Where did this conclusion come from? Please read the following counseling cases of child psychologists.
0 1 Why do perfect parents raise "mental patients"?
A China consultant in the UK once received such a visitor:
A girl in her twenties, smart and beautiful. Because of extreme emptiness, she walked into the consulting room. Her symptoms are:
These symptoms are a bit like what Xu Kaiwen, a psychology professor in Peking University, called "hollow disease". Click the link to read this article. Psychologist of Peking University: The babies you raised anxiously finally came to me.
This "hollow" girl has no depression and anxiety in her family history, and has a solid friendship and close family.
She also said that she was depressed because she couldn't find anything she was dissatisfied with.
She said that she has a pair of "great" parents, two excellent brothers and sisters, supportive friends, excellent education, cool job, healthy body and beautiful house.
What the consultant didn't expect was that there were more and more similar patients.
Counselors' sofas are full of adults in their twenties and thirties. They report that they suffer from depression and anxiety, have difficulty in choosing or focusing on a satisfactory career direction, can't maintain a good "intimate" relationship, and have a sense of emptiness or lack of purpose-but their parents are blameless.
On the contrary, these patients are talking about how much they "worship" their parents, saying that their parents are their "closest friends" in the world, and they have always been responsive and even paid for psychological treatment (of course, they are also paying rent and car insurance for them), which makes them feel guilty and confused. After all, their biggest complaint is that they won't complain!
And after spending some time with these help seekers, the consultant also confirmed that what they said was true!
Let's take a good look at how great these parents are:
In short, these parents are "considerate" and try their best to guide their children through the ups and downs of childhood.
For you who have read the article, many people may be amazed at this time: Isn't this me?
At this point, the consultant wants to tell you a very ruthless sentence:
Are these parents going too far?
These parents tried their best to provide their children with correct upbringing, but they were exhausted. But when the children grew up, they sat in the counselor's office and told them that they felt empty, confused and anxious.
At the same time, what puzzles doctoral consultants studying abroad is:
The clinical focus of psychology major in colleges and universities is basically on "what effect does lack of parental consideration have on children". No one will think of asking, "What will happen to these children if their parents are too considerate?"
We always talk about making children happy. To what extent is happiness?
The fundamental purpose of all parenting laws is the same, that is-
Cultivate children into productive and happy adults.
What has changed in recent years is that people have different views and definitions of happiness.
The author's happiness dilemma of the best-selling book "Happiness Plan"
"I am happy," Gretchen Rubin wrote in the best-selling book "Happiness Plan", "but I should be happier." This pursuit has swept the United States and turned into a national movement.
How happy should it be? Rubin is not sure either.
It sounds like she's in exactly the same situation as those young people with "hollowness":
Still, Rubin was not satisfied. "There seems to be something missing." In order to dispel "melancholy, anxiety, depression and scattered guilt", she started a "happiness journey": making an action list, buying three new magazines every Monday and constantly tidying up the closet.
After a whole year of hard work, Rubin admitted that she was still struggling. She wrote: "In a sense, I made myself even more unhappy."
Then she revealed a so-called "secret of adulthood": "Happiness doesn't always make you happy."
Professor of Sociology: Happiness can lead to disaster.
Barry schwartz, a sociology professor at Swarthmore College, said: "Happiness is a great thing as a by-product of life. "But the pursuit of happiness as the goal will only lead to disaster."
However, many modern parents pursue this goal tirelessly, but it is counterproductive.
Psychological counselors began to wonder: Will parents overprotect their children when they are young and avoid making them unhappy, thus depriving them of happiness in adulthood?
Psychologist: Don't deprive children of the opportunity to experience anxiety.
Paul Bonn, a psychiatrist at UCLA, says the answer may be yes.
In clinical practice, Bonn found that many parents would do everything possible to prevent their children from experiencing even the slightest discomfort, anxiety or disappointment.
When children grow up and face normal setbacks, they think that things have gone seriously wrong.
He said: When a toddler tripped over a stone in the park and fell to the ground, before he cried, some parents would rush in, pick up the child and start to comfort him.
This actually deprives children of a sense of security-not only in the playground, but also in life.
If you don't let your child experience the confusion at that moment, give her some time to understand what happened ("Oh, I fell"), let her grasp the frustration of falling and try to get up on her own, she won't know what it feels like to be uncomfortable, and she won't know how to deal with it when she encounters trouble in life in the future.
When these children go to college, they will send text messages to their parents for help because of the least trouble, instead of trying to solve it by themselves.
If, when a child stumbles over a stone, her parents allow her to recover for a second and then appease her, the child will learn: "I was scared for a second, but I'm fine now." If something unpleasant happens, I can handle it myself. "
Bonn said that in most cases, children will cope well by themselves, but many parents will never understand this because they are too busy to lend a helping hand when their children don't need protection.
03 child psychologist: children need to cultivate "psychological immunity"
Dan Kendron, a lecturer at Harvard University and a child psychologist, said that if children have not experienced the feeling of pain, they cannot have "psychological immunity".
"It's like the development of the human immune system," he explained. "You must expose your child to pathogens, otherwise the body doesn't know how to deal with attacks. Children also need to be exposed to setbacks, failures and struggles. "
Have we ever done something like this:
Family psychologist: Children should experience normal anxiety.
