The most important condition in building parent-child relationships is that the information age is an era of autonomous choice. Parents have to choose, but children have to choose even more, so children must actively manage themselves. Because parents do not know what information their children might receive from their friends, peers, or various online channels.
Only 17.79% of middle school students are willing to share their innermost thoughts with their parents, while for elementary students it is 34.21%. As children grow older, they become less willing to talk to their parents about what’s on their minds. Some children prefer to write diaries, accounting for 38.92%, and online chatting accounts for 17.44%. More and more children are willing to chat with friends or classmates online using QQ. Some children even prefer talking to themselves rather than speaking with their parents, talking to themselves in their own little rooms. Some children, starting from elementary school, lie in bed and daydream, which can easily lead to neurasthenia. When kids lie in bed, they may think about cartoons or comic books, and so on.
The construction of parent-child relationships and the psychological issues of elementary and middle school students are often causally linked. Poor parent-child relationships foster an environment that exacerbates psychological disorders, and if a child has psychological or behavioral problems, the parent-child relationship deteriorates further. Because some parents don’t understand what psychological or behavioral problems are, they criticize their children all the time. In fact, I can tell you that more than half of the parents who come to counseling tell me that their children don’t want to hear criticism, so what can they do? This even starts from children as young as 3 or 4 years old. Hence, many parents do not understand their children.
What psychological issues commonly occur in intellectually normal elementary school students? Clinical psychology generally classifies common behavioral and psychological problems in elementary students into two categories:
1. Behavioral disorders, such as lack of self-control, lack of perseverance, lack of ability, and lack of affection. Why do these problems arise? It is often due to early childhood education or preschool education where children are overburdened with learning. Some parents have asked teachers about this: after entering first grade, the child refuses to do homework, and even by second or third grade, they still refuse because they say they already know it, so why should they write it? Many children have already finished the elementary school textbooks before starting school, which leads to such behavioral disorder issues.
2. Learning difficulties, commonly manifested as difficulty concentrating, inefficiency, passivity, and duplicity. Duplicity means the child’s mind is not on studying but is instead focused on dealing with parents and teachers. A few days ago, we held a discussion with elementary school parents. Parents said they have to watch their children while they study. Many families are like this: the moment the parent looks away, the child plays with many things—erasers, pencils, pencil cases. I said if the child isn’t concentrating, it’s better to just let them play. Parents never think about the problem this way.
Middle school students face even more psychological obstacles during puberty, such as obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anxiety tendencies, hostility, paranoia, and depression. There are also issues like sensitivity in interpersonal relationships, poor social adaptation, academic pressure, frequent mood instability, and psychological imbalance. These problems are very common. Furthermore, puberty is essentially a person’s second birth, and the desire for autonomy grows stronger. If parents do not know how to respect their children, psychological problems during puberty become very common.
If you are a parent struggling to communicate with your child, please contact our counselors.