Source: The 4th "Mingde Zhihe" Haidian District Family Education Forum
Speaker: Su Yanjie, professor and doctoral supervisor of School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Peking University
Write in front:
On May 10, 2024, the fourth "Mingde Zhihe" Haidian District Family Education Forum, sponsored by Beijing Haidian District Women's Federation and undertaken by New Oriental Education Technology Group Family Education Research and Guidance Center, was successfully held in the Zhongguancun Exhibition Center Conference Center.
Su Yanjie, professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences of Peking University, made a keynote speech entitled "Guarding the Mental Health of Children: A Plan for Developmental Psychology" at the meeting. The following is the transcript of the speech.
Speech Record:
My research field is developmental psychology. Developmental psychology studies the characteristics and laws of development in different stages of development from the gestation of life to the end of life, and what development tasks to complete. These perspectives may help us understand issues related to children's mental health.
I used to teach in Yuanpei College of Peking University. Yuanpei College of Peking University has a group of wonderful children. But we originally set up this college without the concept of elite class, to help children give them a buffer, so that they can understand what they want to learn. As a pilot field for reform of Peking University, Yuanpei College tries first and then extends to the whole school when appropriate. But many children will think that if I get such a high score, I will go to Yuanpei College. Because of the rich resources, he can choose majors in the whole school.
Many children like psychology, but they hesitate when choosing a major. He said, "Teacher, I really like psychology, but I can't choose psychology." I asked why? The student said, "My mother said, don't make any mistakes in learning psychology. She felt that there was a problem in learning psychology. Psychology was related to mental health problems, or whenever there was something about psychology, it seemed that I was abnormal and I had a problem." Many teachers also felt that there was a problem in chatting with me.
In fact, psychology and medicine are very similar. They are all processes. The advanced concept should be from prevention, health care, diagnosis, treatment to rehabilitation. According to the current Mental Health Law, people who study psychology have no right to prescribe and cannot make diagnosis and treatment. If you really have mental illness, we will not take care of it. What should we do more? Prevention and health care. If you are really ill, you should go to the psychiatrist first, and then you will need us when you recover. Psychology is the whole process of preventing disease. Developmental psychology focuses on the development process, what will happen, and how to consider it.
I entered Peking University in 1983 and have studied psychology for 41 years. In it, I realized that we can act intelligently according to the various methods that psychology tells us, instead of learning psychology. But with psychological concepts and knowledge, we will have the ability to reflect. When we encounter something, even if it is not ideal, we will also find ways to reduce or eliminate the negative impact.
Why is learning development psychology so important? The reason is that developmental psychology is the underlying logic of mental health. It is difficult to understand if you look at a thing only in isolation.
Look at this picture. If I ask you, is this zebra a white stripe on a black background or a black stripe on a white background? If it is an adult zebra, it can be understood in any way. But if we dig from the essence, what's the matter? Zebra is black at first. Once its melanin expression is blocked, a leucorrhea will appear. In this way, we know that zebras are white stripes on a black background. So we should understand from the essence and look at problems from the perspective of development.
What is our child like now? What was he like as a child? How did he become what he is now? This is what we study in developmental psychology. I hope that from this perspective, it can help us understand many things. When it comes to development, we should not only talk about age, but also about the background of these children's lives.
When we were young, we all played together, met and talked. But now children are not. They have a lot of social media. They communicate in a virtual space. Even if they meet, they may play with their mobile phones and communicate with others through WeChat and SMS instead of face-to-face communication. Last year we all discussed chatGPT, and this year we discussed Sora. The output of this video will bring a series of changes. In today's society, even animals are swiping their mobile phones. It is impossible for your children not to touch or isolate these things. So technology will definitely affect our lives and our children.
When we were young, we heard many myths and legends and thought they were very beautiful. But if I tell the children about the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl now, I think they may question why the Cowherd has no Weaver Girl to tell him? The cowherd took away the clothes of the weaving girl, which is not allowed. Today's children think differently than we did then. In the face of today's children, we should consider their characteristics in order to better do our family education, school education and social education.
The characteristics of each age group of children are particularly rich. Today, we take the adolescent stage as an example to illustrate.
There are really many things about teenagers. I will talk about it from three aspects.
