Children, parents do not want you to repay the favor, but hope that you know how to be grateful.
Qian Zhongshu once described Yang Dai in one sentence:
"It is the only combination of the three incompatible: wife, lover, and friend."
The love of this pair of literary couples not only has the romance of peach blossoms and crescent moons, but also integrates the tacit understanding and perseverance of the heart.
The husband and wife's cultivation of their daughter Qian Yu is also known as a model of humanistic education.
Qian Yi inherited the talent of her parents, became a professor in the English Department of Beijing Normal University, pioneered the English "stylistics", and was quite accomplished in the professional field.
When Qian Yuan was a child, she often said: "My father and I are the most brothers, we are my mother's two naughty children, my father is not worthy of being my brother, only worthy of being a younger brother." ”
When she grows up, even if she is busy at work, Qian Yu will always rush home, sew pajamas for her sleeping mother, and peel sugar paper for her sugar-loving father.
Yang Dai, Qian Zhongshu, daughter Qian Zhen
The Book of Verses says:
"Give birth to me, mother bows to me, caresses me, nurtures me, takes care of me, and goes in and out of my belly." To repay the virtue, Hao Tian is reckless. ”
The greatest blessing of a family is not that the children who have been raised have a job, but that the children who have a job of being grateful.
01
The sorrow of Chinese parents: giving everything but not being able to raise grateful children.
Douban has a discussion group, a name that makes all parents feel frightened: parents are a scourge.
Some of them complain about their parents' poor support for themselves, and some of them feel that their parents are too poor to enter the upper class.
The resentment of the parents in the words, others see it and feel deeply chilled.
This is the sadness of Chinese parents: they have given all their efforts, but they have cultivated white-eyed wolves who do not understand gratitude.
How many families are parents who grit their teeth to shoulder the burden of life and support a greenhouse garden for their children that cannot be soaked by rain and wind.
And the child is accustomed to unilateral acceptance and taking, enjoying everything with peace of mind, and does not know how to cherish it at all.
Why?
In fact, the answer is very simple:
Many parents often only know how to care about their children's food and clothing, only care about their children's achievements, but forget to teach their children to be grateful.
For a family, parents are the root of the child is the fruit.
There are problems with the fruit, most of them are also problematic with the roots, and the children do not understand gratitude, and often there is a problem with family education.
02
Children who do not know how to be grateful are useless no matter how good they are.
If a child does not know how to be grateful, even if it is excellent in other aspects, it will not be beneficial to the family or society.
Remember the news that the international student killed his mother?
A mother, with painstaking efforts to provide for her children to study, went abroad to study.
The boy studied abroad for five years, often in and out of high-end places, and the annual tuition and living expenses alone needed almost 400,000 yuan, while the mother could only earn more than 7,000 yuan a month.
When his mother could no longer provide for the high cost of living, the boy actually stabbed his mother with a knife at the airport.
Later, in an interview with reporters, the boy calmly said that he thought his mother was lying to him and was unwilling to give him money to spend, so he was very angry and suddenly broke out.
The mother's unrestricted love and connivance actually breed hatred and resentment.
Children who do not know gratitude, no matter how much their parents pay for him, are the norm in his eyes, and once the normality in his eyes is broken, he will feel resentful.
Shakespeare wrote in his King Lear:
The ungrateful children are more painful than the sharp teeth of a poisonous snake.
The saddest thing in the world is that while parents are waiting for their children to be grateful, their children are waiting for their parents to apologize.
03
Affection doesn't need to be reciprocated, but it's worth being thankful for.
There is an old Chinese saying called "raising children to prevent old age".
But most parents, love for their children is instinctive, not seeking reciprocation.
Teach children to be grateful, but also just to let them know that they are enjoying the efforts of others, and their lives are happy because of the efforts of others.
Nietzsche said, "Gratitude is the health of the soul." ”
Lin Zexu also said: "If you have a bad heart, feng shui is useless; your parents are disrespectful and it is useless to worship god." ”
Family affection is not one-sided love and care, but more importantly, the warmth and comfort of both parties.
Gratitude is not a debt burden, but a driving force for people to move upwards.
When Qian Yan was ten years old, she returned to the Qian family's old residence for the first time.
