每个孩子都需要被看见的感觉——这里有两种方法可以做到这一点
心理学家丹尼尔·j·西格尔和社会工作者蒂娜·佩恩·布赖森说，培养孩子成功的一个方法是:每天花一些时间去真正了解他们是什么样的人，而不是你希望他们成为什么样的人。
就幸福、学业成功、领导能力和有意义的人际关系而言，衡量一个孩子成长的最佳科学指标之一，就是看他们一生中是否至少有一个成年人始终陪伴着他们。精神病学家丹尼尔·j·西格尔(Daniel J. Siegel)和社会工作者蒂娜·佩恩·布莱森(Tina Payne Bryson)表示，出席并不需要花费很多时间和精力。相反，它只需要以确保孩子感到“安全”、“看得见”、“安心”和“放心”的方式行事。在他们的新书《露面的力量》的节选中，西格尔和布莱森分享了两种能让孩子感到被关注的策略。
你有多擅长看见你的孩子?我们的意思是真正看到他们是谁——感知他们，理解他们，并及时有效地回应他们。
科学和经验都表明，当我们出现在孩子面前，给他们机会让他们被看到，他们可以学习如何清晰和诚实地看待自己。当我们以一种直接而真实的方式了解我们的孩子时，他们也会以这种方式了解自己。看到我们的孩子意味着我们需要学习如何感知,理解,和应对他们的存在。
花一点时间，在你的脑海里，快进到未来，当你的孩子，现在已经成年了，回首往事，谈论他是否觉得被你看见了。也许他是在和配偶、朋友或心理医生说话，他们会对这些人极其诚实，也许他手里拿着一杯咖啡，在说:“我妈妈，她并不完美，但我知道她爱我就像我爱她一样。”或者，“我爸爸总是站在我这边，即使我遇到了麻烦。”
他会这么说吗?或者他会说他的父母总是想让他成为一个不像他那样的人，不花时间去理解他，或者想让他以一种不真实的方式行事，以便在家庭中扮演一个特殊的角色?
我们忽视孩子最糟糕的方式之一就是忽视他们的感受。对于一个蹒跚学步的孩子，这可能意味着在他摔倒后哭泣时告诉他，“不要哭。”你没有受伤。或者，大一点的孩子可能会对参加舞蹈课的第一次会议感到焦虑。如果你说:“别担心，没有理由紧张。”是的，我们想让我们的孩子放心，在他们身边，让他们知道他们会没事的。但这与否认他们的感受，并明确告诉他们不要相信自己的情绪是截然不同的。所以，我们只想看到它们。注意他们的经历，然后陪伴他们。我们可能会说，“你会没事的”或者“很多人第一天都会紧张。”我会一直在那里，直到你感觉舒服为止。”
当他们感觉到你，看到你时，他们会有一种归属感，就像你真正了解你的孩子一样。她还将获得一种被人尊重的“我”和“我们”的感觉——比她的单独自我更大的东西，但这并不需要妥协或失去她作为一个独特个体的感觉。这就是如何看到你的孩子为未来的关系奠定基础，他们可以成为一个个体，也是关系的一部分。
更重要的是，我们交流的同理心更有可能在我们的孩子身上创造出平静。通常情况下，当我们表达爱和支持时，不仅孩子的生活更好，我们作为父母的生活也会更好。
让孩子感到被关注的策略一:让好奇心引导你更深入地探索
要想让我们的孩子感到被关注，第一步就是观察他们——花点时间观察他们的行为，抛弃先入之见，思考到底发生了什么。但要真正看到它们，往往需要的不仅仅是注意那些一眼就能看到的东西。就像成年人一样，孩子们经常会有更多的事情隐藏在表面之下，而不是他们所表现出来的。作为父母，我们的部分责任是更深入地去探索。
实际上，这意味着你要愿意超越你对孩子的最初设想和理解。这意味着要保持一种好奇的态度，而不是立即做出判断。
好奇心是关键。这是一个有爱心的父母可以使用的最重要的工具之一。当你蹒跚学步的孩子玩“让我们把那盘意大利面从高脚椅上推下去”的游戏时，你的第一反应可能是沮丧。如果你认为他是在按你的按钮，你会做出相应的反应。但如果你看着他的脸，注意到他是多么着迷于地板和墙壁上的飞溅，你可能会有不同的感觉和反应。
认知科学家艾莉森·戈普尼克(Alison Gopnik)、安德鲁·梅尔佐夫(Andrew Meltzoff)和帕特里夏·库尔(Patricia Kuhl)曾写过《婴儿床里的科学家》(the scientist in the crib)一书，他们解释说，婴儿和幼儿的很大一部分行为是一种学习和探索的本能冲动。如果你能花点时间，停下来问问自己，“我想知道他为什么那样做?”“如果你把他看作一个年轻的研究人员，在他探索这个世界的过程中收集数据，你至少可以用心和耐心地回应他的行为，即使你清理了他的实验。
