The important role of emotion management in family education

The core role of emotional management in family education is to build a lifelong emotional security foundation for children - its priority is much higher than concrete educational goals such as knowledge instillation and habit cultivation. It directly determines the child's sense of self-worth, interpersonal adaptability, and even the psychological frustration threshold in adulthood. This is not an empty education slogan, but a consensus reached by countless front-line family education practitioners through hard work.

Last week at a family education salon in the community, I met a stay-at-home mother who told me something I regretted very much. Her son had just entered the third grade. He scored 92 points in the last math test. He jumped home to announce the good news. She had already taken out the Ultraman reward that she had prepared for a long time. She glanced at the test paper and found that all the mistakes were calculation questions that she had practiced dozens of times. She became angry. She threw the test paper to the ground and yelled, "What did you use your brain for?" Such a simple question is all wrong, so all the questions I usually give you are in vain? ”

The child's eyes, which were originally as bright as stars, suddenly dimmed. He stood holding his clothes for a long time without saying anything. Later, for six months in a row, whenever test papers were handed out, he hid them at the bottom of his school bag and never took the initiative to show them to her again.

Don't tell me, most parents are probably familiar with this scenario. One moment, they are nodding to the notes of a parenting blogger, trying to be a "good parent with stable emotions." The next moment, they encounter a child who is tearing the house apart and their homework is a mess. All principles are thrown away in the heat of the moment.

Interestingly, regarding the role of parents’ emotional management in family education, the entry points of different academic schools are actually quite different. Scholars of the behaviorist school believe that parents' stable emotions are the core premise of "positive reinforcement" - if your reactions completely follow your emotions, if your child breaks the bowl when you are happy today and you say "It's okay, baby, it's fine", and if you scold your child for breaking a cup tomorrow when he is irritable at work overtime and you scold him for half an hour, the child will not be able to establish stable behavioral expectations. Over time, he will only become cautious and always rely on adults' faces to judge whether he is doing the right thing.

Researchers of the humanistic school pay more attention to the value of "emotion demonstration". They believe that children's way of dealing with emotions is never taught by adults, but is learned through observation: if you throw things and express your anger at family members when you encounter troubles, your children will naturally vent their anger by attacking next time they are wronged.； When you are angry, you will take the initiative to say, "I am not in a good mood right now. Let me calm down for ten minutes before talking to you." When your children encounter negative emotions, they will naturally find buffer space for themselves first and will not go to extremes in a hurry.

Of course, many parents have raised questions over the years: Are people who are naturally short-tempered not worthy of raising children? Do you have to suppress your emotions to pretend to be generous and suppress your internal injuries? In response to this question, the answer given by practical family education researchers in recent years is more down-to-earth: there is no need to pursue "zero negative emotions". Deliberately suppressed emotions will instead become an "invisible bomb" in the parent-child relationship, which is more lethal than a direct explosion.

I have met a high school sophomore girl who dropped out of school before. This is a typical example. Her parents are both teachers in a key middle school. They have to save face all their lives and never quarrel in front of her. Even when they are angry, they have to put on a smile. She later said during psychological consultation that every time she failed in an exam, she would see her mother smiling and saying, "It's okay, just try harder next time." But her fingertips would turn white, and she would deliberately smash the basin and dishes when she turned around to wash the dishes. She felt more uncomfortable than being beaten. She always felt that she was a burden on the family. In the end, the more she thought about it, the more anxious she became, and she simply did not dare to go to school.

I have been through similar traps in the past two years. I always felt that I had to maintain the image of a "perfect mother" in front of my children. I would hold back my anger until the last time I opened the limited-edition lipstick and my child took it and painted a "rainbow" all over the wall. At that time, my blood rushed to the top of my head and curse words came to my lips. Suddenly I remembered the "emotional suspension method" I had learned before. I quickly raised my hand and said to him, "Mom is very angry now. She has to stand on the balcony for three minutes. Don't come to me yet."

Three minutes later, most of my anger was gone, so I went back and asked him why he wanted to draw on the wall. He raised his little face with a colored pen and said, "I want to draw a rainbow wall for my mother. My mother is very tired from going to work every day, so she is happy when she sees a rainbow." Later, the two of us squatted on the ground and wiped the wall for half an hour. He was sweating profusely from wiping, and suddenly he looked up and said to me, "Mom, it's so hard to wipe the wall. I will never draw on the wall again." You see, if I hadn't held back and scolded him right away, he would have been so frightened that he would have cried, not realizing that his behavior would cause trouble to others, and I would have spent several days repairing his grievances.

To put it bluntly, emotional management is not a moral kidnapping for parents. In essence, it is to put a safety patch on the child's psychology. Every time you express stable and candid emotions, you are putting a small patch on the child's psychological system. When he encounters setbacks such as failing in exams, having conflicts with friends, and being criticized by leaders, these patches will work. He will not collapse all at once. He knows that negative emotions are normal, knows how to find buffer space for himself, and knows that he can handle his feelings well without looking at other people's faces.

In fact, family education has never been about teaching children how to get full marks every time and how to live like a "perfect child" in the eyes of others. It is about teaching them not to panic when they do something wrong, to be able to express themselves when they are sad, and not to hurt others casually when they are angry. The main premise of all this is that we, as parents, must first learn to get along well with our own emotions.