This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
The author of this article is a mother of two living in a third-tier city. In 2017 her elder daughter received offers from 8 American universities, eventually chose a top-25 American university to continue her studies, and was awarded a substantial scholarship.
Her daughter’s grades were not outstanding when she started school, and she completed her schooling from primary through senior high in a third-tier city. That she could achieve such excellent results was owed not only to her own efforts but, indispensably, to her parents’ healthy, scientific way of raising her.
How did a mother in a third-tier city raise an outstanding, internationally minded child? Let us read today’s article together.
Primary School, Grades One to Three
Focus on Developing Good Study Habits
When my child was in first and second grade, I was rather busy. Once, the child’s teacher said to her: “All your mom knows is making money; she doesn’t care about you at all.”
Why would she say that? Because at that time the child often failed to get full marks on her homework, and her test scores were not very good either.
In fact, though I was busy, I never neglected my child; I kept her company especially during her studies every evening. But my way of keeping her company was a little different from other parents’. I did not watch over her as she did her homework the way other parents did; usually we were in the same room, she doing her homework while I read or handled some work matters on paper.
The teacher required parents to check the homework and sign it once the child had finished. I checked her homework too, but generally I did not point out her mistakes directly. I made an agreement with her: “Mom is responsible for signing; you are responsible for the score you get.”
Many children develop a bad habit in first and second grade: once the homework is done, they are used to handing the exercise book to their parents. But have parents ever thought about who will check it for them during exams?
When I checked her homework and found mistakes, I would tell her that a few questions were wrong and she should look them over again herself. If she was willing, she would look and correct them; if she was lazy and unwilling, her score the next day would naturally be low, but she had to accept that result. And I felt that bearing the consequences at that stage was better than being forced to bear some consequence later.
The most important step was that, once the exercise book came back, I always made sure she conscientiously reviewed the questions she had got wrong and corrected them. This left a deep impression on her.
A common phenomenon among us parents is that we have very high expectations of our children when they are small, and then, when the children reach the upper grades and their grades fall short of what we hoped, we are prone to give up on them too early.
My view is very different. I believe that grades one to three of primary school are mainly about helping the child adapt to school life, develop good study habits and form the ability to learn independently. Scores are not the most important thing.
In the lower grades, because the material is simple, parents are very keen to tutor. Some even greatly mislead their children, letting them think it doesn’t matter if they didn’t understand in class, since Mom will tutor them at home anyway.
The root of a child’s grades lies in the classroom. If a child cannot concentrate and listen in class, the more you tutor him at home, the more you mislead him.
So help your child develop good study habits as early as possible. These good habits include listening attentively in class, respecting teachers, completing homework independently, and taking responsibility for one’s own grades and test scores.
Paying Attention to the Child’s Emotions and Psychology
Solving Problems at the Root
Some parents think the child’s main task is studying, so their own main energy is also focused on the child’s studies, and nothing else concerns them.
Parents, consider this question: when our relationships with others (whether within the family or in society) go wrong, can we still devote ourselves wholeheartedly to our work? Will our work and study not be affected? It is actually the same for children.
So I believe that helping a child build good relationships and helping him solve problems that arise in dealing with teachers and classmates not only benefits his mental health but also serves his studies.
My elder daughter is rather delicate and sensitive. When she was a little over three and in the junior class of kindergarten, one night I noticed that she slept very restlessly and kept crying in her sleep.
I sensed something was wrong and talked with her carefully. It turned out that that day the teacher had the children line up in the activity room, and while they were lining up, a child standing next to my daughter said to her: “Your mom isn’t coming to pick you up today.”
For a child in the junior class of kindergarten, those words were very serious. So my daughter retorted very earnestly: “That’s not true! My mom will definitely come to pick me up.”
Unfortunately, just as my daughter was retorting, the teacher happened to see her talking, and so the teacher angrily and severely scolded her and made her stand in the corner facing the line of children.
Besides feeling for my child, what I mainly felt at that moment was a kind of shock: a three-year-old child also has self-respect and cares about face.