Physical and mental asynchrony, adolescence and adolescence
I think children of this age live a very tight life and tangle with many things. Psychology develops from three aspects: First, physical strength It is the material basis, including changes in our brain, motor ability, sensory perception, sleep wake cycle, and so on. Second, cognition , including learning memory, thinking language ability, creativity, intelligence. Third, personality and sociality It includes a series of personality development such as self, emotion, relationship, morality, etc.
The body and mind are out of sync, which is particularly prominent in teenagers.
When we talk about teenagers, we think of adolescence, which often becomes synonymous with teenagers. What we need to distinguish is that adolescence is a physiological concept, which is the process of sexual maturity of individual children from infertility to fertility. Physiological maturity is completed in 4-6 years. In our time, everyone started to develop at the age of 12-13, and matured at the age of 17-18. At that time, psychological adolescence and adolescence overlapped. But now our children's puberty is ahead of schedule. This is related to our nutrition, for example, excess nutrition, obesity leads to premature; There are other factors. The artificial light of computers, mobile phones, etc. will affect the secretion of melatonin in the sleep wake cycle, which would have inhibited your precocious rhythm.
According to a data in 2015, the average age at which Chinese girls begin puberty is 9.7 years old, while boys generally start puberty 1-2 years later, 11.3 years old. This year, the alumni of the May 4th Movement returned to school. One of our alumni from the Pediatric Research Institute said that they had moved forward, about half a year old. Therefore, we can see that our physical development is moving forward, but the child's psychological maturity has been delayed. This is an unbalanced performance. It is very unbalanced. The physical maturity is early, but the psychological maturity is late, or it needs more time.
This is a very natural thing, but it is not simple. Adolescent development is a major scientific issue. In 2005, Science magazine published 125 major scientific questions, and the 73rd question was "What triggered adolescence". Although everyone pays close attention to it and there are many studies, there is no answer. In 2017, our Chinese scientists made some sorting and published a series of interpretations on the Science Bulletin.
We have seen a lot of research, including genetics, physiology, psychology, and various factors affecting the development time and process. Why do fat content, obesity and melatonin affect development? Because they will affect this chemical, called kisspeptin, which is especially like the first domino we play. Once it is affected, the development process begins. According to heredity, everyone's heredity has a fixed maturity time. We just mentioned earlier, which means that under the influence of environmental factors, the development is earlier than the genetic prediction.
Adolescence is a physiological concept, which affects psychology. According to the schedule of children's maturity, girls develop earlier, and those girls who mature earlier will face more problems and challenges. Everyone is like a child. She has already begun to develop. At this time, she will be at a loss and don't know how to deal with it. In addition, such changes in appearance will attract the attention of senior boys, who may have some confession and goodwill with her, and the girl will be even more alarmed. therefore Early mature girls face more challenges than early mature boys 。
conversely, Late mature boys have more problems 。 Because this large group was originally late, and it was later than others. We usually see that those small boys in the class are usually followers. We are talking about regularity. In such a group, he will be affected. This is what we say. Physiological phenomena can affect psychology.
Parents and teachers must understand your child, whether the mature schedule is earlier or later than that of other students, and what problems he may face. We should help them. Teenager research shows that there is no way to prevent adolescence from moving forward. Moving forward is actually a double-edged sword. Our brain plasticity has two important time points, one is two or three years before birth, and the other is adolescence. Plasticity means that you can change it. For example, the children in the first two years develop rapidly and can input a lot of things. It has been fixed there for some time, and it is not easy to affect it. When it comes to puberty, it opens again. If it opens early, children's ignorant state is vulnerable to adverse factors, so try not to let him go any further. It turns out that 12-13 years old is good at dealing with the physiological changes we encounter. Children aged 7-8 years old will be very panic, and it is hard for everyone to imagine what will happen if they move forward. This is why we pay attention to adolescent development.
Adolescence is a process of sexual maturity, which causes a series of psychological changes. Some children do not like bathing when they are young, and they will pay attention to themselves at the beginning of adolescence, which may be different. One of our teachers said that his child had to take a bath before sports because he had to go out to meet people. This process brings about a series of psychological changes, such as self-concept, which is originally multidimensional. When I was young, I would say who I am, whether I am a boy or a girl, which is particularly consistent. Later, it gradually differentiated. Who are you and who am I? What is your situation? In learning, how about math, Chinese, sports? Which ability is better
However, our educational evaluation standard is too single. It seems that only academic performance is the only standard for children, and only those who have learned well take advantage in such a system. It is difficult for people with other specialties. Haidian District is a special volume. Because parents in Haidian District are excellent, children will feel too stressed. There was a child whose parents were top performers. The child's achievements in all aspects were passable, but not as good as his parents. So his parents could not understand why your achievements were not like mine. But this child likes to make snacks, which his parents can't accept. They think how can we cultivate a cook? During the epidemic, their views changed. The children changed their ways every day to cook delicious food for them, which moved their parents very much. Once your standards change, your evaluation of your child will also change, and then you will know and accept him, which is very important.
