Dr. Lilac once posted this on Weibo:
A study showed that the proportion of children and adolescents experiencing depressive symptoms in China is 19.85%. Among children and adolescents in the central region of , this proportion even reached 23.7%. .
In other words, in China, one in every five children may have symptoms of depression.
Picture source: Dr. Lilac’s Weibo
This set of data makes parents have mixed feelings.
In real life, we often hear that this child has a glassy heart and that child has depression.
Parents thought hard: "Our living conditions were far inferior to what we have now, and the care given by adults was limited. But now children have no worries about food and clothing, so why are they so fragile?"
Some even said: "When we were children, we were often criticized by our parents. Even though we were beaten and scolded, we didn’t see many people seeking death. ”
In today’s article, we will rationally discuss this question that puzzles parents: “What is wrong with today’s children?”
Today’s children are not fragile. , but what they face is more complicated than before.
01
Today's children receive more attention
An old man once lamented: "In the past, my five children were all grown up, why are young people now so tired of raising a child!"
Parenting in the previous generation seemed easy. , but the pressure caused by living alone takes up most of the worries in life.
Because of this, they are not particularly careful about their children. As long as it is not a matter of safety, they will turn a blind eye and close one eye, and the children will be brought up like this.
Today, living conditions have improved, parents pay more attention to education and are particularly attentive to raising their children.
Because of the hard work, it is harder. This is the progress of the times and the challenge faced by caregivers.
Many families are composed of one pair of parents + two elderly people or even four elderly people. The time and energy of multiple adults are invested in the raising of a single child.
Some people may say, isn’t it good that children get more love?
The problem is that with more love and attention, control, intervention, and arranging will also multiply.
On the one hand, the space for children's self-development is squeezed. Many problems that children solve on their own are solved by adults, and the sense of responsibility and independence they should have are not cultivated.
On the other hand, when the caregiver stares at the child for too long, the child's problems will be infinitely magnified. Among the consultation questions in the background of our official account, simple eating and sleeping have become a headache for parents.
While we pay too much attention to our children, we also find fault with them.
This is not to say that careful parenting is not good or to encourage free-range education, but that education that does not aim at independence will turn airtight love into a heavy "shackles."
02
Today's children have too much expectations.
In the past, parents would also put pressure on their children to study. After all, reading can help them get ahead. They would say to their children: "As long as you want to read, we will do whatever it takes to help you read." "
However, college is worth aspiration, and parents do not regard it as the only way out. If their children do not get into the exam, they will do other things. It is regrettable but not despairing.
Today, when " chicken baby " is popular, more and more parents have higher and more meticulous requirements for their children's learning.
Therefore, the expectations faced by children have also changed. It is not only a good university, but also a good junior high school and high school. They must also develop in an all-round way and not be inferior to others.
From the first day we send our children to primary school, few parents have made a mental presupposition that "my child may be at the middle or lower level."
Everyone is holding their children and must be at the top of the exam. When a child's performance fails to meet his parents' expectations, the painful learning "war" begins.
I saw a piece of news before: a mother got an anxiety disorder because her child scored 98 points in the exam.
This kind of expectation is excessive physical and mental pressure for children.
Parents all over the world have high expectations for their children's future, and it is normal for people not to settle for mediocrity.
Expectations are not a bad thing. The problem is that most parents cannot accept an ordinary result. In the end, they are disappointed, which affects their love and evaluation of their children.
And the child also feels deep anxiety and frustration from you.
Parents must understand that every outstanding child is not born out of nowhere. The greater the expectations for the child, the more patient they must be, the more they must consider the child's ability and current situation, and adjust the education method in a timely manner.
03
Today's children are awakening to self-awareness earlier.
With the development of television, online media, and informatization, children are more informed than in any previous era.
We often hear people sigh: "Today's children are so precocious, and primary school students know a lot of things!"
Children receive multifaceted and complex new media information prematurely, and the call for self-awareness and independence also appears earlier.
They will take the initiative to ask for the right to speak. Some adults often feel that they cannot speak to their children. Heartfelt preaching and tit-for-tat rebuttals often occur in families.