我们鼓励父母去追寻孩子行为背后的“为什么”。通过问“为什么我的孩子要那样做?”与其马上给一个行为贴上“坏行为”的标签，我们更有可能对行为本身做出反应。有时候，这确实是一种需要解决的行为。我们相信孩子们绝对需要界限，我们的工作就是教他们什么是可以的，什么是不可以的。但有时，一个孩子的行为可能来自一个典型的发育场所，在这种情况下，它应该被这样回应。
其他行为也是如此。如果你的孩子在遇到大人的时候很安静，并且拒绝大声说话，那么她可能并没有拒绝表现得彬彬有礼;她可能感到害羞或焦虑。再说一次，这并不意味着你没有教会她社交技巧，或者鼓励她在不舒服的情况下学会说话。这只是意味着你想看到她现在的样子。这种行为背后的感受是什么?追问她为什么不愿说，并检查她不愿说的原因;然后你就可以更有目的、更有效地回应了。
帮助孩子感觉被关注的策略2:腾出时间和空间去观察和学习
很多时候，看到我们的孩子只是简单地在白天集中注意力，但也要创造机会，让你的孩子向你展示他们是谁。晚上是这样做的好时机。当一天结束的时候，当家里变得安静，身体感到疲惫，当干扰消失，防御下降，这让我们更倾向于谈论我们的想法和记忆，我们的恐惧和欲望。这适用于我们所有人，成年人和孩子。
所需要的是一些努力和计划在家庭时间表方面。孩子们需要充足的睡眠——我们怎么强调都不为过——所以理想状况下，你应该早点上床睡觉，为你的日常生活留出时间，再加上几分钟的聊天或安静的等待时间，让你的孩子在他们想说话的时候说话。他们可能会分享他们一天的细节，或者问一些问题，帮助你更全面地了解他们的世界——真实的还是想象的。
我们知道你们中的一些人在想什么:“我没有一个孩子愿意分享他们的想法和感受。“我们明白。“今天过得怎么样”这个问题的答案似乎不可避免地会导致可怕的“很好”。想象在孩子的就寝时间里增加一个聊天的时间，可能会产生这样一种不愉快的画面:你和孩子静静地躺在一起，等待着一些重要的事情被分享。
我们理解这种关切。记住，这个想法并不是每天晚上你都会听到一些惊天动地的启示或深刻的交流。这在成年人之间是不现实的，更不用说孩子了。更重要的是，这不是我们的目标。最终的目标是呈现给你的孩子——创造空间和时间来更好地了解他们，在更深的层次上理解他们，这样你就可以帮助他们成长为一个完整的人。
如果你的孩子不愿意分享他们的内心想法，那么你可能需要问一些更具体的问题，或者提出一些你们可以一起考虑的道德困境。你看到和了解你的孩子越多，这就会变得越容易。当然，有时沉默也是可以的。安静的在一起，简单的呼吸，可以是亲密的和连接的。所以，当时机不对的时候，不要感到有压力，不要强迫别人谈话。
我们知道这可能会让人困惑，试图决定什么时候说什么，是鼓励谈话还是让事情安静下来。但是，要想看到你的孩子——并帮助他们感受到被看到的感觉——最好的方法之一就是创造空间和时间，为这种愿景的实现创造机会。
摘自丹尼尔·j·西格尔和蒂娜·佩恩·布莱森的新书《露面的力量:父母的存在如何塑造我们的孩子，以及他们的大脑如何被连接》。版权所有©2020 Mind Your Brain, Inc.和Tina Payne Bryson, Inc.经企鹅兰登书屋有限责任公司旗下兰登书屋的授权使用，版权所有。未经出版者书面许可，不得转载或重印本节录的任何部分。
原文：
Every kid needs to feel seen — here are 2 ways you can do this
One way to set up a child for success: Take some time every day to really see them for who they are, not for who you want them to be, says psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel and social worker Tina Payne Bryson.