Later I went to the kindergarten, found the teacher, and tactfully told her what had happened. I was not seeking redress over the incident; I believe most teachers want to be good teachers and raise excellent children. So I explained to the teacher that I only wanted to let her know about the situation so that she would understand my child and know that she was a rather sensitive little one.
Sincerity can be felt. After that, my daughter got along happily with her kindergarten teacher and classmates.
On my daughter’s birthdays and some holidays we would hold parties, and when the children came to our home, they were truly our little honored guests.
When the children graced us with their presence, her dad and I would stand at the door, clapping and bowing as if lined up to welcome them. The little ones would laugh out loud. But from their beaming faces it was clear that they were very happy and appreciated it.
Being respected and valued is a good thing; everyone likes it and everyone needs it. Because her parents respected and welcomed her friends, and because my daughter has a gentle temperament, she was well liked in her class.
When we did these things back then, it was simply out of the instinct to love our child and the wish to make her happy; we never thought they would help her studies much. Looking back now, these things also served her studies.
Appreciating and Encouraging the Child
Giving the Child Opportunities to Show Herself
Appreciation and encouragement are like nourishment for a child; they are the soul of education. And those best able to give a child this nourishment are still the child’s parents.
When my daughter was in the lower grades of primary school, her grades were not good and her teachers did not think much of her. But every time she made a little progress, I would show exaggerated delight: “Really? You’re amazing!”
From third grade on, my daughter’s grades got better and better. In fourth grade, at parents’ meetings, the teacher often invited me to speak on stage, and each time I would sincerely thank my child: “You’re wonderful! Because you studied hard and your grades improved, Mom got this opportunity! Thank you!”
At the same time, I believe it is every parent’s duty to provide children, as far as one is able, with opportunities to succeed, and then to affirm and praise the effort they put in. Letting children personally experience the joy of winning is an effective way to cultivate their drive to improve.
When my daughter was in first grade, her school held a rather distinctive activity: Happy English Time. Every Monday morning, a pupil was selected to show off his or her English in front of all the teachers and students. But those children were all fourth-graders or above.
But I believed that, with my daughter’s listening and speaking level at the time, she could also go on stage and show her spoken English. So I went to my daughter’s homeroom teacher and then to the principal, and both supported my idea. In the end, my daughter’s performance was a great success.
When my daughter was in second grade, she had already been learning English for three years. By then she had a vocabulary of more than five hundred words and could write simple English compositions. In these circumstances I had her sign up for that year’s National English Competition for Primary School Students. She won first prize in the finals. After that, my daughter took part in the National English Competition for Primary School Students almost every year, and won first prize every year.
Winning prizes isn’t important. I only hoped that by taking part in these activities my child would experience the joy of success and also understand that success requires effort.
Setting Lofty Ideals and Goals
Helping Her Understand the Importance of Scores
By the upper grades, children grow stronger physically, intellectually and in their ability to bear pressure, so parents can make somewhat higher demands on their studies.
1. English
When my child was in fourth grade, I began having her take English sentence dictation every day. By “dictation” here I don’t mean the classroom kind where the teacher reads a sentence and the students write it down.
I used a repeater to play the same dialogue over and over; the child listened to the dialogue and then wrote down what she heard. Not word by word: she had to listen dialogue by dialogue, but she could listen many times, until she was able to write the sentences down.
Every evening she listened to and wrote down two dialogues, that is, four sentences. After the dictation, she checked against the book, corrected mistakes and words she didn’t know, and finally memorized the two dialogues.
This method trained her listening, increased her stock of words and sentences, and strengthened her spoken English. We kept up this dictation training from fourth grade of primary school all the way to the second year of junior high.
In the second year of junior high there was still dictation training, but the content changed to a complete article. In other words, we actually kept up this dictation training right through to senior high.
2. Chinese:
Read a lot and write a lot. This is the same as with English; in fact, methods of learning languages are much the same. Let me focus on writing. Many parents know how important writing is, so they rush to send their children to so-called composition classes.
There is a very well-known composition training school where we live, and when my daughter was in primary school they were advertising on a large scale. Because I love writing myself, I felt that writing really cannot be improved merely by training over a period of time.
But as a parent I couldn’t withstand the pressure inside, feeling that all the other children were taking classes, and the advertisements were so tempting, so one holiday I sent my child to that composition school to try it out.
