We can see these four words in almost all deserving people, and we can feel their lack in this area in all those who are deficient in character. What can be more important to give to a child than to give these four words.
If I were to say what I hope for my child's future, I hope she will have a good job in the future and be able to pursue a career she likes; I hope she will have good relationships and have a few close friends she can talk to throughout her life; I hope she will get a good love and have a happy and fulfilling family life ...... My hope must be the same as other mothers What mother doesn't think like that!
These hopes are not realized by luck, they cannot be sent by God from the air, they are realized by people themselves. Over the years, having witnessed many people and their different lives, I feel more and more that the saying "character is destiny" is almost true. Therefore, when I earnestly hope for my child's happiness in life, I am very much concerned about her mental health. There are many elements of mental health, and it is like a garden with beautiful flowers and trees such as self-confidence, friendliness, honesty and understanding - the soil in which they are rooted is the four words, without which many things in this garden cannot grow. So I thought, if I were to hang a motto in the hall of my daughter's life to give her guidance and blessing throughout her life, I would write down these four words: Be truthful. These four words are so simple, as simple as air, often forgotten, but it is something that can not be left in life at all times. We can see these four words in almost all respectable people, and we can feel their lack of character in all those who are deficient in this area. What can be more important to give to a child than to give these four words - and this is not at all metaphysical - the lack of these four words in life is like the lack of air in life. So, it is really more precious than gold.
It is very easy for us to tell our children to be "truthful" in concept and in word; it is also very easy for us to make the mistake of not being truthful in word and deed. This mistake often occurs inadvertently, and may not represent our fundamental character qualities, but it can have a bad effect on our children, causing them to unwittingly go to the opposite side of the truthfulness spectrum. For example, some parents say in front of their children that "no rich person is a good person", and then complain that their own family money is too small, and then attribute the lack of money to society or other people's influence. This circle of words down, the child is confused. Other parents, on the one hand, ask their children to be practical, but on the other hand, they love to be vain and arrogant. Such parents, even if the "realistic" all day long hanging on the mouth, children will not be able to understand the four words of the connotation: difficult to internalize into their own ideas.
Therefore, if you want your child to truly acquire the four words, parents must pay attention to their own behavior and reflect on whether their words and actions are truthful. This is especially true in this area, where teaching by example is more important than teaching by word. In the education of Yuan Yuan, my husband and I do not always mention the four words "seeking truth from facts" to her, but we always try to follow them as much as possible. First of all, we set an example ourselves and try to act according to these four words. Secondly, we try to follow these four words in her education.
We have never asked her to achieve any test scores, never compared her ranking with others, because we want her to be realistic in her studies; we never force her to do anything she doesn't want to do, because we are willing to be realistic and consider our child's psychological feelings, and not to pursue her superficial obedience; we are especially willing to accept opinions from others, including our child's, and the family often sits together for "Advice sessions", which allows children to learn to look at shortcomings in themselves and others with a realistic eye, face them objectively and improve them positively ...... Realistic education can happen everywhere in all the details of life. The first semester of elementary school ended with the class electing the three best students and voting by secret ballot, each person could choose three people. The two missing votes were the two boys who did not vote for themselves. I asked her how she knew who didn't vote for her, and Yuan Yuan said that the two boys came to tell her after class.
Although I was happy that Yuan Yuan had gotten more votes, the thought flashed through my mind for a moment: It seems that Yuan Yuan voted for herself, is this appropriate? The two boys didn't vote for her, did they have something against her? But I quickly realized how tacky I was being. Why shouldn't a child be able to vote for herself openly? How can the boys have a problem with her if they don't vote for Yuan Yuan? They are just 6 and 7 year olds, they are so pure-hearted, they don't have these unbearable thoughts in their heads. The two boys were just like the classmates who voted for her, no different. I'm glad I didn't slip up, otherwise just two surprised words from me would have been enough to overwhelm the child and contaminate her heart. I just kissed Yuan Yuan's little cheeks and told her with admiration that it looked like baby had done well.
The next day, after finishing her homework, Yuan Yuan suddenly remembered something and asked me, "Mom, do you think you can vote for yourself?" I said for sure, "Yes, as long as you think you are good enough for the third grade, you can vote for yourself, isn't that what you did? Yuan Yuan told me somewhat strangely that the little boy at her table told her today that she could only vote for others, not for herself, and that to vote for herself was to be unhumble. I guessed that maybe the boy had been "taught" by some adult last night. But I didn't tell my guess, just smiled and said to Yuan Yuan, he misunderstood, you go tell him, if you think you are not enough, don't vote for yourself, if you think you are enough, and want to be the third best student, you can vote for yourself. If you want to be the third best student and think you are good enough, but deliberately do not vote for yourself, that's wrong. This has nothing to do with modesty or pride.