One of the very best scientific predictors for how any child turns out — in terms of happiness, academic success, leadership skills, and meaningful relationships — is whether at least one adult in their life consistently shows up for them. And showing up doesn’t take a lot of time or energy, according to psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel and social worker Tina Payne Bryson. Instead, it just requires acting in ways that ensure a child feels the Four S’s: Safe, Seen, Soothed and Secure. In this excerpt from their new book, The Power of Showing Up, Siegel and Bryson share two strategies that can make a child feel seen.
How good are you at seeing your kids? We mean really seeing them for who they are — perceiving them, making sense of them, and responding to them in timely and effective ways. This is how your child comes to experience the emotional sensation not only of belonging and of feeling felt, but also of being known.
Science suggests, and experience supports, that when we show up for our kids and give them the opportunity to be seen, they can learn how to see themselves with clarity and honesty. When we know our kids in a direct and truthful way, they learn to know themselves that way, too. Seeing our kids means that we ourselves need to learn how to perceive, make sense, and respond to them from a place of presence, to be open to who they actually are and who they are becoming, not who we’d like them to be and not filtered through our own fears or desires.
Take a moment and fast forward, in your mind, to the future when your child, now an adult, looks back and talks about whether he felt seen by you. Maybe he’s talking to a spouse, friend or therapist, someone they’d be brutally honest with. Perhaps he’s holding a cup of coffee, saying, “My mom, she wasn’t perfect, but I always knew she loved me just as I was.” Or, “My dad was always in my corner, even when I got in trouble.”
Would he say something like that? Or would he talk about how his parents always wanted him to be something he wasn’t, didn’t take the time to understand him, or wanted him to act in ways that weren’t authentic in order to play a particular role in the family or come across a certain way?
One of the worst ways we fail to see our children is to ignore their feelings.With a toddler, that might mean telling him, as he cries after falling down, “Don’t cry. You’re not hurt.” Or, an older child might feel genuinely anxious about attending the first meeting of a dance class. It’s unlikely she will feel more at ease if you say, “Don’t worry about it — there’s no reason to be nervous.”
Yes, we want to reassure our kids, and to be there for them to let them know they’ll be okay. But that’s far different from denying what they’re feeling, and explicitly telling them not to trust their emotions.
So instead, we want to simply see them. Notice what they’re experiencing, then be there for them and with them. We might say something like, “You’re going to be okay” or “Lots of people feel nervous on the first day. I’ll be there until you feel comfortable.”
When they feel felt and seen, it can create a sense of belonging as your child feels authentically known by you. She will also derive a sense of being both a “me” who is seen and respected and part of a “we”– something bigger than her solo self but that doesn’t require a compromise or the loss of her sense of being a unique individual. This is how seeing your child sets the foundation for future relationships where they can be an individual who is also a part of a connection.
What’s more, the empathy we communicate will be much more likely to create calm within our child. As is so often the case, when we show love and support, it makes life better not only for our child but for us as parents as well.
Strategy #1 for helping kids feel seen: Let curiosity lead you to take a deeper dive
A practical first step to helping our kids feel seen is just observe them — take the time to look at their behavior, discard preconceived ideas, and consider what’s really going on with. But really seeing them often requires more than just paying attention to what’s readily visible. Just as with adults, it’s often the case with children that there’s more going on beneath the surface than they let on. As parents, part of our responsibility is to dive deeper.
