"Poor psychological endurance", "Love to contradict parents", "run away from home if you have any disagreement"... Adolescent children are often labeled with various labels. Recently, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has dealt with several incidents. The common feature of these incidents is that the parties involved are all children who are in adolescence.
What are the psychological characteristics of adolescent children? What should parents do when facing adolescent children? Psychological experts point out that children in adolescence are gradually developing and mature in their bodies, but their minds are not yet fully mature. As their self-awareness gradually increases, they hope to gain the same rights as adults, often narcissistic, and sometimes unconsciously amplify their shortcomings. In this regard, experts suggest that parents should understand the psychological characteristics of adolescent children, respect them, communicate with them equally, and give them sufficient autonomy and freedom in a controlled state.
The psychological state of adolescent children is "a small horse pulls a big cart"
According to the official Weibo of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau on October 12, at around 10 pm on October 8, Andingmen Police Station received a call from Ms. Xu for help saying that her 16-year-old daughter ran away from home in anger because of an quarrel with her. It was late at night, and the police were worried that the girl would be single and would keep calling and sending text messages to her, and finally added WeChat.
"I don't want to see her." Under the patient persuasion of the police, although the girl let go of her resistance and told her where she was, she refused to communicate with her mother Ms. Xu at first.
Chat history between the police and the girl who ran away from home. Photo/Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau’s official microblog “Safe Beijing”
In the notice, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau stated that in recent times, the police have dealt with several incidents. The common feature of these incidents is that the parties involved are all children who are in adolescence.
"My daughter ran away from home and wrote a last letter. The phone could be reached, but she didn't answer." According to a notice from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the father of a 13-year-old girl called the police to the Changying Police Station of Chaoyang Branch for help. According to the surveillance, the police found clues and took the children's parents to search one by one along the possible paths, and finally found her on the roadside outside a community. The police learned that the girl has been sensitive since she was a child. She felt that she had a lot of pressure to study and could not meet her expectations no matter how hard she tried. She gradually felt frustrated and had nowhere to relieve her depression.
"During adolescence, children's need for independence is particularly strong. Running away from home is what they are most willing to do." Xiao Bin, director of the Mental Health Education Center of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that adolescent children should not be labeled at will. To understand the psychology of children during this period, we must first start with their physiological state.
Xiao Bin introduced that although there are individual differences, puberty is generally believed to start from the age of 10 or 11 and last until the age of 18 or 20. Adolescence is a period of rapid changes in children's physical appearance and secondary sexual characteristics. Learning things they are interested in is very fast, which puts their self-cognition in the "explosive stage".
At the same time, although adolescent children gradually develop and look like adults, their minds are not fully mature yet.
"When I first entered elementary school, my children admired teachers and listened to teachers." Xiao Bin said, but with the increase in physical ability and knowledge accumulation, coupled with the increase in information acquisition channels in the Internet era, their sense of admiration and authority for teachers gradually decreased.
Jia Xinchao, a special trainer, positive psychology researcher and practitioner of the Training Office of the Institute of Social Governance and Development of Tsinghua University, also pointed out that the gradual maturity of adolescent children has made them feel adult and their self-awareness gradually increase. They hope to get rid of their parents' constraints. They are often narcissistic, and sometimes they will unconsciously amplify their shortcomings.
"Emotionally unstable, sometimes sentimental, sometimes moody." Jia Xinchao said that at this time, they longed to be respected and were unwilling to obey parents and teachers like children. They hoped to obtain rights like adults, so they often contradict their parents to demonstrate their rights. At the same time, I also care very much about others, especially my peers’ evaluation of themselves, and it is extremely important to regard the interaction and recognition of peers.
"Setting the goal is actually difficult to achieve, but at this time it is a time when you have a particularly strong self-esteem. There is a popular and vivid metaphor: it is a pony, pulling a big cart." Xiao Bin said that because of this, adolescent children need the support of their parents to help them balance the relationship between attachment and independence. Parents need to support their children's independent awareness and exploration behavior on the premise of confirming safety; at the same time, they can also accept their children's frustration or failure, give their children understanding and empathy with , face difficulties together, and help their children find solutions together.
Parents should learn to respect and communicate with their children equally
How to provide support to their children? This is a confusion for many parents.
Ms. Yang's child is in the first grade of junior high school this year, and his grades have been wandering in the middle of the class. She hopes that her son's academic performance can improve and develop comprehensively. She usually keeps eye on the child to do homework, let the child learn English and attend interest classes, and the courses are arranged relatively full.