At that time, the children of the Qian family, large and small, all gathered in the courtyard to play, only Qian Yu quietly stood by her grandfather's side and read a book.
The girl leaned against her grandfather's bed, tucking the quilt for him and turning the pages the next.
Children who know how to be grateful will care and love the people around them from the bottom of their hearts, and do their best to do what they can for their families.
His sensible and strong, optimistic and grateful will become a lifetime of wealth.
04
Gratitude comes from love; love is fulfillment, but also letting go.
Teaching children to be grateful is easier said than done.
The most important thing about gratitude is love.
In the old concept, "hitting is scolding is love", and punishing a word is actually a kind of rudeness and laziness.
Later, "encouragement and education" prevailed, everything came according to the child's wishes, and everything was meticulous in food, clothing, shelter and transportation, but the feelings of the child were perfunctory, and it was far from being called love.
In educating children, the methods of Yang Dai and Qian Zhongshu are worth learning from.
1. Husband and wife love, moisturizing things silently.
Qian Zhongshu and Yang Dai are deeply in love, raising eyebrows, and their daughter will take care of people from an early age under the influence of the two.
Whenever Qian Zhongshu went on a business trip to other places, he never asked Yang Dai to take good care of his daughter.
He only told Ah Yan to take good care of his mother, and Qian Yu always agreed very responsibly.
Whenever her father took leave due to illness, Qian Yu ran to comfort her father:
"Tille Tiller ears, purring, our dad can't be scared."
If the couple lives with their children as the center, they will be blindly spoiled and spoiled;
If the relationship between husband and wife is bad, the family atmosphere is tense, and the child's psychology will also have a shadow.
On the contrary, if the husband and wife love each other, the child will also learn the appearance of adults, learn to love and accompany, and naturally know how to be grateful.
2. Lead by example and be subtle.
Yang Dai once said: "The role of example is very important, and it is better to pass on words than to teach by example." ”
Their education of their daughters is never instructed, but subtly infiltrated.
The two loved to read, and when the daughter saw it, she read it the same way and gradually entered the Tao.
Qian Zhongshu has never been able to display the majesty of his father, he is even more naughty than his daughter.
Every day when he slept, he would hide his daughter's toys, mirrors, and stationery in the bed, set traps, and let her take the bait. The two enjoyed it.
With children, you don't have to be too harsh.
Let the child play and learn, the child has no diaphragm in his heart, and while growing up happily, his heart is full of warmth.
Of course, it will warmly give back to parents, and the world.
3. Let go appropriately and learn to be independent.
When Qian Yan was a child, she didn't understand English, so she went to ask her father.
Qian Zhongshu did not teach her, but encouraged her to look it up on her own, sometimes looking through 5 or 6 English dictionaries in order to look up an interpretation.
The husband and wife never did much to cover, and they also developed Qian Yan's independent personality.
Yang Dai once wrote in the essay collection "The Two of Us":
"When Ah Yan grows up, she will take care of me, like a sister; she will accompany me, like a sister; she will take care of me, like a mother."
Now many parents carry the weight forward, deliberately leaving their children with a quiet time.
But responsibility and gratitude do not happen overnight.
Only by learning to let go properly can parents let their children learn to fly on their own.
05
The greatest blessing for a family is to raise grateful children.
In the twilight of 1997, Qian Yu wrote a poem to her mother Yang Dai:
The cows don't eat grass and want to repay their mothers.
May the flowers be forgotten, so as to thank niangsheng.
At this time, Qian Yu was seriously ill and could no longer eat, and she died not long after the poem was written.
What she left behind in the world was love and gratitude for her parents.
Bi Shumin said:
"Parents of the world, if you love your children, you must let him start to love you and the people around you when you can."
This is not the selfishness of adults, but the vision of thinking about the child's life. ”
The so-called teaching children to "be grateful" is not to tell children how difficult it is for parents to tell them how difficult it is, and to ask children to be filial piety when they grow up.
It is to teach children the ability to love, to learn to love themselves, to learn to love their parents, and to learn to love life.
Tell your child that life is not easy.
Tell your child that your parents don't want you to repay your kindness, but they want you to know how to be grateful.
This is not the selfishness of parents, but the vision of the child's future life.
May all parents in the world be treated gently by their children.