management level. "It's very exciting. But if you mess up the child, what's the use of making more money?" Wang Yanhua refused.
Fortunately, my son was able to live up to his expectations and was admitted to the provincial key middle school in the county during the 2021 high school entrance examination. Wang Yanhua’s journey to accompany her to school extended to the county seat. Nowadays, she is satisfied with her life as a student. Even when she talks about her busyness and pressure, she is always accompanied by a burst of laughter and a sense of accomplishment. Her son can be admitted to a good university and return to Dongzhi County or the city after graduation to take a job as a civil servant or a teacher. This is all her dream.
Choose
Not every stay-at-home mother is as lucky as Wang Yanhua. In fact, according to scholars' research, the path of "staying with your mother" in the county is a dangerous path that requires a lot of effort but low returns. These "post-80s" rural women, in exchange for their economic functions and freedom, hope to help their children gain the ability to settle down through education and live a better life than their parents. But the complexity of life cannot be completely solved by education; and the complexity of education cannot be completely solved by their experience and resources.
This year, 42-year-old Chen Xia has sent her son to university, ending five years of accompanying him to school. Her son went to a provincial college. In Chen Xia's view, this was a testament to her failure to accompany him to study. To put it more seriously, she was an "unsuccessful mother." She is still full of regrets, confusion and unwillingness: "I accompany others, and I accompany them; other people's children read it, how come my results are like this?"
March 3, 2017, Maotanchang Middle School, Lu'an, Anhui Province, No. 1 A mother who was delivering meals squatted at the school gate and looked at the direction in which her child was coming. (Picture | Visual China)
Chen Xia’s experience is similar to Wang Yanhua’s. Growing up in a village in Dongzhi, he dropped out of junior high school and went to work in an electronics factory in Zhejiang, then got married and had children.When her son was in kindergarten, Chen Xia was reluctant to leave him in her hometown, and she was unwilling to return to Dongzhi. "The salary at home is too low. I spend as much as I earn. It's boring. I want to stay outside for a few more years." She brought her son to Zhejiang and attended a private nursery school near the factory. It was not until the child entered elementary school that the mother and son returned to the village together.
She also took good care of her son's diet and daily life, but she seemed powerless in his studies. "I didn't even finish the first grade of junior high school, so I didn't have the ability to teach him to do his homework." Chen Xia dropped out of school early and has a sense of awe and distance from "knowledge". During the chat, she kept asking our reporter if she knew "any other way to get into graduate school after a junior college degree." In the first and second grade of elementary school, her son's math scores were always only 70 or 80. She heard that other mothers' children in the factory could score 90, which made Chen Xia anxious. She thought of a remedy: a distant uncle who was a retired teacher could ask him to tutor her son in math. Every weekend, Chen Xia rides a bicycle with her son on her back and runs seven or eight kilometers to a relative's house to make up for classes.
When Chen Xia's son graduated from elementary school and she was searching for rental housing information around the middle school in town, a thought flashed through her mind: Could she not be a study companion? But she quickly gave up the idea, "Everyone else is going to accompany me. If I don't go, others might say what they say about me behind my back." Her husband stayed alone in Zhejiang to work. She once asked her jokingly on the phone: "How about letting my son live in school while I go out to work?" Her husband advised her gently but firmly: "I will take care of the money-making stuff. Just take care of your children.”
This is the division of roles in most families who accompany children. My mother works part-time to supplement the family income, while my father works outside the home. "Husbands who stay with families often have to do more heavy and intensive work and extend their working hours to make up for the decrease in family income after their mothers return to the county. The economic power of the family is generally in the hands of the mothers, which helps alleviate their unhappiness. A sense of security is also a way to balance the relationship between husband and wife and maintain the integrity of the family under the current situation," Yin Jingjing told this reporter.
Stills from " The Children of the Qiao Family "
In fact, even if her husband agreed to Chen Xia going out to work, she would not dare to take the risk. Mothers have heard too many stories about left-behind children who learn badly. "The mother of a certain family's child didn't come back until high school to accompany her. It was too late! She had to go to the Internet cafe every day to find the child, and the child dared to fight with the mother." Chen Xia only has one child, which is a risk she cannot bear. . During the research, Yin Jingjing has indeed seen such cases. "Compared with before, the phenomenon of underage children in rural families being addicted to mobile phones is more serious now, and it is difficult for grandparents to supervise them. One mother received a call from the teacher, 'If you don't come to study with me, this child will be completely ruined.'"
