Ms. Zhang’s son is in the second grade of junior high school this year. His grades are not good and his performance in other aspects is mediocre. He is greedy for pleasure. Although he also feels that watching TV and playing games will lead to boredom, he can’t resist the temptation. He often shows confusion about the future and lacks the vigor and vitality that his peers should have. Once, the teacher asked him to write a composition "My Ideal", but he didn't know how to write it. For this reason, Ms. Zhang was very distressed. Ideal is the goal on the road of life. Scientific and lofty life ideals reveal the correct goal and direction of life's struggle. It is the driving force for people's continuous progress and the guiding light of life. Someone once said this: If you don’t know the end of your sailing journey, then the wind in any direction is a headwind to you. So, as parents, how can we scientifically help our children establish lofty ideals without being considered “outdated” by them?
Listen to the child’s inner voice
The child is in the second grade of junior high school, but he doesn’t know what his ideal is. This may seem a bit unbelievable, but this phenomenon exists in society. This is not just a matter of children's personal growth but an important social issue. Many parents are troubled by their children's confusion about the future. The fundamental reason is that parents do not truly understand their children. People without ideals have no goals and no lasting motivation to catch up. Many parents only want their children to follow their own wishes in life and completely ignore their children's own ideas. This is very undesirable. I believe that in order for parents to help their children establish ideals, they must first truly understand their children. Parents should have more emotional communication with their children, listen to their children's inner voices, understand what their children are really interested in, and respect their children's wishes and choices as much as possible.
Observe carefully and make the best use of the situation
As a parent, you must have an understanding of your child’s ideal characteristics. First, the goal is clear. Many children will use the people they respect around them or promoted by the media as their ideals. Second, it is related to interests, hobbies, and expertise. For example, those who like singing hope to be singers in the future, those who like dancing hope to be dancers, those who like painting hope to become painters, and those who like playing football hope to become Maradona or Ronaldo in the future. Third, instability. Children's minds are not mature enough when they are young, so the goals they pursue are often not stable enough. Today they like singing, tomorrow they like dancing, today they like painting, tomorrow they like football... As the saying goes, "Young people have many ambitions, and their ideals are changeable."
Parents should understand their children’s actual situation and encourage and support their children’s interests and hobbies as long as they are legitimate. And we must be good at taking advantage of the situation, and consciously stimulate the spark of the child's ideals based on the child's interests, hobbies and specialties. When interests, hobbies and ambitions are consistent, a child’s lifelong goal—ideal—will be formed. Here, parents should not follow others' opinions and fall into the misunderstanding of having everything done by one person and pushing their children to that path whenever something is hot. In addition, because children are not deeply involved in the world, on the one hand they long for beautiful ideals, on the other hand they underestimate the difficulties they may encounter in the process of realizing their ideals, and they have insufficient understanding of the efforts and prices they have to pay to realize their ideals. , the mental preparation is insufficient. (Inspirational quotes www.lz13.cn) Parents should provide good guidance on this point. First of all, parents should tell their children that ideals are not utopias, but can only be realized through hard work and perseverance in learning. Parents should tell their children that efforts to realize their ideals should be down-to-earth, starting from now and starting from small things. People who are unwilling to do small things will hardly achieve big things. Secondly, we must tell our children that the realization of their ideals will not be smooth sailing, and they will encounter various unexpected difficulties and setbacks. Only by facing difficulties and setbacks with a perseverance spirit can we overcome difficulties with tenacious perseverance. Only when you overcome obstacles can you reach your ideal destination. Success often lies in the effort of persisting a little longer.
As parents, you should carefully observe your children's interests in daily life, take advantage of the situation, sow ideal seeds for your children in a timely manner, and subdivide your children's ideal goals into several small goals. Every time a child reaches a small goal or makes a little progress every day, parents should encourage them in time. When making personal plans, you must respect your children's choices and obtain their consent. You cannot blindly leave it to your children based on your own preferences. Parents and children work together to draw up a big plan, and then make it specific to the year, quarter, or even week. Based on reality, choose study items with clear priorities and arrange study time reasonably.
