I’m lucky to be human

　　I don’t know when, teenage suicides have changed from occasional to normal, from news to data, and have become more and more serious social phenomena in the world. According to the World Health Organization, among adolescents aged 15-19, suicide is the second leading cause of death for girls and the third leading cause of death for boys. Is it too much social pressure and too fast pace? Or is it that the parents and the school didn’t manage it well? Or is the child too glassy? All these remind us that many teenagers have deviations in their cognition of “life” itself. Someone said: Everyone has 100 suicidal thoughts, but 101 reasons not to commit suicide. Then we hope that life education can add weight to this extra “1”.
　　The global youth suicide rate has repeatedly hit new highs.
　　There was once a Japanese news report, a girl in the second grade of middle school asked: Please teach me a way to commit suicide without causing trouble to others. “I want to commit suicide, but I worry about causing too much trouble to those around me.” For example, it may cost parents a lot of money, or it may make people mistakenly believe that they committed suicide because of being bullied, causing trouble for teachers. What’s even more exaggerated is that in order to prevent her parents from spending money on her own death, she actually worked hard to save all her funeral money.
　　In Asia, South Korea has consistently had the highest suicide rate. According to statistics, by 2022, the youth suicide rate in South Korea will increase by 44% within three years. Experts pointed out that if a mechanism to reduce suicide cannot be created, the future of South Korea will be dark. The situation in other countries is not optimistic. Juvenile suicide rates have also risen sharply in Australia, the UK and Mexico, according to statistics. More than one in six children aged 7-16 in England and Wales may be suffering from a mental illness, a National Health Service study has found. The suicide rate among 15-19 year olds is growing even faster, with 6.4 suicides per 100,000 people in 2021.
　　The United States is even worse, with 11.2 suicides per 100,000 people. Data show that in the 20 years from 2000 to 2020, the suicide rate in the United States has increased by 30%, and suicide has risen from 2014 to the second leading cause of death among adolescents. The Golden Gate Bridge in the United States is the site of the most suicides in the world. In the documentary “The Bridge”, the camera was set up in the grass next to the bridge for a long time, waiting for those who jumped off the bridge, and interviewed the few survivors-in fact, they regretted the moment they were in the air. I realized that the predicament that I always thought could not be changed could be solved. So they tried their best to adjust their posture in order to survive.
　　The same world, the same blue sky, in their youth, there is hidden pressure and pain that we can’t imagine. In the face of the growing phenomenon of youth suicide around the world, we should reflect on what is crushing children?
　　How to carry out life education in foreign countries
　　”Life education” was first proposed by American scholar Jay Donner Walters in 1968: “Life education is an educational activity that prepares students for a happy and successful life. Education activities for the purpose of spiritual life.” It is a whole-person education (education for the harmonious development of people in many aspects), which should include the entire process from birth to death and all aspects involved in this process. On the basis of treating, cherishing and revering life, realize the cognition of “I”, “nature” and “society”.
　　American life education mainly has four sections: death education, setback education, character education and health education. For example, in death education, students need to understand the laws of life, including birth, growth and development, aging and death, etc.; they must understand funeral customs; they must understand the ethical and moral issues brought about by suicide and euthanasia. For the topic of death, Americans chose to face it head-on. Some schools even require students to write their own epitaphs. When writing “Epitaph”, students will naturally think: When I die, how do I hope others will evaluate me? How can I live my life without regretting it? During this process, students will think about their life mission and ultimate vision, which is especially important for children to realize their life value.
　　”Yu Yu Education” is one of the important contents of life education in Japan. It advocates “love life and choose to be strong”, and it is proposed in response to the fragile psychology of Japanese teenagers and the suicide incidents of teenagers. “Yuyu Education” believes that one of the main contents of loving life is to live in harmony with nature and to love other lives.
　　Swedish life education is known for its open-minded attitude. The teacher will let the children touch the belly of the pregnant woman, tell them how a person is born, and let the children understand what life is. In addition, Swedish schoolchildren are allowed to come into contact with the remains in the mortuary, and at the same time, they are told what a death means to themselves and their loved ones.
　　In contrast, the field of life education in China is slightly blank and lagging behind. Whether it is the school or the parents, we rarely mention the topic of life with our children, let alone set up special life education courses. We must know that children who grow up in the absence of life education will not only lack a correct understanding of life, but also find it difficult to cherish limited life from the heart.
