Let me start with an example. A local friend asked me to help analyze his youngest son, who was seven years old, and said he had a cough problem. Then I saw the child and found that he was coughing constantly, averaging a minute to three minutes, then coughing up phlegm before he stopped for a while, and so on and so forth.
Looking at his medical history, he was treated numerous times by Western doctors without any effect, and in the end it was difficult to determine the cause of the illness. There are many prescriptions from Chinese doctors, from Beijing hospitals and local hospitals, some of which are somewhat effective, but then ineffective. Look at the prescriptions, Xiao Qing Long and other various ideas, hot and cold prescriptions are available.
So, what is the problem that is causing the child’s cough? Why are all the prescriptions that people use ineffective?
At this point it’s up to experience. I’ve seen too many children with just such examples, and it’s definitely not the case with their family; these families are in the same situation. So one look at the gesture of their family coming, in about a few minutes, I judged what the situation should be like, and the remaining thing was to verify it.
This child’s illness was caused by liver qi discomfort. Children’s coughs are usually more simple, mostly caused by external sensations, but nowadays there are some children’s coughs that are caused by other reasons, for example, liver qi discomfort.
Why does Liver Qi discomfort cause coughing? Because when Liver Qi is not soothing, Liver Fire will appear, and since the Lungs are Gold, Liver Fire will affect Lung Gold, which is called Wood and Fire against Gold. In a way that we can understand, it means that a disorder in the emotional system can cause a disorder in the respiratory system. Almost all of the severe lung diseases I have seen in women have a shadow of poor emotions in them, and many women have respiratory problems after a major setback in their emotional life. Now, there are starting to be more children like this, too.
So, why did I take one look at this family’s gestalt and guess a thing or two? It turns out that such families, without exception, bring their children to the doctor, there must be more than five people, grandparents, grandma and grandpa, the child’s parents, some even include the child’s aunt, uncle, etc.. Under the care of the whole family, the baby child comes out. Then look at the atmosphere, the whole family’s face, must be looking at this child, let the child stick out his tongue, must be the whole family together to coax. The child said unhappy, the family will immediately become the atmosphere dare not come out, I am not exaggerating, basically the whole family to look at the child’s face to feedback happy and angry. The mother of such a child, all have a common characteristic, is to mention the child’s body, immediately shed tears, crying about my child’s body how many kinds of diseases.
People will ask: “Aren’t they being good to their children? Why would they still have liver discomfort?” Yes, this is the cause of the disease. I see cases like this all the time, so I really take one look at this bout and I get a chill in my heart, why? Because this is not an ordinary external cough. Usually an external cough, divided into hot and cold, is very easy to deal with and will be under control in no more than three times. But a cough like this is very complicated and difficult to turn around. It is a coddling of the child, which causes the child’s liver qi to be unstable.
Coddling can also lead to emotional problems?
People may wonder, spoiling can also lead to emotional problems? Yes, we humans have a characteristic that we adapt to our environment and adjust our emotional threshold. Psychologists once did a study and they found that a white-collar executive, who lived in a villa and drove a luxury car, should be happy, but he dealt with the super rich all day long and his expectations were very high, so he was not satisfied with his current self and found it difficult to surpass, so he was very miserable and even ended up depressed. Another is a black woman, divorced, with children, and their own uremia, every week to do kidney dialysis, it is reasonable to say that this person should be desperate, but, she does not have any high expectations, think that can be with the children, has been very happy, so her psychological scale of happiness score, to be much higher than that white collar.
We thought the beggar on the street, must be full of despair about life, all day long want to kill themselves, but you go to study will find that they are often much happier than we thought, and some even feel happy and satisfied.
So, psychologists have concluded that we humans will adjust their psychological threshold to adapt to the surrounding environment.
