A 13-year-old girl from Ningxia committed suicide in order to save her parents 100,000 yuan in school selection fees
"Young students are promoted to young students","young students are promoted to junior high school", and "college entrance examination". The only battlefield left for this year's children's battle for further education is the "high school entrance examination" on Sunday. In order to allow their children to occupy a more favorable position in the future competition, the barriers to further education have become a knot for parents. A new term,"educational anxiety", is turning the most beautiful maternal love in the world, and anxious mothers are becoming more and more fierce. (So, Sun Yunxiao's new book is titled "Children, Don't Panic", which was recently published by China Children's Publishing House.)
Some time ago, a family tragedy shocked society. A 13-year-old boy died at the hands of his mother in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. The reason was simply because he couldn't get up on a weekend morning. What is even more amazing is that this murdering mother worked in college and loved her children very much. What made a mother kill her own son?
"It is the anxiety caused by long-term educational pressure, and the anger caused by hatred for iron failure. When a certain situation that she does not want to see occurs repeatedly, the accumulation of negative emotions leads to excessive psychology and behavior becomes out of control, so tragedy occurs." Han Meiling, a national second-level psychological counselor and an expert in adolescent psychological crisis intervention, analyzed this to reporters. She said that although this case is extreme, similar anxieties are quite common in many families and should be vigilant. "Every year, hundreds of children with psychological crises come to psychological counseling centers for help. Most of them are junior high school and high school students. Many of them are depressed, autistic, tired of school, addicted to the Internet, and even commit suicide many times. By analyzing the causes of their psychological problems, most of them can find the root cause from their parents. It is because they don't want their children to lose at the 'starting line', but the children fall ill at the' starting line'." According to surveys, the number of young people developing various psychological disorders is increasing year by year. A large part of them is caused by parental anxiety."Educational anxiety" is destroying more and more families.
website self-rated anxiety symptoms
Causing panic among many parents
The mother's child-killing case has been a hot topic for parents on some education websites in recent days."Are you anxious?" It has even become a greeting from parents and netizens. The reporter saw on the "e-degree" education website that there are popular posts listing parents "anxiety symptoms" and providing everyone with self-assessment of their anxiety level.
Tests said that if more than 4 of these symptoms occur, anxiety has occurred, and more than 8 symptoms will be serious and should be vigilant. Parents who followed the post expressed panic: "In our unit, almost all the mothers in the room are anxious!" "After a while, I understood and stopped forcing my children. Everyone took their children to play and reduced extracurricular classes. After a while, they were stimulated by something or a certain phenomenon, and they signed up for extracurricular classes one after another, always doing this repeatedly..." Many parents said that there were varying degrees of anxiety symptoms, which had seriously affected their lives.
Among parents with anxiety symptoms, beating and scolding their children has become the norm. In a big city like Beijing, this situation may seem incomprehensible to many highly educated parents, but this is the reality. A mathematics teacher from a key primary school told reporters that she found a girl in the class who always had blue and purple arms. When she asked, she realized that it was her mother who twisted it."Just because she was teaching the questions to the children at home and repeated them several times, the children couldn't understand it, and the parents got started when they were anxious. In fact, this girl has always studied well in the class and can always be ranked in the top few." It is more common for boys to be beaten. The mothers of many primary school boys contacted by the reporter said that they had beaten their children to varying degrees."I often can't hold down the anger because of a small matter. After beating, I feel very regretful and distressed. But I can't help it next time." In many families, parent-child war is imminent, and anxiety is like a toxic gas everywhere.
Where does this anxiety come from? Well-known education scholar Yang Dongping said that this state originated from a kind of "group panic.""Parents in China, especially in cities, are spreading a kind of group panic. They are always afraid that their children will fall behind others and lose at the starting line."
Competition at the starting line
Tired parents drive children crazy
"Since the beginning of spring this year, I have received four cases of students who wanted to die due to too much study pressure. Two primary school students, one junior high school student, and one high school student." Han Meiling, an expert on adolescent psychological crisis intervention, told reporters in a heavy tone,"The pressure mainly comes from two aspects, schools and parents. The families of these children usually have prominent parent-child conflicts." She said that in the mouth of these children, the image of parents is "complaining endlessly","nagging endlessly","picky","beating and scolding", etc."Many children have obvious test anxiety disorders, some children have hallucinations, depression and autism, and have suicidal tendencies; some have symptoms of psychological regression, like a child in their early twenties, and some have severe schizophrenia."
It is understood that the number of children with psychological problems who come to the Meiling Psychological Counseling Center for help is increasing year by year. Many of the things these children say make people sound very sad."Once I held a parent-child psychological salon, I sat among a group of children and asked them what was bothering them.' I am under so much pressure!' An 8-year-old child blurted out. 'I don't feel that living is interesting...' This sentence came from a third-grade elementary school student. 'I'm afraid that I won't be able to get into a key junior high school. I don't know what to do?' A sixth-grade child continued.' If you don't get into a prestigious university, it will be difficult to find a good job in the future. If I can't find a good job, won't my life be over?' The senior high school boy who said this already had typical pre-test anxiety disorder."
