● Expert opinion
One step at a time, a thousand miles in mind.
Zhang Yuguang
The problem reflected by Ms. Zhang is indeed a big problem, and it is also the most worrying problem for the post-80 s and post-90 s people. If you have no ideal, you will lose the direction of life, and you will be very lazy, unmotivated and even world-weary in the face of study, life and work.
So, in the modern society with such diverse values, what efforts should parents make to help their children set up lofty ideals?
I think it depends first on parents' expectations of their children and their ideal state. The former will affect the way you raise children, and the latter will become children directly. Relevant surveys and my personal feelings show that many parents' expectations of their children are short-sighted and one-sided. There are only academic expectations for children, but no personality expectations. Always "we don't want you to do anything, just read the book well", which will inevitably bury an untimely bomb for the development of children.
Some parents like to eat, drink and be merry, and their lives are chaotic. As a result, children can easily become mirrors of such parents. As parents, if children want to have lofty ideals, they must be people who have ideals and dare to struggle. This is the simplest truth. At the same time, we should also adjust our expectations of children to cultivate their good personality first. Xu Teli said: "The function of education is to cultivate a certain personality and serve a certain society according to a certain social form."
Secondly, parents need to understand the basic characteristics of children's ideal development at all ages. Children in early childhood can't talk about career ideals, but personality cultivation must begin. My family education experience is that I firmly believe that "even children have ambitions". Cultivating children's ambition level is by no means what kind of person a particular family will become when they grow up, but to make them confident and believe that what children of the same age can do can be done by themselves and better than others. This kind of education, the sooner you start, the better.
The ideals of primary school students are often erratic, numerous and unstable, and great changes have taken place over time. That's because their ideals are too easily influenced by external objective things. Therefore, parents should not only regulate their words and deeds, but also properly control what enters their minds and hearts, so as to help children learn to choose in the face of complex realistic environment.
Although the ideals of middle school students are gradually stable, the ideals of the second generation are often full of fantasy but lack of science. In particular, actions lag far behind thoughts. Influenced by parents' thoughts, ideals are more manifested in attaching importance to the brain and neglecting the body, and attaching importance to profit.
After parents understand the basic characteristics of their children's ideal development, they can seize the favorable opportunity for their children to have positive emotions, such as entering a new school, starting a new semester, menarche or first nocturnal emission, doing well in exams, being praised at school, watching a good book or a good movie or TV. Parents should communicate with their children in time and strengthen their children to turn positive emotions into goals and ideals. The cultivation of personality and ideals depends on the influence of culture, and the times are changing with each passing day. To provide children with cultural literacy, we should pay attention to the characteristics of the times. What needs to be reminded is that it is forbidden to always point out children's shortcomings with a critical eye and discourage children from changing their image from scratch. At the same time, no matter what age children are, we can't ignore their emotional education for the motherland. It is very important to guide children to care about national development, understand major positive events and enhance their pride as China people. One of the main reasons for many children who have no ideals or even find life boring is that too many dark sides of society have entered their minds and hearts, making them feel hopeless in the case of poor critical thinking ability. Of course, this is also a challenge to the quality of parents.
Third, provide children with practical opportunities close to the ideal. Many children have lofty ideals. For example, in the group counseling of junior high school students in different schools, I heard many students publicly declare their ideals: "I want to be a great scientist" and "I want to be a world-class singer", but when asked how to realize such ideals, they often silently say "study hard" at most. No matter how beautiful the ideal is, if it is not put into action, it will be like an idiotic dream.
As mentioned above, personality cultivation closely related to ideals should be implemented in the details of life. For example, although the family has money, it also restricts the living conditions of children; What children should do at this age is generally not arranged; Encourage children when they encounter difficulties and setbacks, and teach them specific methods; Always tell some cases that have achieved great success in life because of their good personality, and set a good example for children (preferably recent, related to children's interests, such as the story of Aunt Susan who just won the runner-up in Britain's Got Talent). Whether the ideal is realized or not depends on the process of pursuit. In the field of psychology, when people talk about ideals, they often mention the word "dream", which refers to the ideas generated through people's conscious activities. In the process of pursuing ideal realization, a "dream" is a goal. Parents should know how to guide their children to determine the goals of the system within a period of time, and when one goal is achieved, encourage their children to set out for the next goal (for psychological technology, please refer to the article "How to" mark "learning goals" in Wenzhou Daily in March, 2007 12 due to limited space). Of course, in the pursuit process, we should also help children correct their goals in time according to their own development reality.
Finally, I want to quote the famous saying of Napoleon Hill, a successful American psychologist: "The most magical genetic factor of human beings is the power to be good at dreaming." Few children really have no dreams. For example, many children are worse off than Ms. Zhang's son. However, when I asked them to do "lifeline" exercises, I found that they also had dreams about their future, such as "being strong", "being a big boss" and "winning the best bonus of 5 million". Unfortunately, their dreams are just a manifestation of their desire for happiness or ignorance. In view of this, I suspect that Ms. Zhang's son is not without ideals, perhaps because of a short circuit in communication with him.
Family ideal education is a very important and complicated matter. It is very important to catch early and catch naturally. After puberty, the authority of parents will be challenged by children, and their influence will be relatively weakened. As long as parents, society and schools make joint efforts to make every child do every "today", they will certainly approach or realize their own ideals and their lives will be happy.