“First graders” are not human beings! —Continuing the discussion with Yangyang’s father

   
Con­tin­u­ing from the pre­vi­ous one:Dis­cussing with Yangyang’s father the strate­gies for first graders to pass the pinyin test and oth­er top­ics
   
Con­tin­u­ing from the pre­vi­ous two:Con­tin­ue to dis­cuss par­ent­ing strate­gies with Yangyang’s dad: read­ing, ask­ing ques­tions, rewards, hap­pi­ness, etc…
   
Yangyang’s father:
   
Hel­lo, Teacher Ajia: I would like you to rec­om­mend a few more books suit­able for first grade chil­dren, prefer­ably with pinyin. I have always want­ed my son to fall in love with books, but con­trary to my wish­es, he just does­n’t like to read. I have thought of many ways to accom­pa­ny him.
Look, he only likes to be told and lis­tened to, but has no inter­est when asked to read on his own. He does­n’t have any favorite books to read. This semes­ter, the teacher said he has regressed a lot. He does­n’t con­cen­trate in class and is slow to do things. I don’t know now.
How should I edu­cate him? It’s a headache. Please give me some advice. The teacher asked him to write a diary every day, but he doesn’t have the heart to write it. It’s very dif­fi­cult to write every time. In fact, I feel that he still reads too few books. How can I make him love read­ing? This is my biggest prob­lem now.
What a headache. Thanks!
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Yangyang’s good father, after many exchanges, I deeply appre­ci­ate your good inten­tions for Yangyang. As a father myself, I am very moved. So this time my words may be a lit­tle harsh, and if there are any inap­pro­pri­ate words, please for­give me.
Be more under­stand­ing!
   
You asked me to rec­om­mend a few more books suit­able for first graders, but I find it dif­fi­cult to do so. Why? Because books are meant for peo­ple, and first graders aren’t peo­ple, so I can’t rec­om­mend any.
   
What is a “first grad­er”? A con­cept! Just a con­cept.
   
Yangyang’s dear father, I real­ly hope you will say to me: “Please rec­om­mend a few more inter­est­ing books to our Yangyang. He is such an inno­cent and love­ly child. He has recent­ly become obsessed with… and he likes… the most. As soon as he picks up…
He was most delight­ed when he read… with me. He even said… and I had­n’t noticed a few things he read… He’s such an admirable kid!
   
How­ev­er, from your descrip­tion, Yangyang is more like a “stu­pid first grad­er”. In gen­er­al, “he does­n’t con­cen­trate in class and is slow to do things”, “he has no inter­est in read­ing by him­self”, “he does­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like to read”.
“I’ve regressed a lot this semes­ter”, “I can’t pay atten­tion in class, I like to be dis­tract­ed and make small move­ments”, “Pinyin feels very dif­fi­cult”… These ran­dom and gen­er­al descrip­tions are just con­cepts! They are not describ­ing
A liv­ing child!
   
When I read the book “My Dad is John­ny”, I could not help but smile every time when I read the lit­tle boy Dim proud­ly intro­duced him­self to oth­ers: This is my dad, his name is John­ny. But the most touch­ing part for me was the scene where the dad hugged his son.
He picked up lit­tle Dim and intro­duced him to every­one in the train car: “Would you please lis­ten? … This child is my son. The best son, his name is Dim!” Every time I read this, my eyes can’t help but get wet. I am typ­ing now.
I have the same feel­ing when I read these words.
   
Mr. Lu Xun said: Chil­dren can be respect­ed. I think when he said this, he must have regard­ed the word “chil­dren” as peo­ple. If it is just a con­cept, like “first grade chil­dren” or “first grade stu­pid chil­dren”,
How can we respect him then?
   
In tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al con­cepts, chil­dren are often mea­sured with cold rulers. Chil­dren who meet or even exceed the stan­dards are con­sid­ered “good chil­dren”, while those who fail to meet the stan­dards are con­sid­ered “stu­pid chil­dren”.
We can’t do any­thing about the ruler in the short term (I believe it will change slow­ly), but as a father who loves his child, we can help the child not to be scared by the ruler, and to be hap­py and at ease.
We can grow up con­fi­dent­ly and con­fi­dent­ly. This is some­thing that every ordi­nary per­son can do, because at home, we are the cap­tain!
   
It’s actu­al­ly not dif­fi­cult to do this. Bor­row­ing Mr. Lu Xun’s per­spec­tive, look at your own chil­dren with respect, and use the heart of that good father, Jiao Ni, to say, “This is my son, the best son, his name is Yangyang!”
   
How could our own chil­dren not be the best?
   
I’d like to rec­om­mend the book “The Best Son Yangyang” for you, but I’d like to know what kind of child he is. As for “First Grade Kids,” I real­ly can’t rec­om­mend it.

Argen­tine Primera División April 15, 2010