Even if you use your parental authority to silence your child, he can still vent his dissatisfaction on the Internet and with his peers.
When we talked about rebellion before, we always thought that it was something that only happened to "old kids" in high school.
But nowadays, the age at which children become rebellious seems to be getting earlier and earlier. Some children begin to rebel against their parents around the fifth or sixth grade.
The essence of rebellion is actually the awakening of self-awareness.
When a child finds that he is not respected as a real person in front of his parents, too many orders, criticisms and denials will cause the child to rebel.
Gradually, many irreconcilable contradictions arose between the children's desire for autonomy and the authoritative and repressive upbringing of their parents.
04
Lost childhood, fewer outlets to release emotions
American writer Richard Love mentioned a term in his "The Last Child in the Woods" called "nature deficiency disorder", which is a kind of It is a common social phenomenon that modern urban children are gradually alienated from nature and have less and less time for outdoor activities.
He mentioned: "For children, the appearance of nature is diverse: a newborn calf, the birth and death of a pet, an ancient forest path, a mysterious wetland on the edge of a wasteland. Although With different appearances, naturally can always give children a broader and far-reaching world, which is different from the family world given by parents, and it is not like TV that "steals" children's time. "
Children in the past were also like this. In this world, there is a broader world outside the family to release the pressure of study and the grievances in life.
They have many playmates. The neighbor's children will immediately form groups after shouting. There are also many ways to play, such as hopscotch, high jump, rubber band , climbing trees and touching shrimps... Although there are no high-end toys. , but my heart is carefree.
These times provide children with emotional stability and emotional support.
Even if he is beaten by his mother, he will cry outside for a while, play for a while, and walk for a while, and he will be a lively and clingy child when he comes home.
But today’s children do not have the time and space to digest the harm caused by their parents’ improper education.
Although they also have happy memories of childhood that belong to this era, they do not have the vast environment to relieve stress in the past.
The experience of playing freely with peers is unimaginable for many children today.
There are high-rise buildings everywhere in the city, and homes with hundreds of square meters are like barriers.
Parents are the people with whom their children get along the most. In addition to family, some children have almost no other external psychological support. In other words, when the relationship between him and his parents breaks down, all the psychological support systems in the child's heart may also collapse.
05
Beating and scolding were very common in the past, but it does not mean that it is correct.
Finally, let’s answer the first question in the title of the article: Why are we often beaten and scolded by our parents when we were children, but few of us have psychological problems?
Let me tell you a true story first:
A friend who was born in the 1980s was beaten by his father until he was a teenager. This situation did not stop until he grew taller than his father and could no longer be beaten.
Like all children, he hated this rough education method when he was a child. As the years passed, this hatred gradually faded.
But there has always been a gap between me and my father. Even though he is now a father, he is unwilling to talk to his father. As long as it is life advice given by his father, he has no patience to listen.
So, can we say that children who have been beaten and scolded by their parents since childhood have no psychological trauma or impact?
No matter what era, as long as he is a child, his heart must be fragile.
However, in the past, information dissemination was not so developed, and there was little reflection on improper parenting. The painful feeling was vague and afterthought.
Decades have passed, and life has gotten better and better. People are no longer willing to mention the pain of the past, and finally it turned into the childhood trauma hidden deep in their hearts.
is common and does not mean it is correct. The fact that the
problem has not been noticed does not mean that there is no problem.
There are indeed some "simple and rough" parts of the education of our parents' generation. It is precisely because we have suffered from the previous generation that we will be more careful and cautious when educating our children.
"Few people who were beaten and scolded by their parents in the past had psychological problems" is a false proposition.
06
As early as the "May Fourth Movement", Lu Xun shouted out the cry of "save the children" and also wrote the thought-provoking article "How should we be fathers now".
Nowadays, "how to be a parent" has become a new problem facing parents in the new century.
It can be said that parents in this era are more hesitant than ever before.
Before answering this question, we have to think about ourselves. After all, family education should first be the self-education of parents.
Before changing your children, change yourself first.
If parents can let go of their obsession with pursuing perfection, correct their mentality, encourage more, and understand more, they can truly stand with their children and meet the new challenges posed by the times.
