I'm a successful person in the workplace. Before returning home, I worked in top consulting firms for many years and went to foreign companies for many years as an executive. I have always thought that I am a master of efficient problem solving in work and life. However, when it comes to raising children, I often jump...
Until recently, I was exposed to some brain science research results in adolescent education, plus a few personal examples, which made me realize that if some workplace skills are simply copied to raising children, we are not only at risk of losing the best memories of children's growth, but also children will close the door to communication with us.
I cried twice last week
The first time was because the husband sorted out the old hard disk and sorted out the photos and videos of her daughter when she was a child. From birth, watching and watching me cry.
Why is my memory empty, as if I were looking at someone else's child? One of the short videos, my daughter was about five years old at the time, I was sitting on the couch, my daughter was standing behind me doing all kinds of hugging movements, and I was on the phone with a serious and stiff face.
The second time was after dinner. At the dinner table, I thought about my daughter's various requirements for applying for college, and for a while I was blindfolded by lard and began to ask her if she had done this or that. The daughter who was having a headache at the dinner table to prepare for the SAT II exam suddenly collapsed and began to cry.
I realized that these words I said only put pressure on the child and did not help at all. Obviously, a poor child who consciously volunteered to brush up on the problem after dinner, but also listened to me complain that she did not do a good job in many aspects. For a moment, he was ashamed and embarrassed, and he also cried.
After crying twice, I realized that I was sick and that it was a chronic disease caused by working in a foreign company for many years. I was trained as a robot. Although it left the production line four years ago, the problems of robots in the past two decades are still stubborn. Logical thinking, calm and rational, isn't this all typical AI characteristics?
When my robot became a mother, the problem arose. The divine skills we have practiced in our work are used in the education of children, but it makes me more and more distant from the original intention of education.
After years of work being results-oriented and pursuing maximum efficiency, what are the adverse consequences of children's education?
The efficiency of "amnesia"
When I first returned to China to work in a consulting company, every night at 12 o'clock the office was brightly lit, and colleagues at all levels were feverishly brainstorming, drawing Chart and writing PPT.
I was deeply shocked, are these Iron Men? The workload and working hours of Chinese compatriots are far more than those of other countries. In this environment, if you want to survive, you can only desperately improve your work efficiency. Therefore, a lot of the company's training is to teach you how to be more productive.
Each training has a personality test, and colleagues who are tested to be good at planning, logic, and awareness of the overall situation are secretly happy; colleagues who are tested to be easy to lose and emotionally heavy on logic are distressed - they are considered to be prone to thinking too much about people in the tense work, so they drop the chain of tasks and want to change.
At the end of the training, there are always one or two high-level female leaders, preferably with husbands and children, who come out to introduce their advanced experience in how to prioritize, break each one, and not drop a ball in a busy schedule.
This set of efficiency skills trained in the workplace has made me an "envied model of workplace and family balance" in many work scenarios, but it is used in the process of raising children, but I regret it.
The ultimate goal of efficiency masters, multitasking, is actually the opposite of the happy and healthy mental state (flow state) advocated by modern brain science and positive psychology.
A flow state is a state in which the sense of space and time disappears while doing something with full concentration and total enjoyment. While multitasking makes it impossible for us to concentrate and experience the thrill of immersing people in creation, it can lead to memory loss and even depression.
For me, the immediate consequence of multitasking is the permanent loss of precious memories of the child's growth during this period.
But isn't being a stay-at-home mother to preserve memories? Not necessarily. The more results-oriented and efficient a mother is, the more likely she is to fall into this kind of cycle.
Are there any countermeasures? The simple way to do this is not to enter multitasking mode when we are facing our children, and not to ask the children what is happening while replying to the email.
What is more difficult to do is how to quiet down your own galloping brain when you are with your children. There are many ways to try, but the effect varies from person to person. Someone who uses meditation, someone who practices yoga, someone who runs, all of them can train their brains. The consciously trained brain is easier to quiet down, easier to focus on time with children, and will not lose memory.
For children, the consequences of becoming an efficiency master are even more terrible. Although humans no longer grow up when they reach around 16 years old, the brain develops until the age of 22. As efficiency-driven parents, there is a high risk of interfering with and impairing their child's normal brain development.
If we take a moment to study brain science, we know that daze is the default state of the brain, and a healthy brain needs to return to the default state from time to time to recharge. If you deprive your child of his or her time in a daze with cram school, you are interfering with the normal development of their brain.
Quick advice, is it a miracle or a monster?
In the workplace, how to maintain their competitiveness, there is a miracle is to be ready to create value at all times, consultants often use the word is "add value" (add value).
Students who have studied strategy consulting have probably heard of the famous McKinsey Seven-Step Problem Solving Method. This divine skill is also known as a universal algorithm that can efficiently solve various problems in work and life. People who have mastered this divine skill are particularly fond of work and life and can't help but give advice to others. At the highest level, it is also possible to make assumptions and predictions in advance in the dialogue and quickly calculate the answer.