　　Doing a good job of life education as the “gatekeeper” of youth suicide
　　not only depends on the school, but also requires the participation of parents and children. The trinity of “parent-school-child” is interlocking and supports each other; To prevent a certain link from becoming the biggest hidden danger.
　　According to research, in families with serious parent-child conflicts, the risk of suicide among adolescents will increase dozens of times. Therefore, parents are the first and decisive link in life education. If you have read “A Good Mother Is Better Than a Good Teacher” by Yin Jianli, you will find how important family education is to whether children can grow up healthily. Parents are the most important first teachers for children.
　　The interpersonal theory of suicide believes that a person needs to have the following three elements to commit suicide: a frustrated sense of belonging, a perceived sense of encumbrance, and a learned ability to commit suicide. It is really important to be a good parent who can provide a sense of belonging. It can reserve happiness for children, resist wind and rain, and strengthen the connection of warm and powerful life. If a child has enough trust in his parents and dares to tell his parents when he makes a mistake, the possibility of him getting into a dead end will be greatly reduced. No matter how much wind and rain we encounter, we know that our home is our harbor and we have the confidence to face all difficulties.
　　How to strengthen the connection with the life of the child? In addition to learning many general parent-child strategies and skills, parents also need to be especially vigilant against a misunderstanding: the guilt strategy. Studies abroad have found that Chinese parents often use “guilt strategies” on their children, such as: “We work so hard to provide you with everything, why are you not happy/bad grades?” “Other people’s children are so good, Did I give birth to you to be angry?” I always feel that if I say this, the child will reflect on himself and work harder. Indeed, the guilt strategy is very useful. Compared with European and American youths, Chinese youths work harder to get good grades in exams to please their parents. But it also comes with a high price. The stricter the parents, the easier it is for the children to be depressed and anxious. In families with high levels of parent-child conflict, teens are 30 times more likely to commit suicide.
　　I remembered a joke on the Internet: “I usually don’t tell my mother bad things, because she can’t help but also can’t sleep.” But behind this lies the hidden danger of the parent-child relationship-the child loses the channel to talk, pretends to be strong and forbears, and handles problems by himself, but the child who is not strong enough in heart will be overwhelmed by a small incident.
　　A good attitude of loving yourself and loving others Adverse
　　quotient (the ability to face setbacks and get out of trouble), EQ is sometimes more important than IQ. A primary school teacher who has been teaching for nearly 20 years discovered the “tenth place phenomenon”, also known as “the law of the most promising in the middle reaches”: the most promising students in the class are often not the top few students with the best academic performance, but the top students in the class. The tenth or so students in the upper middle reaches. They have neither the burden of “wanting to win and fear of losing” of excellent students, nor the inferiority complex of poor students. The “tenth place phenomenon” gives us a little inspiration: a good attitude is better than a good grade. In the decades of life, everyone will experience dark troughs. The key is to choose whether to sink or break through. Only by cultivating a good attitude can we face the future with a smile – I think the best school education should aim at this.
　　There is a class abroad called “Love Yourself”. The teacher teaches children to “love themselves” from elementary school, instead of waiting until the students enter adolescence to pay attention to themselves. The middle school teacher will assign a task to let the students go home to look in the mirror, see their naked bodies, observe all the details of themselves, and see if they like themselves and accept themselves. This is similar to what our ancients said “the parents who receive the body, hair and skin”.
　　From simply loving one’s body to loving one’s character, temperament, characteristics (including shortcomings) to one’s own study, work, and life, this is a slow project and a unity. They must first truly love themselves from the heart, which is the basic soil of life education. Loving yourself comes first, but not only. Let’s not forget to teach our kids to love others, or we’ll fall into another extreme of “exquisite egoism”.
　　There is a saying in the United States: “If you just want to be happy for an hour, go take a nap; if you want to be happy for a day, do something you love; if you want to be happy for a lifetime, please help others.” American high school requirements While completing their course work, students also need to have dozens of hours of community service experience before they can graduate. This is an excellent step to help children transition to “adulthood”. Because of helping others, their lives transcend “self” and have greater meaning. Even if such a child encounters setbacks in life, so many responsibilities and concerns will help him think further and go further.
　　Loving yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. Loving others makes your life more fulfilling. I hope our children can happily say: “I am very lucky to be a human being.”