Children's Mental Health Activities

The core of truly effective children's mental health activities has never been "teaching children psychological knowledge", but to break away from the misunderstanding of "preaching = intervention" and hide psychological support in games, conversations and daily scenes. It does not deliberately create the anxiety of "you have psychological problems", but can also truly cover the three core goals of emotion recognition, social support and self-identity.

Last month, I volunteered at a street children's center. I copied the "Children's Emotional Regulation" PPT that I had prepared earlier. Just after I lectured for 5 minutes, the little boy with short hair sitting in the first row got directly under the table and couldn't pull it out. Later, we temporarily turned off the PPT and played "Emotional Blind Box" instead - a dozen opaque paper boxes containing stickers of laughing, frowning, aggrieved, and angry expressions, as well as small prizes such as orange candies and small dinosaur erasers. Whichever expression you draw, you will tell a small thing that recently made you have the corresponding emotion. If you don't want to talk about it, you can just take the prize. The little boy who had just crawled around the table was the first to raise his hand, took out a frown sticker, and muttered that he had dismantled his grandma's reading glasses last week and wanted to install a small LED light he saved on the lenses so that his grandma could read the cold medicine instructions without touching the flashlight at night. As a result, he was scolded by his father. He hid in the corridor and sat for half an hour. No one asked him what he wanted to do after taking off the glasses. At the end of the day's activity, he carried three orange candies and walked away, jumping very high.

Interestingly, regarding the design logic of children's psychological activities, the industry has always had two completely different practical ideas. There is no absolute right or wrong, but the applicable scenarios are different. One group is practitioners of play therapy, who insist that children's psychological activities must be completely "de-purposed" and there must be no evaluation or preaching in the whole process. To put it bluntly, just play with them and let the children naturally express their emotions in a completely relaxed state. We used this idea before when we went to primary schools for left-behind children in remote villages to do activities. We put out a pile of drawing paper and colored pens and told everyone to draw "their own secret base" without having to explain to anyone what they were drawing. There was a little girl who had been silent for a long time and drew a refrigerator full of milk, with two adults standing next to her whose faces could not be seen clearly. Later we found out that her parents worked in other places and bought her a carton of milk when they came back last time. She hid half of the carton and was reluctant to drink it, so she broke it. For such sensitive children with long-term emotional deficits, if you ask them "Do you miss your parents?", they will immediately withdraw themselves. A completely stress-free game can actually let them take off their guard.

The other group is the practitioners of cognitive behavioral orientation. They believe that universal children's psychological activities still need to have clear training goals, and they cannot play for a long time without any effect. We have previously conducted a one-semester pilot program in the fourth grade of three primary schools. We used 20 minutes of class time every week to conduct scenario simulations to overcome obstacles. The most common conflicts that children encountered, such as snatching stationery, being called nicknames, and being left behind in team activities, were made into performance problems. There was no need for teachers to comment on whether they were right or wrong, and they were allowed to act out and figure out their own solutions. For the classes that participated in the pilot program after half a semester, the class teacher’s statistics showed that the incidence of conflicts between classes dropped by an average of 32%. Many children’s first reaction when encountering conflicts was no longer to cry or get physical, but to say, “I’m not happy about you doing this.” This is a typical effect of behavioral training. For common problems in ordinary classes, the efficiency is indeed high.

Many parents think that children's psychological activities are the responsibility of schools and counselors. In fact, this is not the case. The fragmented daily life in the family is the most effective scene for psychological activities. My best friend is a psychology teacher at a key primary school. Her advice to parents has never been to "take time to talk to your children every week" - too many parents start a heart-to-heart talk by asking "Have you been obedient in school recently?" This can easily arouse resentment in children. She takes care of her 7-year-old son and plays "Emotional Little Dark Cloud and Little Sun" for 10 minutes on the way home from school every day. The mother and son each tell one happy and unhappy thing that day. No one is allowed to give advice to the other, they just listen. Last week, her son said that his little dark cloud was an Ultraman drawn in art class and was laughed at by his classmates for being too ugly. She subconsciously wanted to say, "Why don't you draw more carefully next time?" She suppressed it and said, "It's really annoying to be told that something you like is not good." Two days later, her son took the initiative and said that now his deskmate paints the glowing Ultraman with him every day, and there is no need for adults to help him.

Of course, there are a lot of controversies now. For example, are the “frustration education camps” and “gratitude sessions” organized by many organizations considered mental health activities? Many parents feel that the effect is good. After participating, their children will wash their parents' feet and say "Mom and Dad, thank you for your hard work." They look very sensible. However, most practitioners in our industry do not recognize this type of activity. It is essentially emotional blackmail that deliberately creates anxious scenes, and is not real psychological support. A mother once took her child to a three-day gratitude camp. The child was asked to read a letter of repentance to his parents in public. The child was unwilling and was told by the teacher that "not being grateful is unfilial." After returning, the child did not speak to her mother for half a month and said, "It's too embarrassing. I don't want to be forced to say that I love my mother." It may seem "quick" in the short term, but in fact it consumes the child's emotional security, and the gain outweighs the loss.

I have been engaged in children's psychological activities for almost five years, and the most common thing I am asked is "Is there any standardized process that must be done?" To be honest, there is really no such thing. There was a little girl who had just entered the first grade. She hid in a corner for three consecutive activities, neither talking nor participating. We didn't ask anything. Each time, we gave her the softest cushion and put the plasticine next to it that she had stared at for a long time. She pinched the little rabbit three times, and the fourth time she took the initiative to give me the pinched rabbit. She said it was the one raised by her grandma's family before. She had just come to the city from her hometown to go to school and had been homesick for a long time. You see, there is no need to deliberately guide or talk about big principles. If you are willing to squat down and look at him at eye level, to give him enough sense of security, and to listen to him talk about those little things that are meaningless in the eyes of adults, it is already more effective than all carefully designed processes. After all, children never want the right truth, they just want to be seen.