t is precisely because I am particularly eager for my child to get good grades that I would never ask her for them.
Vulgar goals only bring vulgar stimuli to children and do not produce good intrinsic motivation. The pursuit of scores from elementary school will cause children to form perverse motivations for learning, become short-sighted and eager for quick success, but reduce interest in learning and affect test scores.
In front of an elementary school, I saw a little girl excitedly say to her mother who came to pick her up, "I got 98 points in math!" Her mother immediately asked who who took how much, and heard that others took 100 points, there is dissatisfaction on the face, "Others can take 100 points, how can you not take?" The child's original excited look disappeared without a trace, a face of aggression and frustration.
It is not about how many demands and hopes parents say to their children, but about how to say them. Words are not air that is exhaled and will not dissipate into the air without a trace. So don't say whatever you want to say in front of your child. Anything a parent says will leave a trace in the child's mind, and good traces produce good effects, while bad traces can only produce bad effects.
I also met the parents of a second grader at a friend's house. She was not as serious as the mother in front of her and seemed to have a good disposition. The friend and their mother and son greetings, asked the child is not a holiday, the final exam is good. The mother was happy to hear her child's praise, and she gave her child a pleasant look, saying, "Look at you, you're showing off, there are several children in the class who are getting a double hundred. The mother should be satisfied in her heart, she said this mostly for modesty. The child listened to this and made a face and ran away.
Whether it is true or not, many parents of elementary school students make mistakes like this carelessly when it comes to their children's scores. Although the two parents above spoke with different tones and intentions, the values conveyed in their words were the same - 100 points is good and satisfying. Parents thus make learning utilitarian, unknowingly leading their children down the wrong path and making them stray from the right path of learning. The previous parent, in particular, not only made her child vain about learning, but also instigated her child to be jealous.
When a child first goes to school with a backpack, he is so excited. But it doesn't take long before many children begin to fall into misery. Homework weighs down on them like a mountain, and marks stand in their way like a river. Especially when he sees other students getting good grades while his own grades are not good, or even if they are still good, they still don't reach the height of parents' expectations, he feels frustrated and unconfident.
At the same time, many parents who send their children to elementary school for the first time do not know how to help their children adapt to the new life and form self-confidence and good habits in their studies by learning from books or others at this critical moment; rather, they wait passively for the results with the mentality of rolling the dice to see whether their children are "good learners" or "poor learners". "or a "poor learner". There are also parents who think that they are instructing their children blindly, asking them to score 100 points, thinking that is called education. The common manifestation of these parents is simply asking their children for grades.
I met an elementary school teacher, her son is very smart, she felt that her elementary school is not good, deliberately sent her son to the city's best a boarding elementary school. That elementary school was known for its good test scores. The children had exams every week from the time they were in first grade. When this mother picked up her son every weekend, she always started talking about the exams, asking how much he got in language, how much he got in math, and how many students in his class got 100 points. Although her son was a good student, he was always wrong in one way or another on his exam papers, and never got 100 points. She also understands that children need encouragement, so she always reassures them, "It's okay, 90-odd points is also very good, strive to get 100 points next time". In a quiz before the midterm exam, my son finally got a 100 in math and was overjoyed. She picked up her child and immediately had him call his grandmother and grandma to report that he had scored 100 points. The grandmother's family and the grandmother's family all praised the child, and this achievement brought great joy and happiness to all of them, promising that they would give such and such a reward if they got 100 points again in the midterm exam. By the midterm exam, she repeatedly urged her son to take the exam seriously, check the paper properly, do not make mistakes, and strive to get 100 points. When she went to pick up her child after the exam, the little man, who was less than 7 years old, cried as soon as he saw his mother and told her that he had not scored a 100. Despite her disappointment, the mother did not criticize the child, but simply encouraged him once again to strive for a 100 next time.
This mom felt that she was the kind of parent who could always give encouragement to her child, and thought that her son's tears over not getting a 100 were a sign of motivation, and she felt that she was effective in motivating her child. So when she told me about this, she also acted confident. But I listened with apprehension.
Her mistake was to set her learning goal at full marks, but not to pay attention to her child's learning ability, attitude, method, interest, and true state of grasp of knowledge. Her behavior seems to encourage her child to study well, but in essence, she is seeking satisfaction as a parent. Her and her family's common penchant for "perfect scores" can mislead the child in terms of motivation, and their promises of perfect scores are seemingly amiable, but in fact brutal, with little motivational effect, but putting a lot of pressure on the child.
A perfect score is an achievement limit that in most cases, most children simply cannot reach. Parents' love for 100 points just keeps creating a sense of loss and guilt in children - children can get temporary pleasure from occasional good grades, but most of the time, they are upset and painful because they don't know how the next test will be, whether it will satisfy the parents, he is not sure. He is anxious and anxious, with his mind on the score, and his real goal of learning is lost.
