Basic requirements for healthy growth of teenagers

The core requirement for the healthy growth of teenagers is essentially a dynamic balance of up to standard physical function, adequate mental toughness, and social adaptability. It is by no means a standard that can be covered by a single dimension of "good grades" or "good health".

A while ago, I was chatting with a full-time psychology teacher from a middle school near my home. She mentioned a case she received last month: a boy in the second grade of junior high school. He is 1.82 meters tall and is the main player of the school basketball team. He is always in the top 20 of his grade in the unified examination. He is the "benchmark kid" in the mouth of the parents of the whole grade. Because of a mock test, he fell fifteen places. He stayed at home for three days and refused to go out. He even dropped out of the basketball class he had enrolled in for five years. He said, "I can't even test well, so what's the use of playing basketball." In the past, everyone must have said, "This child has poor ability to withstand stress." But digging deeper, the essence is that his growth evaluation system only has "excellence" as a yardstick. Mental toughness and acceptance of "failure" have long been worn away by a single evaluation standard.

It's interesting to say that nowadays, there are two extreme schools in the parent circle regarding the standards for adolescent growth. One group is the real "grade point first group". They believe that the most important task in adolescence is to study. As long as they can get into a good university, a little short-sightedness, poor physical fitness, and a weird temper are not problems at all. "Everything can be made up for when you are successful in the future."” ； The other school is the "happiness-oriented school", which believes that children should be given absolute freedom. They should not do their homework if they don't want to do it, and they should abide by the rules if they don't want to. As long as they have a happy childhood, everything will be fine. There are two types of parents around me. The child of the former has completed all junior high school mathematics in the sixth grade of elementary school, but has 800 degrees of myopia and cannot even tie his own shoelaces. When he gets into trouble with his classmates, he goes home crying and wants to transfer to another school. ； The latter's children play outside every day. After graduating from junior high school, they couldn't even memorize the multiplication table. When they went out to work for summer jobs, their boss couldn't figure out the total price of the goods. In the end, they could only go home in despair. To put it bluntly, both of these narrow the dimensions of "healthy growth".

Let’s not talk about anything else. Let’s look at the most intuitive physical indicators. Have you read the National Student Physical Health Monitoring Report released by the Ministry of Education in 2023? The overall myopia rate among primary and secondary school students is still over 50%, and the myopia rate among high school students has exceeded 80%. The incidence of scoliosis in adolescents is increasing at a rate of 10% every year. Many children have cervical and lumbar spine problems in their teens. Do you think these problems have a big impact? When you are young, you wear glasses and have a hunched back. When you are older, you will be restricted from taking public exams, joining the army, and applying for a major. No matter how good your grades are, you can't even reach the basic physical threshold, so what's the use? Not to mention that you have to enroll your child in a physical fitness class that costs tens of thousands to be effective. My colleague’s child used to stay at home and do homework every day. Later, their family changed the "question writing time" after dinner to "walking time." The family of three ran around the community for 20 minutes, and went hiking in the suburbs on weekends. After half a year, the child's myopia has not increased, the physical fitness test has changed from passing to good, and even the efficiency of writing homework has become much higher. To put it bluntly, the physical requirements have never been "to be an athlete". It means that you can eat, sleep, run and jump effortlessly, and have no long-term chronic diseases. This is the standard.

Compared with minor physical problems that can be seen, the psychological problems hidden under the water are the most easily ignored nowadays. Regarding this point, there is actually no completely unified standard in the academic world: the Piaget school of developmental psychology advocates "natural frustration education", which means that children will naturally encounter problems as they grow up, and parents only act as "supporters" and not "solvers", allowing them to build their own ability to resist frustration through trial and error. ； The behaviorist school supports appropriate guidance training, such as consciously allowing children to participate in competition and adapt to winning or losing. But one thing both parties agree on is that you must not deliberately create setbacks for your children, let alone regard "suppression" as "exercise". My distant cousin participated in a city-wide speech contest for middle school students last year. She stood on stage and forgot her words for half a minute, and then cried for almost an hour. Her mother didn't say, "There's nothing to cry about such a small thing." She didn't say, "Let's compete for first place next time." She handed her an ice cream and said, "I also forgot my words during the company's all-staff meeting last week. I stood on the stage and picked my nails for three minutes. After everyone laughed, they turned around and forgot. No one will remember this embarrassing thing about you." Later, my cousin went on stage to compete again, and even if she forgot her words, she could get over it with a smile. She never completely denied herself because of one mistake. You see, there is no such thing as a natural ability to withstand stress. The so-called mental toughness is nothing more than knowing that "it doesn't matter if you lose" and "even if I'm not perfect, there are still people who love me." It's that simple.

There is another point that many people are not aware of, which is social adaptability. To put it bluntly, it means whether you can deal with people normally and whether you can shoulder your responsibilities. It does not mean that you want your children to be all-rounded and have troubles. At least they have a sense of boundaries and empathy. I have seen parents take their children to eat hot pot before. The children shouted and drank at the waiters, and the parents laughed and said, "My children are very courageous and not afraid of strangers." This is not courageous, but lack of rules. Some children always hide at the end of the class when they are on duty. If the hygiene area they are responsible for is not clean, they will blame it on their classmates. When they go home, they will confidently say, "I am here to study, not to clean." They are not even willing to take on this basic collective responsibility. In the future, when you enter the society, will your colleagues and leaders still spoil you? In fact, the requirements in this area are not high. It is enough to be able to say thank you when you see elders and service staff, to communicate well and not to take action when you have conflicts with classmates, and to take responsibility and not blame others when you make mistakes. This is enough.

I attended a class reunion a while ago and met my old head teacher who had been the head teacher of our high school for 30 years. When we talked about the pressure on children nowadays, she took a sip of tea and said, "I have been teaching all my life and have seen all kinds of genius children and rebellious children. How can there be any unified standard for healthy growth?" To put it bluntly, when he is thirty years old, he can eat and sleep well by himself, he will not go to extremes when he encounters difficulties, and he can get along well with the people around him. Even if he does not make a lot of money or become a high official, he can live his small life happily. This is called growing up healthily. ”

If you think about it, this is really the case.