Adolescence is a physiological concept, while adolescence is a stage of psychological development. The defining age of adolescence is changing, and the development schedule of adolescence is also changing. When will it mature? There are several standards.
First, is the physiological development a mature process. In addition to the development of the reproductive system, there are other systems. For example, in our brain, brain science tells us that the prefrontal lobe of management intelligence is not mature until about 25-26 years old.
Second, psychological indicators. You ask current college students and graduate students, "Do you think you are an adult?" Few people think they are an adult. A survey in 2015 found that only 40% of people aged 18-25 think they are adults, which is the stage of college and graduate students; Only when they are over 26 years old, 70% of them think they are adults. So as a mature standard, we need the consensus of most people.
Third, we should independently assume social and family responsibilities. We can see which family expects college students to independently assume social and family responsibilities? The age of teenagers has changed. In 2018, the Lancet sub journal specially published an article to study how to calculate the age of teenagers. From 10 to 25 years old, it is a process of ten years' development. Psychological maturity can only be completed after ten years. It covers most of the time points of education and upbringing.
Reasonable sooner or later: matching demand capability
1. Youth development stage, full of imbalance and conflict
The first is emotion and reason. The matching between children's needs and abilities is unbalanced. The development of neuroscience has enabled us to unlock many secrets of the brain. For example, we now know that the purple part is called the limbic system, which has something to do with emotion. This system has matured since the age of 15, so if children have something to do with their emotions, it has something to do with it, whether passion or depression. But the prefrontal lobe of management intelligence cannot be completed until the age of 25. It is responsible for executive function, inhibition control, flexible transformation, etc., so that you can control yourself to think rationally.
Brain development is very uneven. I often give an example, just like a car, which first puts on the accelerator. The emotion is like our accelerator. Once we step on the accelerator, we go out, but can't stop when encountering problems. We can understand why children are easy to take risks, and why you think they are unreasonable when you quarrel with them. Because his feelings and reasons are inconsistent, sooner or later, the brake system should be gradually improved.
There is a lot of imbalance when we finish such work, What tasks have children accomplished in the past ten years? There is a lot of research. To sum up, four special core tasks need to be completed.
First, safety. When children are teenagers, they can see their parents and teachers. When holidays come, they will say no to swimming or skating. A child doesn't know about danger, which is why we talked about imbalance. He wanted to explore a lot of things, but he didn't know how to avoid danger. Only after life safety can there be psychological development. Self safety is very important. Let children know that I want to survive.
Second, relationship. The simplest parent-child relationship is when a child is born; In kindergartens and schools, there is a relationship between students and teachers; A little more sexual development will lead to intimacy. All relationships are changing. How to deal with these social relationships? Teenager relationships are the most complex, hierarchical and popular, including the bullying problem we face in school. Teenagers should learn to deal with many relationship problems in a complex social environment.
Third, sex. Because of sexual development, it is necessary to consider matters related to sex. It does not mean that children will enter the stage of childbearing when they become sexually mature, but how to deal with sexual intercourse. For example, which child does he like? How to respond if you accept others' confession? This is not a simple matter.
At the beginning of last year, a very influential incident happened in the whole country. A girl died of anorexia. Why does this girl have anorexia? It turns out that she likes a boy who likes a girl who is thinner than her, so she thinks that being thin is a particularly important factor. She needs to lose her body shape and then develop eating disorders. Boys also encounter such problems.
Do adults think why? Children at that age will take this matter very seriously, because this will completely deny themselves. So we say that how to deal with matters related to sex is not a simple physical matter, but how to know oneself psychologically, how to have self-esteem, how to have self-efficacy and protection.
Fourth, self. The fourth task is more comprehensive. Children should have various abilities and be able to independently assume social and family responsibilities. It is independent to be self reliant. It is really difficult for children to complete it, and they may not be able to complete it in the past ten years. Some experts suggest pushing the age of maturity from 25 to 29. Why should the criminal law be revised? A child of a certain age should bear certain responsibilities because he is too powerful and may hurt others. However, his control and ability are not up to the standard. He is unbalanced and prone to various situations. Children at our age are particularly difficult, so they need parents to help them.
