How Parents Can Raise Depressed Children

According to the World Health Organization, there are about 350 million people with depression worldwide. The number of patients with depression in China is about 95 million.

In other words, for every fifteen people around you, there is one person with depression.

Surveys show that depression is caused by various factors, among which emotional stress and parent-child relationship account for the most. It must be said that it is generally believed that the generation of emotional stress is also inextricably linked to the parent-child relationship in the original family.

Adler said:

A happy childhood heals a lifetime, and an unfortunate childhood takes a lifetime to heal.

Childhood is an important stage in a person’s growth and learning. It is like the foundation of life. People with unstable foundations, no matter how prosperous the buildings on them, are easily eroded by depression and make their lives shaky.

Parents, as most of the children’s most contacted people in childhood, what they do is an important basis for children to build a “foundation”.

Among them, these three kinds of parents are most likely to raise depressed children with unstable ‘foundations’.

1. Parents who often quarrel

Quarreling is the behavior of both parents to vent their negative emotions. Whether it is a quarrel or a silent cold war, it will have a negative impact on the child.

These adverse effects are piled up in children’s childhood, which not only fails to bring emotional support to their lives, but also makes them more likely to be swallowed by negative emotions.

Quarrels will inevitably make children feel afraid, at least it will make them feel insecure and inferior, and at worst it will damage their brains and impair their ability to control their emotions.

Children whose parents often quarrel are also more likely to have personality defects, become impulsive and irritable, or be cowardly and inferior, unable to control their emotions well.

The impact of a fight isn’t even limited to psychological problems. Quarrels have seriously affected children’s psychological environment, and children with poor emotions are more likely to be eroded by various diseases.

Spanish researchers found that children whose parents fight a lot have twice the risk of developing intestinal, skin, nervous system, reproductive and urinary diseases than children whose parents live in harmony.

2. Parents who often lose their temper with their children

Different from quarrels, losing your temper is the behavior of parents venting their emotions unilaterally to their children, and children often have no power to fight back and can only passively accept these negative emotions.

In the early years of life when a child needs intimacy most, too much negative emotion from Mom or Dad can lead to a stark lack of positive emotion.

Children who live in this environment for a long time are likely to suffer from a psychological disease called primitive emotional hunger.

Some of such children will develop a pleasing personality because of this , pleasing their parents when they were young , and pleasing others when they grow up. Sensitive, fragile and unconfident, constantly pleasing others to gain affirmation, more likely to suppress emotions and suffer from depression.

Others will become very strong in order to maintain their self-esteem, and are unwilling to show their vulnerable side. But in fact, this is also a way to suppress emotions, and it cannot cure childhood fears.

3. Parents who often blame their children

Blaming is a way of expression that seems milder than losing your temper and actually hurts more. Impatient or frustrated parents sometimes express their displeasure in even the most vicious terms.

In the eyes of children, these languages ​​are all sharp knives, flying towards them from a distance in their emotionally blank childhood, even after they grow up, the shadows of those knives are still clearly visible.

Studies have shown that children who were verbally blamed and hurt in childhood have a very high rate of depression and anxiety as adults.

Scientists in the United States conducted a survey of 5,600 subjects aged 15 to 54 and found that verbally belittling, humiliating, and threatening children are as harmful to children as physical beatings and abuse. of.

Repeated verbal accusations from parents will reduce children’s self-image and self-confidence, and make children in a state of depression and anxiety for a long time. The psychological damage caused by this kind of abuse will continue into adulthood, causing them to develop morbid depression and anxiety . Once this disease is formed, cognitive behavioral therapy must be used to try to change their irrational and negative thoughts in order to regain a healthy state of mind.

Children in childhood are still learning everything, and it is normal to have problems. Blindly accusing them will not allow them to find a solution to the problem, but proper encouragement can stimulate their enthusiasm and allow them to devote themselves to life and study.

Ingenious encouragement to help children find self-confidence

The famous American psychologist Rosenthal once did such a long-term follow-up experiment. He came to a school, found the principal and said to do an experiment. Rosenthal asked the principal for the roster of the school’s students, randomly selected 18 students, and then told the teacher that these 18 students were carefully selected children with high IQs.

In order to ensure the accuracy of the experiment, he also asked the principal to keep it secret. The unknowing teacher really thought that these 18 randomly selected students were talents, so they cultivated them carefully. When the semester was almost over, Rosenthal went back to school to understand the situation, and found that the 18 students selected before had improved a lot in grades and became more confident.

In the next ten years, Rosenthal continued to conduct long-term follow-up investigations on these students, and found that after they graduated and entered the society, they all made extraordinary achievements in their respective positions. Other students in this school generally did not achieve such outstanding achievements.

According to the results of this experiment, Rosenthal came to the following conclusions:

When people form an expectation based on a certain situation, in later days they will get closer and closer to this expectation and make it a reality.

Simply put: when a person is expected, they tend to develop in the direction that person expects.

We can also apply the “Rosenthal Effect” in the education of parents to their children:

Parents encourage their children to make them feel that they can do it. Slowly, the child will really become outstanding.

Growing up is a process in which parents and children work together, improve each other, and move towards a better future. Of course, there will be many difficulties and contradictions, but as long as we work together and walk hand in hand, we will surely reap a bright future.