Ms. Yang said that her idea is very simple, just to allow her child to get into a good university, have a good job, and have a better life in the future. Once, her son’s English scores were not ideal enough, so she nagged a few words, with a tone of scolding, and her son locked herself in the house without saying a word. This made her angry and anxious.
"Now many parents have high expectations for their children. They often just put forward a requirement and goal, and use the simplest command method to show authority, but lack the intermediate operability guidance process." Xiao Bin said that taking memorizing poetry as an example, parents make a request to their children: spend 10 minutes or half an hour to memorize an ancient poem, and the time is up to check. At this time, the strong self-esteem makes the child anxious: What should I do if I can’t recite it? Will mom and dad scold me? Will the teacher scold me?
"If parents scold or even beaten up for failing to fulfill their requirements, their children will fight for their self-esteem." Xiao Bin said that some of them chose to run away angrily, while others locked themselves in the house, refused to talk to their parents, and then communicated with people who were "similar to the same disease" in life or online, complained together, and gain a sense of support. "The correct way is that as parents, you can give your children ideas, share skills, and discuss how to memorize this ancient poem together. There must be an interactive and guiding process."
Xiao Bin suggests that in life, parents can increase interactions with their children that are not related to learning, such as doing housework, doing sports, going out for fun, etc. In addition, parents should also lower their attitude from an authoritative perspective and maintain equal communication with their children, so that they can keep their children in close contact with themselves.
Jia Xinchao also pointed out that parents sometimes cannot control themselves nagging repeatedly on certain things, especially on certain issues of their children. This approach will not only not make children change, but will also increase their children's disgust.
He said that parents should learn to change their education model, respect their children, communicate with them on an equal footing, interact with them as adults, give them enough autonomy and freedom in a controllable state, do not interfere with them easily, and do not peek at privacy. "Moderate exercise, meditation, hug, and persisting in recording three good things every day can help improve our positive emotions. In life, parents can accompany their children to persevere, and there will definitely be good results."
pays attention to strategies and lets children "pay the bill" for their needs
"Perhaps some parents ask whether to improve their children's ability to resist setbacks by creating setbacks. The answer is no." Jia Xinchao said that children will encounter many setbacks during their growth, and their brains are still growing and developing. When the pressure caused by setbacks reaches a certain level, it will cause certain damage to the brain. "If a child is under tremendous pressure for a long time and cannot recover in time, then his brain will be in a continuous stress hormone, which is very unfavorable for brain development."
But this does not mean that all the needs parents have to meet their children. Ms. Wang’s daughter is a fan of a certain star and likes to buy products endorsed by idols.Ms. Wang said that it would be fine if she just bought some daily necessities and snacks, but some endorsement products were not cheap, and they were often hundreds or thousands of yuan. She would be unhappy if she didn't buy them for the child, and the two even quarreled because of this. But some parents do not directly reject their children's needs, but adopt roundabout tactics, "You want to buy it, yes! But you have to do housework, exchange housework for points, and then exchange points for money."
"The child has needs, and this is no problem, but to achieve it, you have to pay and pay for your needs." Xiao Bin believes that it is a good way for parents to adopt roundabout tactics, and this method is best not to be used suddenly, but start from an early age.
Xiao Bin reminds parents not to correct and change immediately if their children raise an excessive and unreasonable demand. This can easily cause the relationship between parents and children to become stiff, and there is no room for further communication. Strategies need to be paid attention to. "The purpose of parents is not to defeat their children, but to help them grow up."
"Study shows that the closer the relationship between parents and children, the better the ability of children to resist frustration. The ability to resist frustration is significantly negatively correlated with parents' denial, punishment and severity of children, and is significantly positively correlated with parents' support for children." Jia Xinchao pointed out that parents are warm and understandable, and children's ability to resist frustration is high; parents excessively interfere in protection, severe punishment, denial or excessive preference, and children's ability to resist frustration is low.
He also advised parents to encourage their children more. "For children, the role of encouragement is always greater than criticism. When you want your children to change, encourage them with positive and positive language." Jia Xinchao said that for example, children always play with mobile phones, many parents will scold you, "You know how to play with mobile phones every day, but don't you know how to read a book for a while." In fact, the real idea of parents is that children should not be addicted to mobile phones and have a degree. At this time, you can change the meaning, such as "Mom believes that you can control the time you play with your mobile phone. If you play for another ten minutes, can you read a book or take a break?" The same thing will have different results, and children will often grow in the direction of encouragement.
Beijing News reporter Su Ji
Editor Miao Chenxia Proofreading Liu Jun
