What are the types of family relationships that affect the development of children in our country? How can we cope with them? The first type: the child as an equalizer The relationship between a couple is dynamic, often in a dynamic process that requires coordination and constant handling of daily conflicts. In general, this daily conflict of life will be dealt with within the couple’s relationship. However, if one of the spouses, when feeling weak, is at a disadvantage in dealing with the couple’s conflicts, is at a disadvantage, or feels that he or she is a “damaged” object, he or she will often invite a third party to balance the relationship between the two, so that the relationship does not deteriorate even more because the tension is too high. The third party plays a balancing role, and this third party is often the child. For example, if the husband is the owner of a small company and often stays late or does not come home, an apparently acceptable reason is that the husband needs to deal with many clients and the store needs to be closed late. Thus, the wife naturally spends more time with the children. But this is not necessarily a reason for the husband to feel like an outsider to the family. In fact, the path to such a story is that the husband is really busy, but there are some conflicts with his wife that cannot be well coordinated, and he feels that she is stubborn, and his coping strategy is to “hide” – to come home later than before. The wife feels helpless, she can’t control her husband, she can’t expect him to come home regularly, so her coping strategy is to “pull” her children in, to connect excessively with them, to complain about her father intentionally or unintentionally, to tell him “bad things”, to balance her negative emotions through her children, and to balance her negative emotions through her children. Through the child, she balances her negative emotions and expresses her dissatisfaction and desire for her husband to come home regularly. Thus, an interesting family phenomenon occurs: the child is pulled into the interaction between the couple, acting as an equalizer and buffering the problems between the couple, which we call triangulation. Currently, intergenerational parenting is not uncommon in our country due to dual-income parents and high work pressure, and extended family grandparents due to living together or living in close proximity. This use of children as a counterbalance to the power of various interpersonal relationships within the family is common, and coupled with the national meanderings about expressing negative emotions and feelings, it is conceivable that this phenomenon has some extra Chinese cultural characteristics added to it. What are its characteristics? Examples can help us see it more visually. The husband and wife are both new generation immigrants who came from abroad to struggle in the big city, and the wife’s parents come over to help take care of the children’s living. There is some discontent between the mother-in-law and the son-in-law, who think that they don’t take care of the old people’s feelings very well. So, there was tension between them. Initially, it was the wife who joined the balance and did her best to coordinate and accommodate both sides, but as the conflict progressed, the children were “looked after” more by the grandmother. This is because the grandmother feels that she is here to take care of the little family, she feels that she is an outsider after all, so she gains more power by pulling in the children. The son-in-law increasingly feels excluded from the family, and he comes home later, talks less, and takes himself more seriously. What are the negative effects of the child as a counterbalance to harmonize family relations on the child’s psychological development? When children are added as a balancing force to problems that need to be solved between husband and wife or between adults in the family, the child will prematurely develop various unconscious compensatory and coordinating behaviors, as well as age-inappropriate caregiving behaviors. For example, as in the example above, the child will develop an automatic willingness to protect the mother, join forces with the mother, “fight” against the father, become distant from the father, or in more serious cases, hate the father. How can someone become “disliked, or even hated?” when both mom and dad are their own family members? There are often doubts in the child’s mind that cannot be integrated. Although the child does have more empathy with the mother on one level, he/she is never able to bridge the split between the bad father and the good father. Such a small family does not escalate or disintegrate because of the couple’s conflict, but at the cost of losing the child’s normal psychological development. We find that children raised in this environment are prone to internalized aggressions such as self-depreciation, fragile egos, self-injurious behaviors, susceptibility to anxiety and depression, and interpersonal problems. Type 2: Excessive adhesion and unclear boundaries in family relationships Excessive adhesion and unclear boundaries between family members are inseparable from the problems that exist in many children. Compared with Western families, Chinese families tend to be more closely related to three generations, and grandparents are more involved in economic and family affairs in small families, resulting in the “421” or “221” family. But this family structure does not necessarily lead to excessive adhesion and unclear boundaries, but increases the possibilities. So what is it? Young parents are giving up too much of their child-rearing responsibilities to the elderly, and the elderly are becoming too involved in the marital life of the couple. For example, if the young couple lives with their in-laws, the children are the primary responsibility of the in-laws, and the mother-in-law visits the young couple’s room every day to clean and do the laundry for them. The