But Chen Xia’s life as a schoolmate was bumpy. In junior high school, her son Chen Meng's grades were always failing, so Chen Xia once again enrolled him in extracurricular tutoring classes, taking classes twice a week for 2,000 yuan a month, which was exactly what she could earn from part-time jobs. Chen Meng always paid attention to his studies, which Chen Xia couldn't stand, but no matter whether he was nagging or promising rewards for improving his grades, it didn't work. Once, at 1 o'clock in the middle of the night, Chen Xia found her son still in bed using an old mobile phone given by a relative to surf the Internet. She felt "blood rushing to her head", grabbed the phone and threw it to the ground, then grabbed a pillow and hit her son. All the pressure was released at that moment, "I felt aggrieved and bored. I couldn't make any money, and I didn't take care of my children well. I felt like a failure."
To a certain extent, the child's academic performance is an important criterion for testing the achievements of the accompanying mother. The mother who stays with her at school seems to have become the "solely responsible" for her child's growth. Yin Jingjing has seen many mothers who were breathless from this kind of pressure. Once, near a private middle school in Hubei, a mother cried before she could say a few words. Her husband is in poor health and can only earn 40,000 to 50,000 yuan a year.At their daughter's request, they spent 30,000 yuan to send her to the best local private high school, but the child's grades did not improve. "My mother is very powerless, suffering, and confused. She seems to have no hope in life." Cruelly, most of the time, the effect of accompanying her is not ideal. "Many people don't know how to get along with their children. When grades fluctuate, parents will be more anxious and more often rely on preaching. If the child is sensitive to stress, it will make the parent-child relationship more tense."
in "Been Before "driving me crazy", Chen Xia reconciled with reality. She and her husband agreed, "As long as the children don't learn to be bad and follow the right path, let the results take their own course." Fortunately, Chen Meng is indeed a cheerful, mature and polite young man. He is already a freshman, responsible for external relations in the college's student union, and is busy every day. Recalling the days when his mother accompanied him to school, Chen Meng felt a little sorry for Chen Xia: "It was not easy. Others had their parents accompany them. If she didn't come, I would definitely feel that I was not taken seriously; when she came, she would always be verbose, and I wouldn't If you like it, argue with her. "
During the summer vacation of Chen Meng's sophomore year of high school, Chen Xia made a decision that was different from most people. At that time, the village director asked her if she would go back to the village to run for women director. This proposal moved Chen Xia's heart. When she was young, one of her sisters served as a village cadre, which made Chen Xia very envious - in her eyes, village cadres were a well-established iron rice bowl, a position that could only be obtained by sisters with a high school degree. But what she struggled with was that she had not yet completed her "own job" of accompanying students. This time, she asked her son's opinion first. "I sincerely advise her to go back. At this point, it really doesn't matter whether she's with you or not. It doesn't make much difference whether her grades are good or bad." Chen Meng told this magazine that in high school, he was only admitted to a technical secondary school, and he was not interested in the college entrance examination. Actually, I didn’t expect much. "On the contrary, she is busy and nervous, so she might as well do something else."
Chen Xia finally found a compromise: every weekend, she would come to the county town carrying large and small bags to deliver insulation for her son. There are barrels of soup and meat stewed at home, as well as some fruits and milk. After becoming a village cadre as she wished, Chen Xia felt that "life is more exciting again." She was busy going to meetings in the village and town every day, and visiting villagers' homes, feeling as content as a fish back in the water.
Now when talking about the experience of accompanying students, Chen Xia still couldn't help but sigh and blame herself. She recalled that during the summer vacation when Chen Meng graduated from high school, she almost did not dare to visit him for fear that others would mention his college entrance examination results. "When it comes to being a mother, I'm really a head shorter than others. It's a pity, really. I don't know why I've paid a lot, but there seems to be nothing in return." Before returning to the village to work, she told the landlord that she was quitting the lease. Not long after, the landlord came to see the house with another mother and son. The child had just graduated from sixth grade and was about to come to the county town to attend the first year of junior high school. At that time, Chen Xia looked at this mother who was asking about the details of the house gently and carefully, and wondered if the result would be different if she went back to this stage. Soon, she came to her senses again, "But goodbye, I will really go crazy when I think of so many years left."
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