An early childhood educator shared about the problems that arise in modern early education and the misconceptions of most parents: some of these mistakes I am also making, and I am glad I found this article early, as the author asked herself, as a first-time mother I am also more concerned about; “In the first three years of my child’s life, the most important, am I doing it right? Can she maintain a strong desire to explore under my guidance, and has her focus been broken? Is she a strong learner? Does she retreat when she encounters difficulties or does she find her own solutions to problems? Can she always maintain a confident, healthy mind?” I also want to raise my own children to be strong-willed, have independent problem-solving skills, have good interpersonal relationships, have good study habits, be confident and generous, kind and brave, happy at heart, and caring. In fact, the first three years of a child’s life are crucial for him, whether in the development of the immune system, or in the sound development of the personality, the overall development of intellectual and emotional intelligence, it is no exaggeration to say that every day is important for the baby. The article is a bit long, so parents with babies should be patient to read the article.
A, do not know the child in the 0-6 years of age there are various sensitive periods, the child in the sensitive period of performance as misbehavior reprimanded children, contrary to the child’s nature, causing him pain, leaving psychological hidden trouble.
There are various sensitive periods when children are 0-6 years old. The so-called sensitive period refers to the period of growth from 0-6 years old, when children are driven by their inner vitality to repeatedly operate a certain action or repeatedly learn a certain ability within a certain period of time, and the learning ability is particularly strong. There are sensitive periods of attachment formation, oral sensitivity, sensitivity of movements such as arms and legs, language sensitivity, sensitivity of subtle things, sensitivity of skin touch, sensitivity of obstinacy and perfection, sensitivity of order, sensitivity of mathematics, sensitivity of drawing, and so on.
The oral sensitivity period lasts from shortly after birth to a little over one year old. No matter how adults try to stop, children always put their hands in their mouths and eat with gusto. Adults should not think it is not clean to stop the child, otherwise it will leave a psychological risk. All the adult has to do is to make sure that what is in the mouth is relatively clean, and it is best to provide different things for the child to explore with the mouth! Children at this stage rely on their mouths to explore the world, and if they pass through it successfully, they will never use their mouths for anything other than food again. Some children enter kindergarten or elementary school and still can’t break the habit of sucking on fingers or other objects, or even develop other undesirable behaviors, such as snacking, spitting, and swearing! All of these are to some extent related to the failure to pass the oral sensitivity period.
During the hand sensitivity period, the child throws things with his or her hands, picks holes with his or her fingers, and even hits people (actually, from the child’s perspective, he or she is just practicing arm muscle movement). The hand sensitivity period overlaps with the leg sensitivity period, and sometimes the two or three sensitivity periods often cross over at the same time.
Children over two years old enter the sensitive period of property rights awareness, often saying “this is mine” and “that is mine”, and refusing to share anything with others, and even their mothers cannot ask for what they are holding. Dear parents should not think that their children are selfish and must find a way to change this problem. In fact, this is the practice of property ownership, through the confirmation of the right to belong to the object, to recognize his relationship with the object. Foreign education experts often say that the philosophy of two-year-olds is “mine, mine, mine, everything is mine. We should also understand the behavior of children at this stage, rather than labeling them.
The way to get through the sensitive period of property awareness is not to take your child seriously when he is particularly obvious and just go along with him. This takes about three or four months (depending on the child). Then, when you find an appropriate opportunity, i.e., when other children share their toys with your child, remind him, “Are you happy that the children share their toys with you?” When he nods, tell him, “They are also happy that you share your toys with others. Stop there and don’t force the child right away. After a few repetitions, let him try to share the toy with other children. Through practice, he will learn that the toy belongs to him and that he will get it back after sharing it with other people. Most children enter the sharing stage around three weeks of age.
Note 1: Adults should not tease children who are in a period of strong property rights awareness by forcibly grabbing things from their hands, making them cry, and then shaming them with “You’re so stingy! This is absolutely unacceptable behavior!
