I took my little girl to a kindergarten interview on Saturday. During the interview, five children went in at a time, and the interview probably included recognizing colors and shapes, matching shapes, reading picture books, dancing with the teacher, and singing. My 3 year old daughter performed well in all aspects of the interview. Especially when she was dancing with the teacher, the other children either walked around without looking at the teacher or hid behind their parents and refused to come forward. The youngest daughter was the only one who swayed her body with the teacher. The last part was to prepare their own program, which was just singing. The teacher asked the children if they had a program to prepare, but they didn’t respond. I said to my little daughter, “Do you want to sing? Raise your hand if you want to sing!” So, my little daughter raised her hand. The teacher asked her what song she sang. She said she sang Little Swallow. In fact, she sang the songs “DO RE ME” and “I have a home” very well. But I guess “Little Swallow” is relatively easier and the child was willing to sing the simplest tune in a public place. My youngest daughter started singing timidly, a little softly at first, but I thought it was not easy enough since it was in public and I was putting myself forward after all. I encouraged her from behind: “You can make your voice louder.” So, my little daughter let go of her voice and sang. At that moment, a little girl next to her suddenly said, “Not good, not good, not good singing!” My little daughter was stunned for a moment, and I encouraged her: “Keep singing!” So, the little daughter continued to sing, just opened her mouth, the little girl said louder: “Not good, not good, singing is not good!” At this point, my little daughter couldn’t stand it and cried, then turned around and threw herself into my arms. All three teachers said, “It sings well. Nice singing.” Still unable to control her emotions, my youngest daughter cried even louder. As she cried, she said, “Mommy, she laughed at me!” “Yes, she laughed at you and you had a hard time.” I repeated her words, “But you were the first one to sing, you raised your hand to sing by yourself, you were brave, and all three teachers said you sang well!” I hugged my little girl and held her tightly. Perhaps she was in the midst of aggrieved emotions, and her singing was naturally interrupted. Of course, for me, it didn’t matter if I finished singing or not, what my child needed at this time was my acceptance and listening. “Look, the teachers think you’re great, too. This child says let her say it, and Mommy and the teachers think you’re great.” I gently whispered in my little daughter’s ear, and gradually she regained her composure. Later, in addition, the little girl who just sang with her parents also finished the song, and the parents immediately praised: “My family ** is the smartest!” When I heard the word “smart”, I felt especially harsh and thought a lot about it. I was not so much thinking about my little girl being ridiculed as I was lamenting the fact that this little girl was living in a dysfunctional evaluation system. Not to mention an article I just read a while ago, “Why Talented Girls Kill Themselves – Boasting About Your Child’s Intelligence Is a Lifelong Spell”. In fact, what I have to say is another serious topic: “evaluation”. Evaluating others is rooted in a low sense of self-worth In the process of raising children, we often use evaluation. Of course, there is a difference between positive and negative evaluations, or rather, between positive and negative evaluations. When we approve of our children and praise them, this is positive evaluation, or positive evaluation; when we deny or criticize our children, this is negative evaluation, or negative evaluation. Generally speaking, when we give a child a positive evaluation, the child is often happy and will be more willing to try to perform better and will continue to develop in a positive direction. This means that the child’s sense of self-worth is enhanced and the child’s internal drive is boosted. On the contrary, if the child is often given negative, negative evaluations, the child’s sense of self-worth will become lower and lower, and eventually become broken. On the surface, the child appears to be indifferent to negative evaluations, but in fact, the child’s sense of self-worth is gradually lost, and he starts a negative evaluation system when evaluating others. There was a 9-year-old child who, whenever he was with others, was like a hedgehog, attacking them with words at all times and always speaking in such a discordant way. My intuition told me that the child’s mind was hurt. In later contacts, as trusting relationships were built, I slowly learned how much the child did not accept herself! It was clear that the title given for an essay about himself was “I like myself”. This child had to write “I don’t like myself”. In his original essay, he listed many people who did not like him, “So, I don’t like myself.” As a teacher, I was very distressed when I read this. How many times had this child endured negative comments inside of him to come up with such a self-evaluation? Back to the above example with this little girl. A child of about three years old, why did she judge others in such a way. There is no doubt that this little girl