--Title
My parents basically helped raise both of my children. When my daughter Jingyi was around two years old, we had to hire two nannies for her in six months because my parents were busy with something. Other than that, my parents were with me from the time I got pregnant until the kids learned to walk and talk.
At that time, I was working all the time, except for the statutory maternity leave, and I only had one day off a week, Sunday, and sometimes I had to work for more than an hour at night. Although at that time also understand the parents to bring up the child's hard work, but that only stays in the "know" level, when I myself alone to bring up the children for more than half a year, I really understand the sweet and sour, bitter and salty, but also deeper my gratitude to the parents.
This "way" must be understood
There is a word called "intergenerational pro", there is a kind of education called "intergenerational education", with what kind of mentality to understand these two words, directly determines the quality of parents to help bring up children. The quality of a parent's help in bringing up a child is determined by the mentality with which the two terms are understood.
Type in the words "intergenerational education" at Amazon.com, and 17 search results will pop up, which means there are 17 books dedicated to teaching people how to deal with intergenerational education, and their authors are both foreign and Chinese. If you ask a few working people who are married or have children, nine times out of ten, there are elderly people at home helping to bring up their children. Otherwise, how can people cope with overtime work, business trips and late work due to various reasons? Therefore, this is a general social topic. To understand this is not to popularize any social common sense, but to make it clear to all of us that if we let our parents help bring up our children, we have a lot of experience to learn from, a lot of cases to refer to, and a lot of people who have come before us to ask for advice, so we don't have to go up and down the stairs alone as a family, making a mess of things.
But experience or case study is just a "technique" of "intergenerational education". When you consider letting your parents help you with your child, ask yourself, "Why should my parents help me with my child? "This is the core of the whole issue. This is the core of the whole issue.
Parents have worked hard to bring us up, and before we had a chance to see the world, meet friends, and enjoy our leisure time, we were pulled into a new long march of parenting, and once again lived the life of a "24-hour-a-day, year-round, stay-awake" person. Is it their duty or do they deserve it? Is it their responsibility or our selfishness? Is it their choice or our shameless kidnapping?
The essence of pain is anger at my own incompetence. Although I have mentally cursed my incompetence 10,000 times, for the 10,000th time, I still longed for my parents to help me with my children. Having experienced the fear of babysitting and the chaos of working and raising children by myself, I felt most comfortable with my parents' help. I'm sure it's the most shameful choice I've ever made for my parents.
Whenever you have a disagreement with your parents or in-laws about parenting, when you want to change some of your parents' or in-laws' practices because of your children, or when your parents or in-laws violate some of the parenting rules that you have set up, just think, "Why do they have to help me with my children?
Gratitude is the "way" that keeps us on track when facing intergenerational parenting issues.
Believe in your children
When a mother's father was raising her children, he liked to make jokes that would scare the children. For example, your mom won't come back this time when she goes out. Your mom doesn't want you. If you go away, don't come back. And so on and so forth.
On one occasion, the mother was in a bad mood and was a bit annoyed that Grandpa was teasing the child like that again, so as soon as Grandpa's words were out of her mouth, she told the child:
Your Grandpa is always like that, you don't have to listen to him.
The child replied:
I know, that's how he talks, that's how he always plays with me.
The reason the child said this is because this mom has been consistent in spending a certain amount of quality time with her child every day. And because of that quality time, the child learned early on that Mommy loves me. Mommy will always be there and will not abandon me. Therefore, he will not believe any jokes made by others.
You see, a thousand trees are not as good as this root of mom. If our children are being helped by our parents, then we ourselves can avoid many problems by "spending quality time with our children every day".
Believe in yourself
My parents did the same thing that Grandpa did above when they were helping me with my kids.
In those days, I had to work during the day and read stories to my daughter at night, and my parents kept my son sleeping with them after he was weaned so that I could get a good night's sleep. Every night after dinner, I probably had close to two hours to play with my two children. After those two hours, I take my daughter to wash up and go to bed, and my son is tucked back into his parents' room.
Son often misses his mom and wants to find her. The only way the parents could do this was to scare him in a colorful way, no going out of the room oh, there are weirdos (monsters) outside. No matter how much the son cried, the parents either locked the door, distracted him with the TV, or described the monsters in a more exaggerated way. Even when they occasionally opened the door, the son saw a dark living room instead of his gentle mom, as if there were really monsters in that darkness.
After my parents stopped helping me with the kids, for a long time my son was afraid of the dark, had to sleep with the light on, and when he saw the light on the balcony flicker, he jumped into my arms and cried out, "Mom, there are monsters. The most important thing to remember is that you have to be able to get the best out of your life, and you have to be able to get the best out of your life.
Whenever my son was afraid of monsters, I hugged him tightly and carried him to the place where he thought there were monsters, and stayed there with him for a few minutes while talking until he was sure: "There are no monsters here. .
It was probably less than three months before my son became less sensitive to monsters in the dark.
So every mom doesn't have to be so nervous about problems in intergenerational education. As long as you face the problems with love, you can use the magical power of your mother's love to solve them with the right methods, even if they are already formed.
Later, I read some parenting books that dealt with the "parent scaring the child" approach, and although I knew it was too late, I was relieved. Because even if I bring up my own children, even if I don't use the "scare the child" method of discipline, I can't guarantee that I won't have any other problems when I bring up my children.