Note 2: When the child can share and give us something to eat, we must accept it, don’t say “I am teasing you, I don’t eat it, you eat it”, this is to refuse the child’s sharing, it will bring the child a feeling of disappointment, the child will associate sharing with disappointment and not enjoy the joy of sharing, slowly will not be willing to share. The child will not enjoy the joy of sharing and will slowly stop sharing.
If an adult breaks off a piece of cake and gives it to the child, the child will cry and refuse to accept it. Adults must not think that the child is selfish.
Each other sensitive period has its own performance, for example, at the age of five or six there is a worship and worshipped sensitive period, marriage sensitive period, etc. Only by allowing the child to pass through smoothly and naturally, will he or she maintain a healthy state of mind. Parents can refer to Ms. Sun Rui Xue’s “Capturing Children’s Sensitive Periods”, a book with detailed discussion, which is a must-read for parents.
Second, the wrong knowledge instillation as early education, always use the “teaching” method to cause children’s resistance.
It is often said that before the age of three is the most important period, this period is not to let the child learn how much knowledge, but the most important period of psychological growth. Psychological growth is the important content of early education, a healthy mind is the source of lifelong happiness. This is the period to spoil the child, child-centered, let him eat alone, do everything for him, do not respect him, easily meet his material needs in advance, while ignoring his inner feelings and so on, this kind of emphasis on material satisfaction light spiritual nourishment way, can only raise an unhealthy and independent child.
Don’t teach your child, just demonstrate. For not teaching children, many people may think I’m talking nonsense, this statement in the beginning of my contact also do not understand, I experienced a full two years, through a lot of observation and practice to understand that children really are not “taught” out. For example: when guests and small children greeting, the child did not respond, adults usually out of courtesy and face, will be urged to say “call ah, how not to call auntie, how not to answer, you should call auntie ah, you child is so” and so on, so do is to teach, teach will give the child pressure. If you teach and accuse at the same time, it is even more torturing to the child. We just need to imitate the child’s tone of voice to respond: “Auntie, hello! Or “Bye, Auntie!” “Thank you, Grandma, I’ve eaten.” And so on. This is modeling, not teaching.
A child with nimble fingers can start practicing putting on shoes at about 18 months, and if the child puts them on backwards, most parents will say, “Wrong wrong, left and right wrong.” Wrong left and right? With a little one’s ability, there is no right or wrong. Telling him he’s wrong will stress him out, and the tone of our voice will make her nervous: What’s wrong, why does mommy sound so bad? Just calmly tell your child: “Swap the two shoes”. This is the correct way to tell him, so on the line, do not go “teach: this is the left, that is the right (the child’s brain is very simple, accept the correct instructions on the line, too complex he can not accept.)” In my experience, after a month or two of prompting, the child will be able to wear shoes, and left and right will not be wrong.
When operating a toy, you only need to demonstrate, “baby, look at mommy do”, mommy slow down the speed to do the demonstration, after that, give the child time and opportunity to let him adjust himself repeatedly repeatedly operation, do not bother him, do not chatter when he happens a little mistake “wrong wrong, not this Do it”. This way the child loses the opportunity to internalize external information. If everything is taught by you, the child’s ability to learn for himself is often lost when no one teaches him. This is how children’s ability to focus is destroyed by us! What we should do is to wait patiently for him to adjust himself, and we must not criticize. With enough love and respect, children even have the ability to educate themselves.
Third, never use a walker! Always let your child crawl!
A walker is more harmful than good for your baby’s health. Learning to walk requires overcoming a huge psychological barrier, mastering the skills to maintain body balance, the walker does not need to be so “troublesome”, a little touch can easily slip far away, which makes it difficult for children to overcome the psychological barriers to adapt to the hard process of learning to walk on their own. This is why children who use walkers are slower to learn to walk.
Another situation is that children with walkers have their foot muscles shaped into tiptoes, and parents often have to spend a long time to let their babies learn to land on their whole feet. With a walker, the child’s chance to crawl is greatly reduced. Many elderly people are often very proud of “my grandchildren do not need to crawl, walk directly, really good!” They do not know that humans must crawl to develop healthy. Children who do not crawl have poor body coordination, which affects life and movement. Poor vestibular nerve development affects future reading and writing, and also hinders the development of language.