"By listening to children say such things, you can know what parents say to them. A large part of children's anxiety is instilled by parents. Think about today's children who start to read before the age of one, recite Tang poetry, learn foreign languages, and learn arithmetic as soon as they can speak, start to learn musical instruments at the age of two or three, and start to learn primary school courses at the age of four or five... This is the life trajectory that most children today are experiencing. Parents are always worried that their children will lose at the starting line, thinking that if they lose at the starting line, their children's life will be over. They start to become anxious and nervous when the children are not able to start. When the children have a little ability, they even more They try hard to fill the children, but in the end, the children couldn't bear it and collapsed." Han Meiling analyzed to reporters.
According to data released by the Ministry of Health, at least 30 million children and adolescents under the age of 17 in my country suffer from various emotional disorders and behavioral problems. Among them, the prevalence of mental disorders among primary and secondary school students is 21.6% to 32%, mainly ADHD, Internet addiction, etc., while 16% to 25.4% of college students have symptoms such as anxiety, phobia, neurasthenia, depression, and obsessive-compulsion. Mental disorders have become the main reason why college students drop out of school. At the same time, anxiety and depression tend to become younger and younger.
"Mental violence"
in the name of love
conducted
Sun Yunxiao (Weibo), deputy director of the China Youth Research Center and education expert, has been paying attention to the mental health problems of young people. He told reporters that he still cannot forget a 13-year-old Ningxia girl who hanged herself on the day of the primary school graduation ceremony. Her parents were devastated when they saw the child's suicide note. The child wrote: "Dad, Mom, I am a poor student. I didn't do well in the exam. I can't go to key middle schools. If I die, I can save you 100,000 yuan."
What's going on with this 100,000 yuan? It turned out that this 100,000 yuan was the school selection fee for going to a key middle school. Parents once discussed these matters with their neighbors and said that a child they knew was not admitted to a key middle school because he spent money. It would cost about 100,000 yuan in six years, which was said to be very expensive. When the child heard this, the burden became heavier and heavier. In the end, he could not bear the panic and chose to commit suicide. "What is childhood panic? Childhood panic is a kind of anxiety caused by children who are facing tremendous pressure and cannot understand and bear it. And this panic is becoming more and more serious among underage children." Sun Yunxiao said.
Such stories can be seen everywhere at the Meiling Psychological Counseling Center. In the past six months, 15-year-old Xiao Cheng has often experienced chest tightness, heartache, tightness in his throat, difficulty breathing, and suffocation. He has been to the hospital for examination many times, and all physiological indicators are normal. After chatting with Xiao Cheng, the psychological counselor discovered that his physical discomfort came from an unsolved knot. This sunny and handsome boy has always been a good boy in the eyes of parents and teachers. In June last year, he took the junior high school entrance examination. He felt that his usual grades were good and he was confident of getting into key high schools. However, the actual score after the exam differed from his estimated score by more than 20 points, so that he failed in the key high schools. For this reason, his parents paid a considerable amount of school selection fees for him to attend a key high school. "I can't figure out why there is such a big gap between the exam scores and the usual grades. I'm really useless to ask my parents to pay so much more money for no reason! I feel sorry for them, let down their expectations, and put such a big family burden on my family. I really want to study hard, but the more I rush, the more I fail to learn well. My grades don't rise, but drop. I feel uneasy all day, as if something big is coming..."Xiao Cheng suffered greatly psychological trauma, which led to various physiological reactions.
"Many parents destroy their children in the name of love." Han Meiling said that they gave money, time and energy for their children, and even sacrificed themselves completely. However, the more they gave, the more anxious they became. Even if they did not use direct violence like the mother who killed her son, cold violence and spiritual violence existed in more families. "Parents often tell their children that they have not even watched a movie since they had him. They are so worried about him that they are sick from exhaustion. They even have to tell them which illness they have is caused by him. Or, if it weren't for taking care of him, they would have made great progress in their career..." These gradually became a heavy burden on their children. When the last straw finally crushed the child,"Parents successfully destroyed the child with their own hands."
■ Every night, I can't help but sit next to my child, afraid that he or she will waste time;
■ I feel fidgety after dinner, always wanting to go in to see if my child is serious about doing his homework, but I am afraid of disturbing him;
■ I often can't help but ask my child over and over again how many scores they scored;
■ I am worried all day long, and the days are like years. I can't help but lose my temper when I hear that my child has not done well in the exam;
■ Sometimes he becomes stricter than usual, speaks extreme, sometimes he becomes more cordial than usual, and even he feels uncomfortable;
■ When I hear that my child is going to take a test, I feel fidgety and feel more pressured than my child, but I have to pretend like nothing has happened;
■ Don't dare to speak loudly or walk in large strides, or look at the child in his eyes for fear of alarming him;
■ Worried that the child is too tired, worried that they are not enough nutrition, and feeling uneasy, afraid that the child will get sick on the day of the exam;
■ No matter what you do, your heart is always on your child's side. You are restless, palpitating and flustered, hoping that your child will finish the exam soon;
■ Unexplained depression, pain, and sadness, so sad that you don't want to do anything, and you feel like you can't hold on."