The other day at a party, I met an old classmate whose son is in his second year of middle school and his academic performance has been mediocre, and he is a bit worried about it. We were having dinner that day when he received a text message from his son saying that he had scored 97 in his math test. It seems that the child is very happy, can not wait for his father home, eager to tell him this good results, and asked him if he was happy. My old classmate, of course, was happy and immediately announced this to everyone, saying that his son hadn't scored 90 in math for two years. He immediately texted his son back, and when he closed his phone, he said with some glee that I told him "I'm happy, but I'm even happier if you get a 100". He was still reveling in the good feeling that he was good at encouraging his son. I said to him politely, "You're crazy to say that. Not only does it ruin the child's immediate happiness, but the little confidence he has just built up is enough to be shattered by your words.
If the child could achieve whatever the parents wanted, all the children in the world would have good grades, good habits, many talents and good looks - that would be a real relief to be a parent.
But God seems to have a kind of injustice, "the more you want, the less you get" this phenomenon is cruel but really exists. Some parents work hard on their children's studies, but their children have poor grades and bad habits; other parents seem to be doing a light job, but their children are conscious and good in their studies. This makes many parents disappointed with their children lament their "bad life". In fact, these "bad luck" parents can change their "fate", that is, to change the incorrect view of achievement.
Psychological research shows that in learning, too strong or too weak motivation to succeed is not good, one is not good for learning; the other is not good for retention. Vulgar goals only give children vulgar stimuli and do not produce good intrinsic motivation. The pursuit of scores from elementary school will cause children to develop aberrant learning motivation, become short-sighted and eager for success, instead reducing interest in learning and affecting test scores. Just like a high jumper, if in training or on the field he is not focused on how to run, jump, leap over the bar, but always consider how the audience on the field looks at him, how to evaluate him, how he will be rewarded for jumping over, how embarrassed he will be if he does not jump over. This kind of thinking will make him worry a lot, even pretend, then he will not achieve good results in the field.
"Scores" and "grades" are not exactly equivalent. Scores can reflect grades, but scores are not the same as grades. If parents focus on the number of points scored on each test from the moment their child starts school, without cultivating their child's interest in learning itself, then the "good grades" are destined to be a fleeting rainbow of dreams that will ultimately disappoint parents who do not have the vision and the heart to get down to earth. This is why many parents wonder: my child was very good in elementary school, often scoring 90 or 100 points, but why does he or she not want to learn and will not learn when he or she enters secondary school? There are certainly many reasons for this situation, but a large number of children must have formed a poor motivation to learn from childhood, the result of which, one is to spoil the appetite for learning, and the second is the low motivation to limit their vision and ability, so that their space for development is increasingly narrow.
Parents guide their children to face the knowledge itself rather than the perfect test score, the child's potential in learning will slowly erupt. Few children will get stronger as they go along; they need to experience success. The experience of success is not the occasional high score, it is the joy of solving a problem through one's own efforts.
According to philosopher Fromm, one of the most prominent psychological features of modern life is that many of the means and activities taken to achieve the end have increasingly usurped the status of the end, while the end itself has become a vague, non-real presence ...... We have become trapped in the web of means, often forgetting our purpose.
When my daughter Yuan Yuan was in elementary school, the school did not grade grades, only "excellent", "good", "passing", "failing ", 85 points or more is excellent. She always got good grades and scored "excellent", but as far as I can remember, she got something wrong on almost every paper, which means she basically never scored 100. I didn't want to reinforce the importance of exams, so I didn't ask her directly about her big and small exams, but only paid attention to her studies in secret, often talking to her about school and communicating with the teachers.
The teacher often asks parents to sign the papers that are given out, but my husband and I are never excited or disappointed by our child's score. If she does well on the test, she will be happy and we will express our happiness as normal; if she doesn't do well on the test, she may be a little frustrated, so we will tell her: if she doesn't do well on the test, she can find out what she didn't learn well enough, and if the teacher gives you a paper that you know, it would be a pity if you can't find out your problems even though you scored high. This is a good way to guide her to get down to earth and focus on her studies.
At the same time, I also pay attention to motivating my child, because she is after all a child and needs some superficial sense of achievement. For example, if she scored 85 on a math paper, and after she corrected it herself, she got 9 points correct, but not 6 points correct on a small question, I would happily put a check mark on the corrected question, and then write "94" in pencil next to the original score, telling her that her score was now 94, not 85. The score is now 94, not 85. She may correct the 6-point question right away, or she may need to think about it again or ask her teacher for help the next day, or she may need her mom and dad to talk to her about it. Anyway, whenever she corrects it, I erase the 94 and write 100. Even if the paper had been taken away again by the teacher, I would give her a verbal 100, saying to her, "Yesterday you couldn't do one question and it was a 94, but today it's all right and it's a 100!"