Fourth, the correct handling of children’s crying emotions, is the beginning of building a good character.
Joy, anger, sadness, happiness, fear, etc. are all normal emotional expressions of the old gift to humans. We adults always like happy things and often find it annoying for crying.
A child’s crying needs our patience to feel, not just saying “don’t cry, don’t cry” to the child, which is a very big mistake. Crying is the release of his inner conflicts and contradictions, not a bad thing, adults just need to gently hug him, rub his back, the first sentence said “Oh baby, mommy knows …… (what just happened), you are very sad, mommy understand you” “Oh, baby, mommy knows you’re hurt from the fall and a little scared, right?” This is empathy, showing that we understand him and accept his sadness is the beginning of adjusting his emotions.
The second sentence must be “mommy knows you are not happy (this is very important)”, so that he will quickly cheer up, the third sentence is “mommy loves you, mommy understands you”. Finally, you can take three deep breaths to let your child exhale the unpleasant feelings. If you learn this, your child may still have tears on his face before he runs away to find his buddies. (This method I have tried and tested, very effective, others often laugh at me, after all, is to do early education, the child let you a coaxing on the good. (In fact, this method is not coaxing, is the effect of empathy.)
We often say “boy, what are you crying about!” when raising a little boy. “Shame on you, boys still cry!” Boys are often prevented by adults from releasing their sadness as children, and slowly grow up, they don’t know how to release their sadness, and they don’t know how to express their love, so I believe many wives feel the same way about how hard it is to get their husbands to say they love you. In other words, after such a boy enters marriage as an adult, he must not be able to communicate well with his wife, which will affect the quality of the marriage. Please think about it, if your son’s future married life may be unhappy as a result, will you still stop your little boy from crying? Please accept his sorrow unconditionally! A boy crying is not something to lose face!
When a few months old baby cries, we often rush over to him with the words “come on, come on”. You should say in a relaxed and calm tone, “Are you hungry? Once the child struggles and cries and refuses to do something, he or she should say in a compromising voice, “Oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. … (do something)”. Don’t let your child feel that he can control adults with crying and can do as he pleases.
Many times the implementation of educational methods should be well observed and summarized, not just generalized.
The reason why two to three year olds become more aggressive the more they are stopped is that aggression is a necessary part of most children’s development.
Most children between the ages of two and three years old often hit others, and adults should never say “Don’t hit” or “Why are you hitting again? This is not helpful. This makes the child think that this action can attract the attention of adults, and the more repeated hitting action.
Most of the time it is because the child is in the sensitive period of mouth, hands and feet, he is eager to explore the world with his mouth, hands and feet, to know things, and the scope of exploration will certainly include the body of others, so there is “biting”, “hitting”, “kicking” and other aggressive actions. “kicking” and other aggressive behavior.
Another reason is that he has not yet mastered the method of interpersonal interaction. When his language is not yet able to express his thoughts correctly, he often uses impactful body movements instead in an emergency. He may say, “Get out of my way,” or “Don’t get my stuff,” but before the words are out of his mouth, he is already pushing or grabbing them.
Some children are so insecure that they attack others to vent their feelings or to get the attention of mom or dad. What adults need to do is not to label him as “you are a bad boy who hits”, but to apologize to the other parent and child when he hits, hold the child in time to prevent him from continuing the aggressive behavior, and leave calmly. At the same time, promptly adjust the time spent with the child to give him adequate comfort. Reasoning is 100% useless at this stage of the child’s life.
Parents of children who have been shocked must be calm and not assume that their child is being bullied. Many children interact by physically punching each other and understand that the other child is not intentional nor is he or she of questionable moral character. If you think your child is being bullied, it will make your child develop a character of being bullied and will be bullied for life. Don’t go home and tell your family that your child was beaten up by so-and-so or something, which makes your child think that I am just easy to be beaten up, and he or she will think that there is something wrong with him or her that others don’t like, which will form a timid and cowardly character. The correct approach is to accept the other parent’s apology and say to the child, “You are a good boy, I know you just want to play with our baby (you can change the wording according to the situation), you two shake hands.”