This imbalance, this conflict, is the conflict between emotion and reason, the imbalance of nutrition and physical attention. According to psychology, when a child comes to middle school, his pure logical reasoning will develop very well, but he is not dialectical. He does not know that everything in society is not absolute except black and white and gray areas. This is very difficult for a child. He didn't develop such an ability until he went to college. We say that he pursues autonomy, but there may be some violations, such as smoking is cool, he wants to hit people, and he feels very sexy. However, in many cultures, people under the age of 21 are not allowed to drink. This age group is prone to conflict and rebellion. What he saw was absolute reasoning. He didn't know that adults would compromise when dealing with things, so he would think what you said to me and what you did were totally different. He will challenge you, which is a problem for children.
2. Letting go and giving support are also a pair of conflicts that need to be balanced
Our adults are also very uncomfortable with this kind of pinch. Let's talk about it. He wants to make his own decisions when he is old; No matter how bad he is, he may not listen to you. This is a special test of the wisdom of being a parent. In fact, we should master the degree, like a good salesman, too enthusiastic will scare people away. A good salesperson will look at him from a distance and let him explore on his own. When he wants to buy something, he will look up and ask about the price. As a parent, you should pay attention to him, but don't make decisions for him in everything. Parents can help children make schedules and deal with some things. In fact, it is necessary for children to see how to give, instead of making them feel passive.
Another is children's reasoning ability. If you give him enough time, he can do as well as you. But in an emergency or in the presence of a small partner, he tends to make mistakes.
You can obtain a driver's license at the age of 16 in foreign countries, but they have regulations that between the ages of 16 and 18, you must be accompanied by an older person when driving. If there are parents or elders in the car, the child will drive very well. But if he is a small partner, he is prone to risky behavior. If the situation is different, his performance will be different.
We need to give support and help to children, but how to give it in the process? We must consider whether this method is suitable for your own children.
Challenge and Response: Developmental Psychology Program
To help and support children, we must meet their needs in these three aspects, which are basic human needs.
The first is autonomy You can give your child a choice, but the decision is made by him himself. Autonomous satisfaction is very important for teenagers.
The second is competence Let him feel that he can do it.
The third is the sense of belonging Let him feel love.
Meet these three needs, so that children can accept your help.
We have just said a lot of problems, but after careful analysis, there are very few serious psychological problems before the age of 10, basically in the youth section. There are many conflicts in all aspects, and if not handled well, a series of problems may arise. The family education that we are going to discuss today must be multi linked, called family school community education. It is too simple to say that children's problems are all family problems. In fact, it contains many reasons. It needs to help children from the outside to the inside, and help them solve problems in essence, so that our children can have fewer factors that make them deviate in the development process.
We should have a development orientation, not a problem orientation. It is not to let children live through adolescence, but to let them live better. We must let our children live well, not just talk about depression, anxiety and suicide. Otherwise, our starting point is problematic. This is our development orientation.
I hope you can understand that children today are much more difficult than us. So, how do we do it? Specifically, there are three points.
First, we must pay attention to children's exercise and sleep. The child will be fine after playing and sleeping well.
Second, communication and understanding in relationship. Teenagers must learn to deal with various relationships. Adults, too, must understand children when dealing with various social relations.
This is a pun often used by psychology. What do you see? A young woman may also be an old lady. This is a particularly objective physical stimulus, and you may see different appearances. In society, it is natural for you and I to have different ideas about a complex social phenomenon or a thing, so you can figure it out from the perspective of the other party. When a child quarrels with you, you say: "I gave birth to this child, I gave birth to this child, and he is like this." If you accept it, you will not be so angry. The same is true of children. When they learn to get along with others, they don't ask others to be like me.
Third, psychological immunity, the construction of a complete development resource system. From an individual perspective, there are many characteristics that help us to resist some challenges, such as empathy, self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism, psychological consistency, self-discipline and self-control, as well as the support from the environment, our parents' emotional support and authoritative education, good peer relations in the school and the school's curriculum design, physical environment. If children like it, Even if they encounter some minor problems, they can pass away quickly and grow up smoothly.
Just like the body's immune system, it builds a psychological immune system to help our children develop and grow better. That's what I'm telling you today. Thank you!