Any exam paper that is revised will definitely get a higher grade than the original one. In this way, the child discovers the correlation between the process and the result. Yuan Yuan realized that by going to solve a wrong problem, he could get a better grade; if he pursued the wrong problem all the way through, the final grade of every exam would be 100. This not only lets the child know that learning should be taken seriously little by little, but most importantly, she will thus feel that the initiative to get or not to get 100 points is in her own hands, instead of seeking 100 points with a betting mentality like the crying little boy in front of her.
The parents who don't think religiously about education, who don't understand their children with their hearts, and who press on with their scores, will most likely end up as parents who are losing.
There is a parent who is doing well in his business and making a lot of money, but his son has been giving him headaches. This child is now in his third year of junior high school and is particularly unmotivated to study. He is now worried that his son will not even be able to get into high school, let alone go to any major school. On one occasion, when he heard me mention the idea of "the more points, the less", he said with some disbelief, "I don't think you're right, the child's learning is still his own, I'm more attentive to my son, his requirements are not high, never asked him to get 100 points, he did not learn well.
This parent's situation I know better, he is very smart in business, but in the education of children is always how stupid how to come. When his child was in the first and second grade, every midterm and final exams, he hired a tutor for his son in all subjects and gave him extra lessons from a month before the exam. He said to his son, "Dad is not afraid to spend money, as long as you can get good grades on the exams."
When his child was in the lower grades of elementary school, he was able to maintain moderate to high grades, and in order to encourage his child to achieve better results, he always said, "Whose parents in the class are willing to spend so much money on tutors, you should be in the top 10 ah." But instead of being in the top 10, his child started going backwards. If his son came 22nd, he would take his child's test results and say to him in a serious way, "Dad spent so much money on your studies, you should have been in the top 20." After several years, his words to his son have now become, "You can even pass the exam!" For his son's study, in addition to hiring tutors, he often sent gifts to school teachers before exams and came back to his son and said, "All the money your father earns goes to the teachers, so who can you afford if you don't study well?"
This shrewd businessman thought that his business rules would work everywhere, and that spending money would achieve the effect of "the ghost pushing the mill". In fact, he has a shallower understanding of learning than the previous parents who "want 100 points", and he is even more shallow in worsening his child's learning psychology. He keeps positioning the goal of learning on the "test", making the child short-sighted; keeps focusing on the "ranking" to disrupt the child's motivation to learn; keeps creating a sense of guilt in the child, making the child's mentality vain; keeps using money to belittle knowledge, making the child learn vulgar thinking. to make the child learn vulgar thinking. How can a child who is short-sighted, unmotivated, vain and vulgar in his thinking not have his grades fall all the way down?
What parent doesn't want their child to get 100 points, including myself, I also care about my child's grades. It's because I especially want my child to get good grades that I will never ask her for a score. Any behavior that simply asks for a score is shallow and destructive. What I want to do is to cultivate my child's intellectual energy, that is, her curiosity for knowledge, her love for research, her ability to ask questions, her interest in finding answers, her effective learning methods, her peaceful learning mindset, her perseverance, and so on - these are the things that make her grades complete and are the decisive conditions for winning in various exams. The most important exam - good grades in the entrance exams - can only emerge from here.
Children are born with self-respect and self-love, and it is in fact a natural instinct to be "competitive". When children enter school, even if their parents don't say anything, they will have the pursuit of scores and the desire for ranking. Faced with the paper, each of them will do their best to show the best of themselves, no child will obviously do, deliberately do wrong, deliberately let themselves get bad grades.
Parents need to build up the confidence that not mentioning marks or ranking requirements will not affect their child's academic performance - the child knows from the parents' attitude that learning is not about marks, not about comparing with others, but about learning for himself. It is by not being calculating about marks that he will eventually get good grades.
It's a strange law - if you want "100 points", don't ask your child to get 100 points - sounds like a paradox, but it really holds true.
Special tips
If parents guide their children to face the knowledge itself rather than the test scores, their children's potential in learning will slowly spill out. No child ever gets better at anything; they need to experience success. Success is not the occasional high score, it is the joy of solving problems through their own efforts.
I am never excited or disappointed by a high or low score. If you do well on the test, your child will be happy and I will express my happiness normally; if you don't do well on the test, your child may be a little frustrated, so I will tell her, "If you don't do well on the test, you can find out what you didn't learn well enough, and if the teacher gives you a paper that you happen to know, it would be a pity if you can't find out your problems even though you got a high score." This will guide her to get down to earth and focus on her studies.
●"Yesterday, you couldn't do one problem and scored 94 points, but today you can do it all and it's 100 points!"
What I want to do is to cultivate my child's intellectual energy, that is, curiosity about knowledge, love of research, the ability to ask questions, interest in finding answers, effective learning methods, a peaceful learning mindset, perseverance, etc.-these are the things that will make my child's performance complete and are the decisive conditions for winning in various exams.
Educational toys can be used to prompt children's learning abilities