Since then, Yuan Yuan has voted for herself every semester for the "Third Best" because she has always gotten top grades and served as a class officer, and she has confidence in herself. However, she gradually discovered some subtle thoughts and practices of her classmates in this regard. People cared more and more about who voted for whom, while no one wanted to admit to voting for themselves. Yuan Yuan could slowly sense why people did this, but when a classmate asked her who she had voted for, she would not hide it and truthfully said that she had voted for herself as well. When she said this, she felt some awkwardness and went home to tell me about her confusion. I told her that how you do it is how you say it, and that truth is the best and most beautiful. Who you vote for and who votes for you, there is nothing to be embarrassed about as long as you feel things are done right, it is pretending that is wrong and should be embarrassed. These words of the parents made Yuan Yuan feel frank, and she has been in this matter how to do it on how to say.
The first year of junior high school, the class also held a vote to choose the third best student, she also voted for herself as before. When asked about it in the dormitory, Yuan Yuan frankly admitted to voting for herself. But that time Yuan Yuan was not elected as the third best student, because her sports score did not meet the "good" requirement for the evaluation of the third best, she was disqualified. The reason why Yuan Yuan voted for herself was because we had talked about it once before, and she wanted to keep the honor of being the "third best student" and was worried that her sports performance would become bad all of a sudden after she started junior high school, which would affect her evaluation of the third best. I reassured her that the school would consider that you are only 10 years old, two or three years younger than your classmates, and that others are starting to go through puberty and develop, but you are still the age and physique of an elementary school student, so the sports aspect should be relaxed appropriately. I also mentioned that her class teacher praised four children who insisted on morning practice every day at the parent-teacher conference, among which was the case of Yuan Yuan, and thought that with her performance, she should have no problem in evaluating the third best.
But the school did not consider her specific situation. So the next year, when the third best student was selected again, Yuan Yuan did not vote for herself, but voted for someone else, because her sports still did not reach "good". But this time, when Yuan Yuan said she didn't vote for herself, some of her classmates thought she was smart enough to hide it. The company's main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. I think Yuan Yuan has formed a more stable understanding in this regard. After a short time, the class voted for class officers again. Yuan Yuan voted for a classmate she usually didn't like much, she said because that classmate is quite capable of working and is suitable for that position.
Class officers are often an honor for junior high school students, so who they vote for is often influenced by emotions, and they may be more concerned about who they have a good relationship with when they vote. Yuan Yuan's ability to consider who to vote for based on his or her ability to do the job is invaluable, and this kind of realism is very valuable. How down-to-earth a child will be in his future life depends on how much he grows up influenced by the four words truthfulness and how close he grows up to think like these four words. The main antithesis of pragmatism is not falsehood, it is vainness - vanity, impatience, and the paranoia and jealousy underneath this, etc. - seemingly small problems that flow inadvertently, but have considerable destructive power.
Nowadays, there is one child in every family, and the eagerness to see their son become a child makes many parents' vanity and impatience rise along with them, and paranoid behaviors appear frequently. Children are very miserable in their vain lives and are more likely to suffer failure; parents, however, do not know what they have done to their children. I have come into contact with many parents and have continued to help some parents with some of the problems in their children's education, but I have also continued to lament the subtlety and difficulty of solving some of the problems. More and more, I find that many parents' improper parenting methods are actually not due to their lack of educational knowledge, but due to vanity and impatience. The following example is representative of one I just encountered.
A person I know called me and told me that her relative's daughter has some psychological problems now, and that I could do some counseling for the girl. The girl is already twenty-five years old, her father is a senior secondary school teacher, teaching in a very famous secondary school, and always with high school graduation class, he taught most of the graduates have gone to Tsinghua University, Peking University and other prestigious schools, he personally in the industry is also a little famous. The girl's mother is also a high school teacher. The girl in such a family has been strictly required to learn well from childhood, high school in the father's high school.
According to the girl's ranking in the school at that time, it is possible to get into Tsinghua, but not sure. When filling out the application, the father said if you do not get into Tsinghua, I will not be persuaded to teach in the future, and strongly advocated his daughter to enroll in Tsinghua. The mother also advised the child that if you get into Tsinghua, I will have the confidence to control the students in school.
In order to let the child have no other ideas, they suggested that the child only applied for a volunteer, not the second volunteer. As a result, the girl missed the exam by 8 points, so she had to go back to school. A year later, the girl was a bit timid to fill out the volunteer again, the first volunteer did not dare to apply for Tsinghua, and wanted to apply for another more prestigious university. But the parents think that school to last year's scores can be on, since they have been cramming for a year, they should fight to get into Tsinghua, so they encouraged the child to apply for Tsinghua again. This time, fortunately, after Tsinghua filled in the second volunteer, the result is still a few points short of Tsinghua, was not admitted to the second volunteer university. The second volunteer university is actually not bad, but the family always think not to Tsinghua will be aggrieved, parents always because the child crammed a year to get an ordinary university and feel humiliated, sighing, there is a lot of dissatisfaction between the words, so that the child read four years of college has been very depressed, in the middle even took half a year off school.