Jeff Bloom, a family psychologist in Los Angeles, said:
"Even with the best parents in the world, you will still experience a period of unhappiness."
"A child should experience normal anxiety to adapt. If we want our children to be more independent when they grow up, we should prepare for their future departure every day. "
Bloom believes that many of us are reluctant to leave our children because we rely on them to fill the emotional gaps in our lives. Yes, we have spent countless time, energy and wealth on children, but for whom?
Do children need parents, or do parents need children?
An article in The New York Times magazine described the emptiness of Renee Bacher, a mother in Louisiana, after sending her daughter to college in the northeastern United States.
Bacher wants to get some comfort from other friends who are mothers, but they are busy buying refrigerators for their children's college dormitories or rushing home to help middle school students turn off their computers.
So Bacher also went to her daughter's dormitory from time to time, looking for various excuses to criticize her daughter's roommate, and stayed for a long time on the grounds of helping her move. At first, she argued that it was good for her daughter, but finally admitted: "People say that helicopter parents are people like me."
Every year at the beginning of school, parents stay on campus, and university administrators have to use various tricks to "drive away" new parents.
At the end of the opening ceremony, the University of Chicago added a bagpipe performance-the first song led the freshmen to the next activity occasion, and the second song was intended to drive parents away from their children.
University of vermont hired "parents' expellers", who were responsible for keeping the parents who followed the door at the door. Many schools have also appointed informal "parents reception directors" to deal with difficult adults.
In recent years, there have been many articles discussing why so many young people in their twenties refuse to grow up, but the problem is often not that children refuse to be separated and personalized, but that parents hinder them from doing so.
Think about whether we have done the following ourselves:
Because our children are fewer than our ancestors, every child becomes more precious. But in China, there are so many one-child families, and this child is a treasure.
We also want more from children-more companionship, more achievements and more happiness. In this process, the line between selflessness (making children happy) and selfishness (making yourself happy) becomes increasingly blurred.
Many parents say that they want their children to live a happy life, but they are actually "happy bankers" and "happy surgeons", but in fact these "happy" occupations "do not necessarily make people happy".
Even some parents, if the child is a cashier, the child is very happy every day, but parents think that "the child is unhappy."
"They are happy, but we are not." The counselor said, "Although we say that the greatest expectation for children is their happiness, we will try our best to help them get happiness, but we don't know where the happiness of parents will end and the happiness of children will start. "
Excessive appreciation education will breed pretentious "weirdos"
Jane Thunzi, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and one of the authors of the narcissistic epidemic, said:
Many patients claim that they had a very happy childhood, but they are dissatisfied with their adult life.
When parents always say that their children are "well done!" In order to enhance their self-confidence. Even a child should learn to wear shoes by himself at his age. Every morning when he wears shoes, he will get such praise, and children will feel that everything he does is special.
Similarly, if a child participates in an activity and gets a reward sticker just because he "worked hard", he will never get a negative evaluation about himself (all failures are disguised as "worked hard").
Tu Wenqi said that since1980s, children's self-evaluation index has been rising in middle schools and universities. But healthy self-confidence will soon become harmful self-expansion, self-centeredness and a feeling of getting something for nothing, just like narcissism.
At the same time, the proportion of people with anxiety and depression is also rising. Why is this happening?
"Narcissists will be happy when they are young, because they are the center of the universe," Tu Wenqi explained. "Parents are like servants, driving them to participate in various activities to satisfy their every wish. Parents keep telling their children how special and talented they are. This gives them the illusion that they are simply outstanding compared with other human beings. They don't feel good about themselves, but feel better than others. "
After entering adulthood, this becomes a big problem.
How do pretentious people behave? The picture and text are described like this:
They grew up in a bubble, and when they came out of this bubble into the real world, they felt confused and helpless because they didn't know how to solve the problem.
But they are right-they really don't know how to solve the problem.
Why are children either learning disabilities or geniuses, and where are the average grades?
Some people who do interest training classes, in order to meet their children's blx, hold competitions that don't score or win prizes as long as they participate. Because some children will be heartbroken if they lose too badly.
The counselor said: "Today's children are either learning disabilities, geniuses, or both, and there is no mediocrity."
Because parents prefer to believe that their children have learning disabilities, so as to explain their poor grades, rather than ordinary education.
Anxious parents hide a secret.
That is:
If we do it right, children will not only grow into happy adults, but also become adults who make us happy.
This expectation is so tempting that parents would rather be exhausted than achieve their goals.
Just like gambling, the more you invest, the more unbalanced your mentality will be.
But we ignore the most important decisive factor-no matter how hard you educate, you can't completely overcome your child's nature!
We can expose children to art, but we can't teach them creativity;
We can protect them from the meanness of their classmates, poor grades, all kinds of rejections, their own limitations and so on, but in the end these things are all experienced by themselves.
In fact, when we spare no effort to provide children with a perfect childhood, it makes their growth more difficult.
Children are not our job.
06 conclusion
Anyone who has studied psychology knows that "pursuing perfection" is one of the root causes of anxiety and depression. As parents, please don't "pursue perfection" in family education.
We are parents and human beings. We have our own personality and temper.
In front of the child, we just get along with him as a normal person. Don't expect too much of yourself, don't blame yourself easily, just be a "passable parent".
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