After three weeks of age, when the child slowly understands more, if he still hits, we should deepen the reason for his hitting (whether there is domestic violence, etc.), eliminate the root cause, and at the same time, every time he attacks others, tell him “no”. Note that I use the word no, not no hitting, and do not add negative messages to it. Whenever a child exhibits negative behavior, the first rule is to downplay it and downplay it again! Do not reinforce!
Children naturally love to try and repeat behaviors that produce interesting, stimulating consequences and get adult attention. The right thing to do is to make the consequences of the behavior meaningless, and he will naturally give up.
VI. Why do we treat children like circus performers? What adults do not want, do not do to children.
Many families greet their children when they have guests at home: come, come, come, sing a song, dance. This is extremely disrespectful behavior. Do not let the child perform in front of the guests, this will make the child grow up to devote all his attention to pleasing others, and as an adult, once others do not approve of him, he will suffer a huge blow, and will not be able to play well with his inherent abilities as he should.
”If children were given the opportunity to choose the most annoying question they have ever been asked, this would be at the top of the list. Think about it: if an “alien” two or three times your height and several times your weight looked down at you and asked you in a nonchalant tone, would you be happy to answer? You would have given that rude “alien” a long look, wouldn’t you? So how can we blame our child for being rude when he doesn’t like to answer the question?
We should: crouch down, keep our eyes parallel to the child’s, introduce ourselves and ask the child’s name: “I’m Ms. Lin (auntie), very nice to meet you, can you tell me your name?” And remember never touch a child at will on the first meeting, it’s the proper cultivation of an adult! If someone does this to your child, don’t do it out of face, or even help someone taunt your child: “Yes, he’s just not talkative!” “Why so rude, answer uncle.” “He is such a coward” and so on. If a child is constantly put in such an unhappy situation by his parents, it is very difficult to get him to be outgoing and lively. So often parents respond by saying, “My child is a little bully at home, but a little rabbit outside. The child is treated with enough respect that he behaves as one inside and outside.
Would you like people to laugh at you, mom or dad? No, right? So don’t laugh when our children say something that makes you laugh. For example, one child said, “My dad doesn’t wear clothes in the shower!” After the family laughs, they ask the child, “Are you taking a shower with your clothes on?” This is not clearly confusing the child’s thinking? Many families often make such jokes about their children. Don’t tease your child. When I’m confronted with someone teasing my child, I often reject it without question: Sorry, my child doesn’t like such jokes. In between the child and face, we should choose the child.
Seven, we often unknowingly pass a lot of negative, negative information to our children!
Don’t tell people about your child’s “bad behavior” in front of them. For example, many mothers often say in front of guests, “That’s how timid he is!” “He just doesn’t like to eat!” You are implying to your child that you expect him to be this way. He will reach the result in the direction you expect him to go: he must become more and more timid and unmotivated to eat. The power of verbal suggestion is enormous. If you pretend to say it secretly to someone else, but then let your child hear it: “You know, our baby was especially brave today when he played on the swings!” “Did you know that my baby ate a bowl full of rice by himself today.” This will send a message in the child’s mind, “Huh? Mommy said I was brave? Did she? Well, I’ll be even braver tomorrow!” “Ah, mommy is so happy, well, I’ll eat another big bowl tomorrow.” This is positive cueing that reaches the child’s subconscious and has a huge impact.
Don’t threaten your child, “If you make any more noise, mommy won’t want you.” This is the biggest threat, the deepest fear. Because a young child can’t survive without his family. The mother’s verbal violence against the child is the beginning of the child’s bad character. The right thing to say is: “Please be quiet, mommy loves you!” Other words that make the child feel that everything external will hurt him should not be said.
Special emphasis: never say the following words: “Don’t make any more noise, the police will come.” “If you make any more noise, the doctor will come to give you a shot.” “Go to sleep, the big bad wolf is coming.” If you don’t threaten your child in this way, he will be drop dead, lively, healthy and confident when he goes out.