What's more, as a parent, I am the first one responsible for my child's education. No matter what problems my child has, the first thing I should ask is: what responsibility do I have for this? Instead of pointing the finger at the parents who sacrificed themselves to bring up our children for us right from the start.
So whenever I see some parenting experts talking about the pros and cons of intergenerational education, I simply ignore them. Rather than alarmistically analyzing the theoretical dangers, I prefer to take action to make intergenerational education warmer, more effective, and more loving.
A Few Suggestions That Might Work
I'm not a parenting expert, and I have no intention of guiding anyone else's life. I just want to help parents who are going through this period with some of my summaries so that it is possible for everyone to raise a happy child more harmoniously with their parents***. So please take my advice with a grain of salt and take it with your own family (it's kind of like the medical instructions that say "follow your doctor's instructions and stop using it if you develop an allergy")
1. Reasonable filler
When my parents were helping me with my kids, in order to get them to watch less TV, I had some picture books and books with pictures for them. prepared some picture books and small cards with pictures. Though the kids would tear the books and break the cards, the fun and rewards were certainly not comparable to those of a TV program. I don't expect parents to read the books to their children, as long as they want to read them, or just flip through them, that's enough.
When faced with parents who are helping with their children, we have to arrange everything for them as we would for our own children, because if we don't, they are likely to fill their children's worlds with chatter, TV, square dancing, and so on, probably in their own lives.
2. Make rules
The younger the child, the more rules are needed to help him develop good habits and behavior. Of course, since the main enforcers of rules are the child's grandparents or grandparents, such rules should be simple, easy to understand and easy to enforce.
When my parents helped me bring up my children, I had three rules: first, children can't watch more than two episodes of TV at a time (I've written a special article on how to deal with children's TV watching, which you can see by replying to the number 16 in the public number), second, children's outdoor exercise time is not less than two hours a day, and third, children are not allowed to hit people, including grandparents, and pretending to hit is not allowed. And it's a rule I only give my kids to hear and ask them to try to do, never asking parents to try to enforce it.
It's a great honor to have a mother who doesn't know a single word - her parenting philosophy is simple, but practical and efficient: she believes that children should get more sunshine, so in addition to napping during the day, basically all the children are playing outside, even if it's cloudy, and she believes that more exposure to natural environments and cold air can strengthen the immune system, and always take the children outside. Even on cloudy days, she believes that more exposure to the natural environment and cold air can strengthen the immune system, and always takes the child out for a drive. I encourage my children to walk on their own when I take them grocery shopping, and my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter often walks back and forth with her on the two-kilometer road, while my child's stroller becomes a tool for pushing the groceries. So my second rule is just a bar in my mind, but when I'm on my own with my kids, it's sometimes hard to stick to that because of the weather.
3. Give your parents a full day off
Previously I had always thought of my day off as a day when I minimized their burdens and took away a child they could easily take a break. It wasn't until one time when my beloved and my mother took one child for vaccination, my father took one child to play in the neighborhood, and I was left alone in the house for the morning that the rare clarity and freedom suddenly made me realize how parents can be in a state of rest as long as there are children around.
Since then, whenever it's my day off, or I'm at home, I let both my kids be around me, and whether they fight or compete for favor, I let my parents enjoy a bit of free time - to go shopping or watch a TV show, or even if I don't do anything but just soak up the sun on the balcony.
4. Give your parents a salary
The salary referred to here is symbolic, money based on your own family's financial situation.
Maybe it's a cheesy way to do it, but it's also the most tangible, real way to show our appreciation and make our parents feel respected. Don't we ask them to help with the kids because babysitters are too expensive for us to afford and we want to save some money? Don't we ask them to help with the kids because the babysitter is not reassuring, we can't go to work without worrying, and we want to save some heartache? They have saved us so much heartache and money, isn't it right for us to pay them a little bit? Not to mention the respect and sense of accomplishment that this money brings them.
Though the reasoning goes like this, things have to be done euphemistically. You can say that it is to supplement their lives, you can say that it is to give them pocket money, you can say that it is to reward them for so many years of hard work to raise their own, so that they are no longer because they can not afford not to buy a pair of decent comfortable shoes, so that they are no longer wandering around the window for a long time do not dare to go to try on that only a few hundred dollars of the watch, so that they would like to eat some slightly more expensive dishes will not be difficult to do this will not be a waste of your hard-earned money. Just can't say it's a paycheck for them to bring up the kids. At least in my family, I don't think it's appropriate to say that.
Junmei said
Parents do not have the responsibility or obligation to bring up our children, and if we have to impose this responsibility on them, please bring along "gratitude" and "method".
Sidenote:
Today's article is just about one of the situations in which parents help with the children, that is, when the children are around and the grandparents help with the children. But there are at least three other situations in life: when the kids are around and the grandparents help; when the kids are not around and the grandparents help; and when the kids are not around and the grandparents help.
Each of these different situations has different considerations. And it's not possible to cover all of these issues in one article. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that, but I'm sure I'm going to be able to do that, and I'm sure I'm going to be able to do that.
The so-called success is to have the time to accompany the child to grow up together; the greater success is to accompany the child to see the world together, discuss the world, think about the world, depict the world, integrate into the world, and then with the TA to create a new world of their own.