lives in an environment that is bound to have a negative evaluation system. There is a saying that lives: “Evaluating others is another form of self-evaluation.” For most Chinese people, all external evaluations are the reference standard for their next life. The old folks would often say, “People live with a face, trees live with a skin.” The face in question is what most people seek. Not being able to maintain oneself and living in the evaluation of others is the state of many people at the moment. Children who like to judge others often live in an environment where they are constantly judged. Children are like a sponge, absorbing everything around them. If the adults around him are accepting, appreciative and approving, the child learns to be accepting, appreciative and approving, and his heart will start a positive evaluation system; if the adults around him are critical, harsh and mocking, the child learns to be critical, harsh and mocking, and his heart will start a negative evaluation system. There is always someone who appreciates you, even if you are a grass In my classroom, it is common to find children using negative evaluation systems about other children. For example, in a mixed-age class, a younger child will have a word they don’t know and ask how to pronounce it, and also immediately a child will say, “How do you read when you don’t even know this word?” I would gently say, “They’re only in first grade, they can’t know it, they’re learning it!” Sometimes a child would ask, “Teacher, how do you write the word for bright and wintry?” At this point, the child next to me will immediately say, “You can’t even know such a simple word, really!” At this point, I usually say gently, “He can’t write it.” Sometimes, I will also say: “Everyone goes from not knowing to knowing, there is no shame in not knowing!” Feng Menglong once said, “The ruined reputation can never be heard, right and wrong is ultimately self-evident.” Although others have the freedom to evaluate themselves, for children who are not yet physically and mentally mature, their sense of self-worth and self-evaluation system is not yet established, and the evaluation of others is quite important. As parents, we need to understand that there are objective and non-objective evaluations of others. Objective evaluation means that when evaluating a person, we keep an impartial mind and discuss the facts, rather than replacing them with points and affirming or denying the whole of a person. Non-objective evaluation is often to look at people with colored glasses, or confuse right and wrong, black and white, or gullible to believe in others’ short and short stories, and then embellish and process them to spread in other people’s communication. A child’s self-evaluation comes first from the evaluation of others, and the evaluation of parents is the most important of all. Through parents’ and teachers’ affirmation and recognition of their children’s strengths, children can have a correct self-evaluation of themselves and realize that “I can do it” and “I am great”. Through the correct guidance of parents, children can identify right and wrong, confirm the direction of value, so that they can consciously control their own behavior, not deviate from the track of life, and improve their sense of self-worth. Chinese people always ask their children to be human beings and not ordinary people when they educate them. Therefore, they are demanding, unaccepting, and unrecognizable to children at a young age in an attempt to develop their ability to move upward. As a result, many children lost themselves in the process of growing up, and eventually gave up on themselves, and some even embarked on the road to self-destruction. In fact, the most important thing for a child to do is to be himself. Every child has an inner growth code, which is not even controlled by parental education. When a child exists in this world, as long as he does not give up being himself, there will always be someone to appreciate him, even if he is just a blade of grass. Others don’t know your child, but you should know your child best What saddens me is that there are a lot of children who like to evaluate others negatively, which also shows that there are a lot of children who live in negative evaluation. In fact, helping children build a sense of self-worth and guiding them to pay attention to the evaluations of others begins at age three or four. According to research, the initial development of a child’s sense of evaluation begins with self-evaluation. It is when a child reaches a certain level of self-evaluation that the child will understand the evaluations of others. For example, in the child in the above example, if the parents keep evaluating the child by saying “you are the smartest”, the child will naturally think that others are bad and not good. On the surface, this seems to develop the child’s self-confidence, but in fact, this is not a correct sense of self-worth. Because the evaluation given by adults is not an objective evaluation, the child’s evaluation of self is also naturally not objective. Once the external environment later makes an objective evaluation of the child, the child will not accept it. As you can see, as a parent, you should neither demean your child nor overestimate your child. For example, when your child is the first to take