Parents can refer to the teacher's teaching plan methods to help their children gradually complete the entire plan. Education that is too hasty or too slow will destroy the child's normal psychological development. Only step by step can you achieve your ideals. When children encounter setbacks, parents should provide timely help to help their children overcome difficulties on the way forward. In this way, even if the child does not achieve his ideal goal in the end, he will still experience the joy of striving for his ideal, and his life will be rich and colorful as a result.
Guide children to read more biographies of famous people
In order to help children establish their ideals, parents can tell their children more stories about celebrities’ success, guide their children to read more biographies of famous people, and write down their experiences , allowing children to absorb the spiritual power of celebrities, gradually establish their own ideals, and strive for them.
Educator Mr. Tao Xingzhi once said: "Give you a high mountain to climb by yourself, and all you have to do is persevere." Yes, always have a firm goal and work hard persistently. , success will not be too far away.
Helping children find the true meaning of life
Children in the second grade of junior high school have not yet fully established their worldview, outlook on life, and values. It is not easy to clearly explain their ideals. I once read a report that there was a survey about children's ideals abroad. A little girl said she wanted to have a group of children when she grew up, and a little boy said he wanted to have a farm. In our opinion, these two children really have no lofty ideals. However, the little girl’s parents told her that to be a good mother, she should start learning from now on and how to set an example for her children; the little boy’s parents took him to the farm to familiarize himself with the crops on the farm and understand their origins. Characteristics... This seemingly ordinary but profound guidance is worthy of our reference and study.
I believe that for parents, the primary issue is not to help their children establish ideals, but to help their children understand society and experience life. When children have a deeper understanding of society and a richer experience of life, they will naturally have their own ideals and life goals. When a child has independent thinking, he will discover what he really wants and fight for it. For parents, helping their children find the true meaning of life is to teach them how to establish ideals. As for the child’s specific ideal, I believe the child will give us a surprise.
First of all, parents must cultivate their children's ability to live independently, and allow their children to participate in more educational activities and public welfare activities of social groups, so that their children can adapt to social life. Appropriate financial constraints can stimulate children's will to strive for the unattainable goal, thereby establishing the ideal of working hard and achieving their goals unswervingly.
Secondly, correctly guide children to cultivate their interest in learning and develop good living and study habits. The great educator Piaget once said: All intellectual work depends on interest. Therefore, in terms of learning, we cannot use the authority of parents to force children to learn this or that. You must know that things that are forced to learn will not be retained in the heart, and it will obviously not achieve the desired effect. In this case, we should induce children step by step and cultivate their interest in learning. Good study and living habits are the core of ultimate success. It is true that children need discipline and guidance, but if they are disciplined and guided all the time and in everything, they are unlikely to learn self-control and self-direction. For this reason, parents need to use some tips to cultivate their children's self-learning habits and self-management living habits.
Secondly, parents "tailor-make" personal plans and methods for completing the plans for their children based on their children's personal circumstances.
Finally, while helping their children establish their ideals, parents should not blindly pursue results and ignore the process. Children should be cultivated morally, intellectually, physically and aesthetically.
Thousands of miles in mind, one step at a time
The problem reported by Ms. Zhang is indeed a big problem, and it is also the most worrying problem for people born in the 80s and 90s. If you don’t have ideals, you will lose your direction in life, and you will be very lazy, unmotivated, and even world-weary when it comes to study, life, and work.
So, in a modern society with such diverse values, what efforts should parents make to help their children establish lofty ideals?
I think it first depends on the parents’ expectations for their children, as well as the parents’ own ideal state. The former will affect the way you raise your children, and the latter will directly become the way your children are. Relevant surveys and my personal experience show that many parents’ current expectations for their children are short-sighted and one-sided and limited to “getting into a good university.”
They only have academic expectations for their children, but lack personality expectations. They always say "we don't ask you to do anything, you just need to study well", which will inevitably plant a time bomb for the child's development.
Some parents like to eat, drink, have fun, and live in chaos. As a result, their children will easily become the mirror of such parents. As a parent, if you want your children to have lofty ideals, you should be a person with ideals and dare to strive. This is the simplest truth. At the same time, we must adjust our expectations for children to cultivate their good personality first. Xu Teli said: "The role of education is to cultivate a certain personality according to a certain social form and serve a certain society."