Practically speaking, that means being willing to look beyond your initial assumptions and interpretations about what’s going on with your kids. It means taking an attitude of curiosity rather than immediate judgment.
This curiosity is key. It’s one of the most important tools that a caring parent can use. When your toddler plays the “let’s push the plate of spaghetti off the high chair” game, your initial response might be frustration. If you assume he’s trying to press your buttons, you’ll respond accordingly. But if you look at his face and notice how fascinated he is by the splatter on the floor and the wall, you might feel and respond differently.
Cognitive scientists Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl have written about “the scientist in the crib,” explaining that a large percentage of what babies and young children do is part of an instinctual drive to learn and explore. If you can take a moment, pause and ask yourself, “I wonder why he did that?” If you see him as a young researcher who is gathering data as he explores this world, you can at the very least respond to his actions with intentionality and patience, even as you clean up his experiment.
We encourage parents to chase the “why” behind kids’ behavior. By asking “Why is my child doing that?” rather than immediately labeling an action as “bad behavior,” we’re much more likely to respond to the action for what it is. Sometimes it really may be a behavior that should be addressed. We believe that children definitely need boundaries, and it’s our job to teach them what’s okay and what’s not. But other times a child’s action may come from a developmentally typical place, in which case it should be responded to as such.
The same goes for other behaviors. If your child is quiet when she meets an adult and resists speaking up, she may not be refusing to be well mannered; she may be feeling shy or anxious. Again, that doesn’t mean you don’t teach her social skills along the way or encourage her to learn to speak in situations that are uncomfortable. It just means you want to see her for where she is right now.What are the feelings behind the behavior? Chase the why and examine the cause of her reticence; then you can respond more intentionally and effectively.
Strategy #2 for helping kids feel seen: Make space and time to look and learn
Much about seeing our kids is simply paying attention during the day, but it’s also about generating opportunities that allow your kids to show you who they are. Nighttime can be a great time to do this. There’s something about the end of the day, when the home gets quiet and the body feels tired, when distractions drop away and defenses are down, that makes us more apt to talk about our thoughts and memories, our fears and desires. This goes for all of us, adults and kids.
What’s required is a bit of effort and planning in terms of the family schedule. Kids need an adequate amount of sleep — we can’t stress that enough — so ideally you’ll begin bedtime early enough to make time for your usual routine plus a few minutes of chat or quiet waiting time to allow your children to talk if they are inclined. They might share details of their day or ask questions that help you gain a fuller understanding of what’s going on in their worlds — actual or imaginary.
We know what some of you are thinking: “I don’t have one of those kids who willingly shares what they’re thinking and feeling.” We get it. The answer to the “How was your day” question seems to inevitably lead to the dreaded “Fine.” Imagining a chat time added to your child’s bedtime routine may produce the unpleasant image of you and your child silently lying next to each other, both of you waiting for something important to be shared.
We understand this concern. Keep in mind that the idea isn’t that every evening you’ll hear some earth-shattering revelation or deep exchange. That’s not realistic between adults, much less with kids. What’s more, it’s not the goal. The ultimate aim is to be present to your children — to create space and time to get to know them better and to understand them at a deeper level so you can help them grow into the fullness of who they are.
If you have a child who doesn’t eagerly share their inner thoughts, then you may need to ask more specific questions or pose ethical dilemmas you can consider together. The more you see and know your child, the easier this will become. At times, of course, silence is okay too. Being quiet together, simply breathing, can be intimate and connecting. So don’t feel pressure to force conversation when it’s not the right time.
We know it can be confusing, trying to determine what to say when and whether to encourage conversation or let things be quiet. But one of the best ways to see your kids — and to help them feel seen — is to create the space and time that cultivate opportunities for that kind of vision to take place.
Excerpted from the new book The Power of Showing Up: How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. Copyright © 2020 by Mind Your Brain, Inc., and Tina Payne Bryson, Inc. Used by permission of Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
网友评论