the initiative to sing, first do not evaluate how well your child sings, but perhaps say to your child, “You are brave to be the first to raise your hand and sing.” “Your voice is loud and great!” This is an objective evaluation. However, when your child sings a song, the praise you give is: “My family** is the smartest!” Singing a song is not even close to being smart. This confusion of the child’s evaluation system is certainly putting a spell on the child’s life. In kindergarten, teachers use praise to recognize and affirm children, and sometimes, to our adult bewilderment, a little sticker from a teacher has magical powers. In fact, it is not the sticker itself that has the magic power, but the recognition, praise and positive comments hidden behind the sticker. As parents, we need to convey to our children the idea that “do not hurt others, do not hurt the environment, do not hurt yourself” is a must. This is the ultimate evaluation system we adults teach our children. When children learn this evaluation system, it is easy for them to develop an initial sense of evaluation of others. However, there is no exact standard of evaluation here for how well a young child can draw or sing, nor should it be used as a standard for evaluating children. If we adults lack a certain level of aesthetic sophistication and make presumptuous comments about our children, we can easily disrupt their evaluation system. As children continue to grow older, especially after the age of five, with the development of abstract thinking, children’s awareness of paying attention to the evaluation of others becomes stronger and stronger. If parents neglect to educate and guide their children about self-worth at this stage, they will not be able to help their children establish a good sense of order, such as being disciplined in the classroom and following order in public places. Especially after the age of seven, although the child enters elementary school, the game era is over, but the child will still be recklessly just play, and completely ignore the orderly, not to mention the evaluation of others. At this point, parents need to start from scratch to help their children establish an evaluation system again. The most important job of parents is to help their children build a sense of self-worth What is the most important job of parents? Many parents are confused, some parents will say to earn more money to save for their children; some parents will say to help their children to find a good school, to train their children to become successful; in fact, for parents, the most important job is to discover the real existence of children, to help children to build a sense of self-worth. The so-called sense of self-worth can be described in three words: self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-love. Self-confidence means believing in people; self-respect means respecting people; self-love means loving people. Everyone living in the world cannot escape three relationships. That is, the relationship with oneself; the relationship with others; and the relationship with the environment. The establishment and integrity of one’s own sense of value is to help one to be able to deal with these three relationships. When a person has the ability to handle these three relationships well, his life will be full of light. The important period for building a sense of self-worth is from 0 to 6 years old. Many parents say that they are too busy at work and do not have time for their children. Some parents even leave their children before the age of 3 to the care of the elderly. For children growing up in this state, I would have a concern. As a parent, if you pass the responsibility of education, you may miss many sensitive periods in your child’s development, such as the sensitive period of self-evaluation and others’ evaluation. When a child has problems, is indifferent to the evaluation of others, and lacks motivation, this is karma. What do parents need to do when their children are 0 to 6 years old? Before the age of 1, a child’s sense of self-worth depends on how he feels about his external environment; does he feel gentle or rough? Will his needs be met in a timely manner or will he wait indefinitely? Are other people trustworthy or untrustworthy? These adult perceptions and judgments of the external environment are actually formed before the age of 1. Between the ages of 1 and 3, are children’s emotions such as joy, anger, sorrow, and sadness empathized with, listened to, and accepted or are they ridiculed, scolded, and repressed? Are children’s emotions expressible or inexpressible? Some adults, who seem emotionally stable on the surface, suddenly become violently angry and suddenly sad, often because similar emotions were repressed at a young age. At the age of 4 to 6, have the child’s inner feelings been guided into internal and external unity? Does the child have the ability and power to express his or her inner feelings correctly? This is what psychology refers to as “inner and outer unity”. We may find that some children have a “heart of mouth” or “heart of mouth”, which are the opposites of being one. There are many adults who do not want to do something, but do it against their will to accommodate others. This is because they are not allowed to express their inner feelings correctly during this period.