When the girl graduated from undergraduate school, she went to take the master's exam of Tsinghua University, but she didn't get in, so she wanted to study abroad. She applied to two famous foreign schools, but for some reason they were not successful. Once again, she was devastated. Her parents later helped her find a good job through their connections, and she should be happy, but what upset the girl was that two other graduates from the same class who came to the unit with her were from famous schools. After a year of work, one of those two was promoted to a small responsible person, which made the girl finally can not stand, without leave, left home for half a month, came back and refused to go to work again.
Now the girl shut herself in the house every day, except for the Internet and sleep, nothing else to do. After much persuasion, she went to see a psychiatrist, who said she was depressed, talked to her once and prescribed medication. But this has more than a month passed, no effect, and now the girl not only shut herself in the house all day, and even do not allow others to draw the curtains for her.
The girl's father is also about to collapse. He has always been competitive, in any matter is not defeated, the child these years of bad hit him very hard, he feels that as a parent he is too failure, too humiliated. After hearing this situation, I felt very sorry for the girl, but told the other party that I could not do this counseling, not that I did not want to help, but could not help.
From his account, especially the description of some details, I have clearly seen how the girl has come to today. Although what I heard was a relatively isolated incident, but almost certainly, her parents can think like that in the matter of children's college entrance exams, in ordinary life must also be full of that kind of thinking. So the girl's problem is not an overnight thing, but a problem that has been accumulating for a long time, and the entrance exams just pushed the problem to a worse place.
The vain parents exhausted themselves and pitted their children.
If I could turn back time, I would be willing to help, I would quickly go to her parents and say that in the education of children, everything should be as realistic as possible, the more realistic, the more your daughter's life will be smooth, her life is likely to be happier, only to make you more proud.
Rousseau said, "The noblest morality is negative and at the same time the most difficult to practice, because such morality is not meant to be done for people's eyes." (1) By extending this statement from the treatment of others to the treatment of oneself, one can understand that when one does something against oneself, one must also be truthful and do something "not for the sake of doing it for others," which is one's truthfulness to oneself and one's goodness to oneself-although it may be equally "good" to oneself. -But it can also be "difficult to practice.
Parents are often not easily alerted to their own vainness, which is why vanity and impatience often occur - from small things like rewarding and punishing children indiscriminately, making false statements and derogatory remarks about their opponents; to large things like directing children in choosing a major, a job or even a date. -Day by day, month by month, drop by drop, unknowingly messing up children's values, so that their feet can not step on the ground.
Not being down-to-earth is a hard part of life, distorting one's way of thinking so that one can neither face others objectively nor be true to oneself.
Without the spirit of realism, even if he is shrewd, he is often short-sighted; even if he is hardworking, he is always backward; even if he is arrogant, he secretly has no bottom; even if he wants to love, he will not grasp it properly. He lacks both peace and tranquility to be an ordinary and happy person; he also lacks individuality and creativity to be a distinguished person.
In addition to parents setting an example and paying attention to influence from words and deeds, I think reading also has a good role to play in cultivating the spirit of truthfulness in children. In particular, some biographies have a great impact on children.
Those outstanding people, whether they are scientists, artists, or politicians or entrepreneurs, their love for the cause, their firm will, their pioneering courage, and their high level of awareness, all reveal a way of thinking that is full of the spirit of seeking truth from facts. Their achievements are not rooted in the solid soil of seeking truth from facts. To read the biographies of great people is to communicate with some excellent people and excellent ideas, and to form your own feelings of truthfulness and beauty.
Seeking truth from facts is a big topic, and there is no end to the inquiry; seeking truth from facts is also a very simple thing, which can be realized everywhere without any skill. These four words are plain and unmarked, but they give the best protection; extremely plain, but they bring luster to people. I would like to say once again that giving these four words to a child is more precious than giving him gold!
Special Tips
● The main antithesis of truthfulness is not falsehood, but vainness - vanity, impatience, and underneath this, bigotry and jealousy, etc.
● Many parents' improper parenting methods are actually not due to their lack of educational knowledge, but to vanity and impatience.
This is why vanity and impatience often occur - from rewarding and punishing children indiscriminately, to making false statements and derogatory remarks about their rivals, to directing children in choosing their majors, jobs and even dates. -The children's values are unconsciously messed up, and they cannot keep their feet on the ground.
It distorts one's way of thinking and prevents one from being objective to others as well as true to oneself.
● Reading also has a good role to play in developing a realistic spirit in children. In particular, some biographies of people have a great influence on children. To read the biographies of great people is to communicate with some great people and great ideas, and it is to form their own sentiments of truthfulness, kindness and laughter.