Let’s go back to children. In a normal family in general, children have rules, when it’s time to eat, they have to eat, this is the rule, although this is contrary to the principle of freedom, according to the principle of freedom, we should eat when we want to eat, when we want to sleep. However, we humans did not evolve that way, but we quickly chose to establish order, to establish rules, to eat and sleep regularly, to establish marriage without messing up, to establish rules of interaction without harm. Human society, with rules as a framework. Do not feel that the rules make you not free, because, we will quickly adapt, and such rules, in favor of the child to establish a normal and orderly concept of work and rest time, when the time comes, the family does not have to persuade how, the child himself knows that it is time to eat, it is only natural. So such children, not because of eating and psychological problems.
However, the children of spoiled families are completely different, such families, there is no established rules, the children do what they want to do, when they want to eat when they want to eat what they want to eat, the grandparents at home to meet at any time. This runs down, the child feels that everything is centered on me, his expectations will be very high, once a failure to meet, it is a big thing, he will feel aggrieved to the extreme.
I once saw a child, because the food is not what he wanted, that is, the grandparents did not meet their own in time, simply angry with me! So the child cried and screamed for about two hours in total.
That’s the difference. In a non-coddled family, the child understands the ethical relationship within the family, knows how to co-exist and interact with everyone, and realizes that we are all one, so there is little negative feeling that everyone is against me. In a coddled family, the child feels that I am the center of the world and that you must satisfy me and make me happy. If you don’t satisfy me once, you are the rebel, the biggest villain, I am so aggravated, there is no point for me to live! The psychological threshold of the two to bear frustration, completely different. So we will find that the spoiled family, the child’s temper is very big, once the fire, the whole family is fearful, the child will think: you are now so afraid, how just treated me like that, give me to do I do not want to eat the meal? So more aggression fire is also bigger. In this way, the liver Qi discomfort appears.
More and more frequent anger, will lead to more and more serious liver Qi discomfort.
Without changing the concept, no medicine will have any effect
If I say this, you understand the reasoning, right? I have seen too many children like this. However, the majority of them, I can not regulate. Why? Because you speak hard for half a day, they will not go back to the pain, will continue to spoil the child, at this time, no medicine is ineffective.
For such families, I often suggest that the whole family meet to discuss the problem, reach an agreement, and change the way of education. If it can be done, then the rest of the problem can be solved with drugs, if not, there is really nothing we can do.
This time, the family, it so happened that all came together, so I spent two hours to give them such reasoning, about similar conditions I have seen, how the child was finally well, and told them that if this continues, the child’s body is a small thing, will come to society, will suffer too much, and will be mentally broken. They listened, were touched and determined to make a complete correction. This gave me hope.
As for the medication, I didn’t use those cough medicines, I just suggested them to use the foot soak formula for regulating emotions and treating insomnia caused by poor emotions inside my book “Illustrated Tongue Diagnosis”, in fact, this formula is for detoxifying the liver and relieving depression, which works well for people with poor emotions and depressed liver qi. As a result, after a month or so, the child’s cough was actually basically cured. I think, in fact, the medication only slightly detoxifies, and what really works is the change of family education style.
I know that many parents will ask after this article, “Which formula is it? Which prescription?” I repeat, at this point, the formula is not so important, the change in education style, no longer spoiled, is the key.
So, every time a parent of such a child comes to tell me that the child has recovered and reports to me, I reply, “The cough is just a small problem, the child’s education problem and the child’s future are the real problems.”
I have seen many families with this kind of spoiled model, and to be honest, it is more difficult to regulate the body of such a child. What needs to be changed is the mindset of all the members of the family. That’s why I now spend part of my energy talking about Chinese studies and the rules to be established in the process of educating children. Many Chinese people nowadays think that this is all very pedantic and that it is time to throw all these things away. In fact, there is a lot of truth in it, and when I have time, I will talk about it slowly.
There is no reason for a person to devote his or her energy to something that is irrelevant, really, because I see too many families with this kind of educational model and too many children whose bodies are difficult to regulate. Some people say, “Are you talking too seriously? My experience tells me that I’m not exaggerating, the family nowadays, in the four elderly, a pair of parents under the excessive care of the child, bear too much love. All parents should reflect on this, and if there is a similar situation, it is time to change.