Children's Mental Health Class

It is neither a correctional class to "correct problem children" nor an emotional chicken soup class that talks about big principles. It is essentially a basic psychological protection system for children - small enough to be able to withstand the frustrations of quarreling with peers and failing exams, and large enough to proactively ask for help when encountering bullying or family changes. However, the quality of the courses currently implemented in the country varies greatly. Useful classes can benefit children for life, and it is better not to take formal classes.

I audited a third-grade psychology class at a public primary school in Nanshan, Shenzhen last month, which just illustrates what a good class looks like. The teacher took a stuffed emotion monster half as tall as a person. Different colors of fluff correspond to different emotions: red represents anger, yellow represents grievance, blue represents sadness, and gray represents fear. The whole class didn't say a word about "be optimistic" or "be strong". The children were asked to write down the negative emotions that they had not digested last week on sticky notes and paste them in the corresponding color area. A little boy put a sticky note in the yellow area and hesitated for a long time before saying that his deskmate borrowed his limited-edition Ultraman flash card and hadn't returned it for a week. He didn't dare to take it for fear of being called "stingy."

Interestingly, two of the three parents who attended the get out of class that day complained to me after class, saying that this class was just about "playing with the kids" and that they couldn't learn anything real, so they might as well spend time studying for the Math Olympiad. This is actually a common misunderstanding among many parents. They feel that classes that do not teach knowledge points are useless.

The current design logic of child psychology courses in the academic community actually has two completely different directions. No one is right or wrong, but the applicable scenarios are different. One school is more oriented toward positive psychology, focusing on cultivating strengths and teaching children to identify emotions, express emotions, and practice frustration resistance and empathy. The classes at the school in Shenzhen just mentioned fall into this category and are suitable for areas where students have stable family environments and fewer conflicts on campus. They are equivalent to providing "daily health care" for children's psychology. The other school is more risk-prevention oriented. Many schools in Shanghai with a large number of migrant children use this logic. They rarely talk about "how to be happy" in class. Instead, they directly teach children how to identify school bullying, how to seek help when encountering physical/verbal attacks, and even teach children to identify early signs of depression. The views of this school of scholars are very practical: if children do not even have a basic sense of safety, no matter how much they learn to "stay optimistic", it will be in vain.

But if you say that all psychology courses are useful, you are definitely lying. When I was doing research in a primary school in a northern county last year, I saw a psychology class that was completely out of shape: the teacher read the truth for 20 minutes with a ready-made PPT, and gave out papers for the remaining 20 minutes. The test was all multiple-choice questions about "Who should I go to if I am unhappy?" The standard answer was only "go to the teacher" or "go to the parents." A little girl in fifth grade secretly told me after class that she was blocked by her senior classmates for pocket money last time. After telling the teacher, the teacher only said, "Are you provoking someone else?" From then on, she no longer believed in what was taught in class. You see, this kind of class that is divorced from reality essentially teaches mental health as a dictation question on ideological and moral character. It has no meaning except to cope with examinations.

I know Li Meng, a teacher who has been developing child psychology courses for 12 years. She told me that the most common question she encountered was "My children are fine, why are they doing this?" ”She gives an example every time: Your child doesn’t have a cold, why do you still teach him to wash his hands before eating and wear a mask when going out? Psychology classes are actually "hygiene habits classes" at the psychological level. They are not just waiting for you to catch up when you are sick. Data from the 2023 National Mental Health Survey by the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences can also support this: primary school students who have taken systematic mental health classes are 62% more willing to seek help when they encounter negative emotions than those who have not, and are 38% less likely to have thoughts of self-harm—these data are not deceptive.

Of course, there are also a lot of controversies in the industry now, the most concentrated of which is whether the content of "negative relationship identification" should be taught to young children. For example, some classes teach children to identify "what is emotional manipulation." Some parents object, saying that children have incomplete cognition and can easily regard normal parental discipline as "control," which in turn intensifies parent-child conflicts. The supportive side believes that children have the right to know what an uncomfortable relationship is, and they cannot be allowed to remain adults' emotional trash cans. The most appropriate way I have seen this is in a primary school in Haidian, Beijing. Parents are invited to sit in when this part of the lesson is taught. It is not about teaching children to "confront their parents", but teaching both parents how to express their true feelings. Last time, a mother came home from the class and apologized to her child, saying that she was too impatient before and said "I am doing this for your own good". The child cried on the spot and said that she thought her mother did not love her at all. You see, as long as it is designed properly, there is no such thing as "over-arousal".

I later asked the psychology teacher at the primary school in Shenzhen if there was any follow-up after the emotional monster class. She laughed and said that the little boy who posted the yellow grievance sticker mustered up the courage to ask for his Ultraman flash card from his deskmate that afternoon. There was no quarrel or crying, and he even ran to her to tell her the good news.

In fact, a good child psychology class does not need to teach any profound principles at all, nor does it require any high-end teaching aids. It just puts an extra soft sponge in each child's heart, so that it will hurt less when he falls down in the future. How can there be so many complicated meanings?