How to protect children’s mental health

The core of protecting children's mental health is never to wait for children to show extreme signs of self-injury or boredom before intervening, but to provide children with a "cushion cushion" to catch their emotions in daily interactions. This is currently a consensus reached by front-line child psychologists.

But now everyone’s understanding of this matter is really divided. Many elders and even young parents feel that “children don’t have anything to worry about. It’s enough to feed and clothe them to go to school.” There are also a group of anxious parents who go to the other extreme. If their children occasionally lose their temper and refuse to go to school, they rush to see a counselor or a psychiatrist for fear that their children will develop psychological problems. Both approaches can easily turn small problems into big conflicts.

I encountered an example like this when I was on duty at a community psychological service station last week. Xiaoyu, who was in third grade, was approached by his parents several times by his head teacher, saying that he could not sit still in class and always fought with his classmates. The parents took him to a private institution for evaluation, and he was almost labeled as having ADHD and had to undergo sensory training. In the end, they talked for almost an hour. Let’s understand that Xiaoyu’s parents have been getting divorced in the past six months, and they always excuse each other and refuse to pick him up from school. He deliberately causes trouble at school, just to let his parents show up at school together, even if they scold him together. You see, the problem is with the child. It is obviously the emotional pressure in the family that cannot be dealt with, and it all falls on the little child.

This kind of misunderstanding is really too common. Many people are always accustomed to attribute their children's abnormal emotions to "naughty" or "ignorant", or directly label them as mental illnesses. They forget to squat down and ask their children if they have encountered any difficulties recently. Nowadays, most primary and secondary schools are equipped with full-time and part-time psychology teachers. However, many psychology teachers in many schools either work multiple jobs and lead the main course, or spend most of their energy on filling out reports and doing screenings. Very few of them can really take the time to sit down and chat with their children. Many school management even think that "psychological counseling is a waste of study time", and even psychology classes must make way for Chinese, Mathematics and English. If this perception is not reversed, children's emotional outlets in school will basically be blocked.

In fact, the psychology of a child is like a sapling that has just sprouted. If you wait for it to grow crookedly and then break it, it will not only hurt but also break easily. It will be more effective to loosen the soil and water it more. I once went to a primary school in a suburban county. They placed locked "Emotional Tree Hole" boxes at the corners of each floor. Teachers were not allowed to open them. The senior psychology committee members who had undergone simple training sorted them out once a week, and reported the trivial questions that everyone complained about, such as "My mother always compares me with my cousin", "PE classes are always occupied and no one cares", "My deskmate always grabs my eraser and the teacher doesn't care". Classification of questions, some feedback to the school to adjust the curriculum, some compiled into anonymous cases for discussion at parent-teacher meetings, without naming names, just saying that many children have encountered this problem recently, and everyone can go home and ask their children if they have the same troubles. It is only half a semester, and the number of children fighting and being tired of studying in the school has been reduced by almost a third. The effect is more effective than holding ten large-scale psychological lectures.

After all, protecting children's mental health is really not a particularly sophisticated matter, nor does it require expensive intervention. It's just that adults should stop looking at the child from their own perspective, squat down more often, stand at his height and see the world in his eyes. If you can catch his little emotions that seem "inexplicable" to you, you have already done 80% of the job.