Recently, in the martial arts novel of Jin Yong hero, in the Book of Dragon Slaughter in the Heavenly Slaughter, the Golden Retriever King practiced the Seven Wounded Fist in order to get revenge, and there was a side effect to practicing this divine skill, and people with insufficient internal strength would hurt their internal organs at the same time.
People with insufficient concentration also have side effects when practicing "Suggesting Divine Exercises". The first time I discovered this problem was in a course of learning communication. The teacher said that I had a "suggestion monster" living in my head. Every time I listen to someone else, the algorithm monster in my head will jump out, "Quick count, quick count, what is the solution?" Before the other party could finish speaking, I was eager to interrupt the other person, "Don't you understand such a simple question, you should do this..."
The teacher said that you can't give advice, you can only ask questions to let the other party find the answer by himself. Well, then I'll try to ask questions, and it turns out that my approach has become a negative case for the whole class. I asked the other person, "Did you consider that you could do this...?" I wrapped my advice as a problem, actually suggesting to the other person, "Look, you can't do it, you have to listen to me."
Why can't we feed our own advice directly to others? Isn't that the most efficient approach? Judging from the findings of psychology and brain science, this is the least effective approach. Because only through their own thinking, find and recognize the answer, can everyone cross the step of change in action, otherwise it is only the left ear in the right ear out.
When parents live in this "suggestion monster" in their heads, not only can not motivate children to make positive changes, but will let children directly close the communication channels with parents. The best way to counter this magic skill, the best thing for children is not to talk to you, so that your suggestion monsters can't jump out.
The second time I cried, I realized that I was almost 50 years old, and after learning so much kung fu, I still couldn't control this monster.
Back to the topic of how to let children open their mouths, a training and communication teacher gave me a few tricks, interested parents can try whether it is effective (and then tell everyone a secret, manage the suggestion monsters in the brain, ask more and say less, but also make your other half love you more)
1. Repeat the second half of each sentence your child says. For example, a child says, "Our English teacher is really annoying." You say, "Annoying? Then the child said, "The teacher doesn't say anything in class, just let us read the book ourselves." You say, "You read the book yourself?" And so on, give it a try.
2. Ask three times in a row, "Is there anything else?" For example, a child says, "Our English teacher is really annoying." You say, "Yes, is there anything else?" The child may say, "The teacher doesn't say anything in class, just let us read the book by ourselves." You say, "Really, is there anything else?" And so on.
In the face of children, emotional intelligence drops to zero
In real life, parents may use their brains at work to analyze the meaning behind the leaders and customers, but when facing their children, they do not have the will and patience to listen. To put it mildly, it automatically becomes a robot without emotional intelligence.
I am very poisoned in this regard. I remember that my daughter once had a bad test score, and I pulled her along to analyze the reasons. I only focused on whether she reflected on where the problem was, and what I didn't pay attention to was that her emotions were already low because of her unsatisfactory grades, but instead mistakenly thought that she didn't want to answer, or that her tone was not positive, that she didn't take the test seriously.
As you can imagine, for a while after the conversation, the relationship between my daughter and I fell into a freezing point. The change in behavior I was expecting not only did not happen, but a door to communication was closed to me again.
Later, I happened to listen to a lecture on "how to help students with autism or ADHD learn social skills" during my daughter's school education festival, which touched me a lot.
Children with autism or ADHD, due to unbalanced brain development, can only understand the superficial meaning of the conversation, cannot decipher the deep communication information of others, lack social skills, and are difficult to establish friendships, which ultimately affects academic performance.
The lecture's expert shared how she taught such students to learn to listen effectively, using the simple phrase, "Listen with your eyes, not with your ears." That is, while listening, by observing other people's expressions, tones, and movements, to understand the real intentions of the other party.
This reminds me of the highest state of listening, which is also mentioned in communication training in the workplace, not only paying attention to the words, but also the tone, tone, speed, energy level and emotions behind the words. In this way, it is possible to understand the real intentions of the other party's subconscious, form empathy, and promote changes in the other party's actions.
In the face of children, we need to turn all the antennas on in order to win the trust and friendship of children.
And children grow with high quality
If we look closely at the above three symptoms, they are actually all the same. If you can't quiet your mind and focus on one thing, you can't listen to everything, and you can't control the suggestive monsters in your head. The results-oriented fast culture in the workplace is just the opposite of the step-by-step and self-driving force needed by education.
Whether you're in the workplace or at home full-time, here are three things you can do:
1, control the thousands of things in the brain, and do one thing with the child 100% immersion.
2. When talking to your child, try not to post opinions and only ask questions
3. Let go of other things in your hand and look into the eyes of your child and listen to them
Challenges and perceptions of the world have a different height, not only can become a model for children's future struggles, but also can pass on these valuable workplace experiences to children.
Like I said earlier, even stay-at-home moms may not be able to listen and talk attentively to their children. We need to always remind ourselves that we do not need to "manage" our children efficiently, but to grow together with our children with "high quality".
Welcome to the attention of Clumsy in Shanghai
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