Within a few days I found that template-based teaching was rampant. With dozens of people in a class, targeted guidance was impossible, and the teacher who taught the class did not even seem to be the same person who marked the compositions; it was entirely an assembly line.
So before the term was even over, I stopped sending my child. Everyone must be wary of template-based teaching.
Growing according to a fixed template inevitably means having certain freely growing parts of the body cut off and destroyed. Forcing a person’s thinking into a template is, for a free soul, no less painful than physical torment.
If you force children into templates, what you gain is short-term vanity, and what you destroy is your child’s future.
3. Mathematics
When my daughter was in primary school, Math Olympiad was at the height of its popularity. My daughter also attended a Math Olympiad class for a while.
But Math Olympiad is a game for mathematical geniuses and not suitable for every child. After attending the Olympiad class for a while, my daughter was badly discouraged. I did not force her.
After my child entered junior high, I specifically consulted the principal of that school about whether she should study Math Olympiad. He said it was not required and was not tested in the entrance exams for senior high. Why do some children study it? They have a special talent for it, and the school is glad for them to win prizes; it is an honor for the school and good for its reputation.
Besides that, we also supported our child in extracurricular activities rather than just studying from books. For example, during senior high she took part in an international space settlement design competition; both the preliminaries and the finals were held at Tsinghua University, and it took a lot of time. But we felt she gained enormously.
Letting the Child Step Out of School and See Society
Cultivating the Ability to Face Pain and Suffering Squarely
From the first year of senior high, we had our daughter volunteer at the city social welfare institute. The first time my child and I walked into the welfare institute, the sight of those disabled children truly shook my eyes and my heart. If even I, an adult, felt this way, one can imagine how the child felt.
In the view of many Chinese parents, pain, suffering and death are all inauspicious, and it is best that children not know about them. Abroad, things are somewhat different. American child-education scholars hold that in fact most children have already encountered the word “death” by the age of three.
When children ask “questions about death,” American parents always give the most direct, simple and clear answers, and try to avoid anything specious or vague.
For this reason some primary schools in Europe and America have even set up distinctive “death classes,” attaching great importance to “death education” for children. In fact, in our country too, more and more people of insight are calling attention to this issue.
Recently, at a roundtable on the theme “Questioning the Dignity of Life: The Mission and Care of Medicine,” Bai Yansong said that when the Chinese discuss death they are like primary school pupils, because China has never had real death education.
Some people think these practices may cast a shadow on a child’s heart. But I still lean toward not rushing to filter things out, and letting children have the chance to truly face pain, suffering and imperfection. Information can be filtered, but when pain, suffering or even death arrives, no one can stop it.
The first time my daughter walked into the welfare institute, accompanied by her father and me, she was timid; now she can skillfully care for the elderly there and teach the children with great enthusiasm.
Viewing the Child’s Romantic Feelings Correctly
When my daughter was in her second year of senior high, I once found messages in her phone from a boy pursuing her.
My daughter turned him down, but when she did, she also pointed out some of his shortcomings. The boy then said he would correct them and hoped she would give him a chance.
My daughter said she was absolutely not in an early romance; the boy was only pursuing her. I believed her completely, but the boy had sent his message at 2 a.m. And he was in his second year of senior high!
I said to my daughter: “You can just turn him down directly; there’s no need to point out his shortcomings. He’ll mistakenly think that if he changes, he’ll have a chance. Look, he’s still not resting so late; how will he manage in class tomorrow? If this affects him, when you grow up you’ll feel you wronged him. We must protect ourselves so that we are not hurt, but at the same time we must also not hurt or harm others.” I believe this kind of education is also meaningful for a child’s growth.
Someone once asked me: “Has your child always been this good? Has she never had a rebellious phase?” Thinking back, my daughter really never did have a so-called rebellious phase. So is it really because I’m lucky? I don’t think so.
What I want to say is: if you give your child enough love, enough companionship, enough trust and understanding, why would she rebel?
Finally, I’d like to share a saying with all parents: “The only thing in life you can get without effort is failure.” This is true of children’s studies, and it is equally true of us as parents in raising our children.