daughter-in-law will feel uncomfortable with the fact that the mother-in-law enters the sleeping couple’s bedroom without even knocking on the door, cleans the house directly and then “walks away”. Or they may express their disapproval of the way the parents discipline their children in front of them, or even tell them not to pay attention to them. This is a case of unclear family boundaries and excessive bonding, two terms that describe the same concept. A more typical situation is that of a young man who has become a husband and father, but still grew up being spoiled or controlled by his mother and doing whatever she told him to do. So how can he handle his relationship with his wife? When the mother interferes in a big way with her son and daughter-in-law’s married life, financial situation and family division of labor, the young husband is unable to make a fully independent, or step back and make decisions relatively independently. Thus, there is the story of two women and one man. What are the problems that arise when children are raised in a family environment with excessive adhesion and unclear boundaries? An important dimension of a child’s psychological development is the ongoing individuation, the ability to slowly and gradually dissociate from the family, especially the primary caregiver, to develop age-appropriate autonomy and independence, the ability to perform developmental tasks progressively and independently, and the ability to get along responsibly with others. This process is like a daughter cell slowly separating from the mother cell, a process that depends on continued encouragement from the mother. If, however, the family is overly adherent, the child’s completion of such a process is delayed and, because of unclear boundaries, the child’s various legitimate developmental needs are inappropriately intruded upon and limited. There may be a lack of independence and assertiveness, increased dependence, self-centeredness, indulgence, etc. during various developmental periods of life. In severe cases, various psychological problems, interpersonal problems and psychosomatic disorders may arise. For example, many drug abusers have a higher rate of excessive family bonding than the general population. A balanced family is one that has clear boundaries, has its own values, and communicates and collaborates with each other. Family balance is a relatively easy concept to be blurred, but the meaning of balance is that family members are able to handle daily conflicts autonomously and collaboratively in accordance with their roles and ages. Simply speaking, in terms of family structure, first of all, there are two independent people who form a family and become a couple, and the relationship between husband and wife is the core relationship of a family. The couple and the child have to deal with the parents on both sides as a whole, and this circle has to be drawn properly. The son cannot go and draw a circle with his own mother and leave his wife out of the circle. Of course, for the parents on both sides, they are first of all a small circle of the couple, and then the relationship with the daughter-in-law and grandchildren, neither the son nor the grandchildren, are part of this small circle. Only when each small circle is well delineated, it is possible to achieve a balance between generations of the extended family. This can be avoided to a great extent, cutting off excessive adhesions and clarifying boundaries. We often hear young people complain that their in-laws or parents-in-law interfere too much with them, but there is a potential line here: when you push too much of your responsibilities onto the elderly, you may have to give up some of your power; when you expect the elderly to do your laundry, you cannot expect them not to “tell you what to do with your life” at the same time. When you expect them to do your laundry, you cannot expect them not to “tell you what to do” with your life. The intention of mentioning this here is to remind young parents to take moderate responsibility for child care, which is conducive to establishing family relationships with clear boundaries. The third type of strict homeschooling is sometimes the “dispatch of anxiety.” Families are now forming an inverted pyramid structure: grandparents outnumber grandchildren, and many of the family’s unfulfilled expectations rest on the youngest children. Harsh parenting also tends to happen. Discipline and rules are absolutely necessary in homeschooling, but with a certain amount of flexibility. Overly strict rules can create an oppressive, anxious mood in a child. For example, it is fine for parents to require that homework be completed every day, but occasionally there is a day when the child is uncomfortable, or even if he or she forgets to play and doesn’t finish the homework, the parents have to allow that to happen. If it is not easy to make any exceptions, over time, the strict rules set by the parents to complete the homework every day, how many points in the exam, the first place in the exam, and so on, become absolute requirements for the child inside himself, and if he fails to meet these requirements, he will be very anxious, very self-doubting, and then may self-doubt, especially when he finds himself further and further away from these requirements, his anxiety level is outsiders This is especially true when the person finds himself falling further and further away from these requirements, his anxiety level is unimaginable and the chance of self-compulsion increases. Final advice: Just as each person has different developmental cycles, with different developmental tasks and developmental difficulties to overcome, so too do families have developmental cycles and encounter difficulties. Some difficulties can be solved internally, others require the intervention of external forces. And, seeking professional external forces is precisely what gives a person a higher level of understanding and awareness of the family.