Secondly, parents need to understand the ideal development of children of different ages. The characteristics are different. For children in early childhood, career ideals cannot yet be discussed, but character development must begin. My tutoring experience is that I firmly believe that "even young children have ambitions." Cultivating children's ambition level is by no means specific about what kind of family they want to be when they grow up, but it means making them full of self-confidence and believing that they can do what children of the same age can do, and they can do it better than others. good. The earlier this kind of education starts, the better.
The ideals of primary school students are often erratic, numerous and unstable, and change greatly over time. This is because their ideals are too easily affected by external objective things. Therefore, in addition to regulating their words and deeds, parents should also appropriately control what enters their minds and hearts to help them learn to make choices when faced with complex real-life environments.
Although the ideals of middle school students have gradually stabilized, the ideals of the independent generation are often full of fantasy but lack scientific basis. In particular, actions lag far behind their thoughts. Influenced by their parents' thoughts, their ideals are more focused on the brain and less on the body. Affordable features.
After parents understand the basic characteristics of children’s ideal development, they can seize favorable opportunities for children to generate positive emotions, such as entering a new school, the beginning of a new semester, menarche or the first nocturnal emission, getting good grades in the exam, and being in school. After receiving a compliment, watching a good book or a good movie or television. Parents should communicate with their children in a timely manner to strengthen them in transforming positive feelings into goal ideals. The cultivation of personality and ideals requires the influence of culture. Times are changing with each passing day. To provide children with cultural literacy, we must pay attention to the characteristics of the times. What needs to be reminded is that you should not always point out the child's shortcomings with a critical eye, which will dampen the child's determination to start from scratch and change their image. At the same time, no matter what age group children are, we cannot ignore the children's emotional education for the motherland, guide them to care about the development of the country, know about major positive events, enhance their pride in being Chinese, and ensure the atmosphere and height of their ideals. Very important. Nowadays, there are many children who have no ideals and even feel that life is boring. One of the main reasons is that too many dark sides of society have entered their minds and hearts, making them with poor critical thinking skills feel that there is no hope. Of course, this is also a challenge to the quality of parents.
Third, provide children with practical opportunities to get closer to their ideals. Many children have lofty ideals, such as "I want to be a great scientist", "I want to be a world-class singer", etc., but when asked how to achieve it, they are often silent, and the most they say is "study hard." No matter how beautiful the ideal is, if it is not put into action, it is just a dream.
I mentioned before that personality cultivation is closely related to ideals. It should be implemented in the details of life. For example, although the family is rich, it also imposes restrictions on the living conditions of the children; everything the children should do according to their age, Generally do not do everything; when the child encounters difficulties and setbacks, encourage him and teach him specific methods; often talk about some cases of very successful life due to good personality, and set a good example for the child (preferably in the near future, with the child It is related to a certain interest, such as the story of Aunt Susan who just won the runner-up of Britain's Got Talent.) etc. Whether the ideal is realized or not depends on the process of pursuing it. In the field of psychology, when people talk about ideals, they often mention the word "dream", which refers to ideas generated through human conscious activities. In the process of pursuing the realization of ideals, each "dream" is a goal. Parents should know how to guide their children to set systematic goals for a period of time. When one goal is achieved, encourage them to work hard for the next goal. Of course, in the process of pursuit, we must also help children revise their goals in a timely manner according to their actual development.
Finally, I would like to quote the famous saying of Napoleon Hill, a successful American psychologist: "The most amazing genetic factor in human beings is the power to dream." There are very few children who truly have no dreams.
For example, there are many children who are worse off than Ms. Zhang's son. However, when I asked them to do the "Lifeline" exercise, I found that they also have dreams for their future, such as "being powerful" and "being a big person". Boss", "It's best to win the 5 million jackpot", etc. Unfortunately, their dreams are just the expansion of their desire for pleasure or the expression of ignorance. In view of this, I suspect that Ms. Zhang’s son is not without ideals. It may be because the communication between her and him is short-circuited.
Family ideal education is a very important but very complicated matter. It is important to grasp it early. After adolescence, parents' authority will be challenged by their children, and their influence will be relatively weakened. As long as parents, society, and schools work together to ensure that every child takes every "today" seriously, they will be able to get close to or realize their ideals, and their lives will be happy.