Note: Never make malicious jokes with your child: “Your mother doesn’t want you anymore, she’s not coming to pick you up. You must keep your children away from people who say such things to them. Such jokes are very bad and are extremely detrimental to the construction of a child’s sense of security.
A child who talks a lot of milk must be the result of improper parental language education.
The first thing you need to do is not to say milk words, such as “feet and feet”, “shoes and shoes”, “dinner and rice”, or even make up some whispered words that others do not understand. From birth, every word spoken to the child should be grammatically correct and pronounced in the native language. The primary caregiver should use exaggerated mouth shapes, a clear voice, and a slow speed when talking to the baby, e.g., “Po-po-sleep-wake up. Never speak in milk words, or you will still have a lisp by the time you are four or five years old. Why should a child learn to speak in milk once more when he can learn standard pronunciation at once? It’s a waste of time, energy, and neural information storage area.
Many children still can’t tell the difference between you and me by the age of two or more, which is also the result of adults not paying attention. In order for the child to master the first, second and third person pronouns as soon as possible, the mother should use personal pronouns when communicating with her baby after the age of one week so that the child can imitate them. You should say more often, “I’ll pour you water,” and less often, “Mommy pours water for the baby.” When a child says, “Baby’s,” the adult should follow with, “Yes, it’s yours.” When the child says wrong, do not laugh, then the child will be laughed at the moment, lost the opportunity to learn.
Do not say “obey” to your child, let your child happily follow the rules, internalize the rules into his heart, and become his lifelong belief in compliance.
Chinese family education, social order can be seen everywhere in a variety of behavioral norms, but few people comply with them, this is why? Is it because Chinese people are not naturally rule-abiding? Is it because we don’t talk about rules in the education process? Definitely not. With these years out of the country to the world, open your eyes to see, we and the world civilization turned out to have such a big distance. As long as there is no supervision, we break the rules, and we are still lucky that “no one should see, right?” Why is that?
Most people in the developed countries in the West believe in God, and what is deeply rooted in their hearts is that I can’t do anything wrong to my conscience, God will see it. That’s why there are no ticket inspectors at the subway stations in Germany, many supermarkets abroad are self-calculating, and it is common practice internationally to return goods unconditionally. While we grow up being supervised by others, as children we listen to our parents at home and are reminded not to do this or that, and when we go to school, we listen to our teachers and obey this and that, children never have the opportunity to judge for themselves the rules that they should spontaneously obey in the process of growing up. The impact of the rules is the child is testing our bottom line, in fact, is the beginning of compliance with the rules, we should be tolerant, remind him “you forgot what?” Instead of criticizing him and putting pressure on him, we need to be tolerant and remind him “What did you forget? (“How did you forget” can not be said, “how” the two words will form pressure on the child, the meaning of reproach.)
At the same time, we should fully respect the child’s spontaneous exploration behavior. When our child’s spontaneous explorations are respected, he will begin to follow the rules we set for him, that is, he will learn to be wise and obedient to others, and then the light of discipline will appear and the rules will be internalized. The internalized rules will stay with the child for the rest of his life, and it will be very pleasant and easy to follow the internalized rules.
X. How to deal with children grabbing toys in the process of interaction.
As soon as the little ones start interacting, a principle should be established that whoever has the toy has the right to decide. Adults cannot force their children’s toys to other babies, nor can they induce him to give them to others. If it is a public toy or play equipment, whoever gets it first or whoever starts playing first, he has the right to decide to continue playing or leave, and other babies must wait. Often, if the child does not get the toy he wants, he will cry, and the adult can say in a calm tone, “We have to learn to wait!” You can also divert the child’s attention by using another toy to entice him to leave temporarily. When a child does not want to share, adults should not say “you are just mean”, “cheap”, etc. Your child will never learn to share if you keep labeling him as such. A child knows that he has ownership of his own belongings before he can talk about sharing. If an adult gives his child’s toy to another child out of face, it means that you are telling your child that he can also grab someone else’s toy, so the rules must be uniform regardless of the situation. Normally after the age of three, the child learns that if he shares a toy with someone else, he can still get it back, so that he is happy to share. Never be in a hurry to cultivate your child’s quality of generosity before the age of three.