編者按：現(xiàn)在養(yǎng)小孩子的成本越來越高，這個高指的是對孩子的教育是父母親的照顧，這類話題是英語考試中的重點，教育類的英語作文也是很常見的。

　　We can sometimes be so modest about our power to know what might be good for others or ourselves, we forget it might be possible to hazard a few generalisations about what constitutes an emotionally-healthy childhood. It can’t be pure idiosyncrasy or good luck; there are distinct themes and goals to identify. With a map of optimal development in mind, we could more clearly appreciate where dislocations begin, what we have to be grateful for and what there is to regret. At a collective level, we would have more of a sense of what there is to achieve to generate a more emotionally-privileged – and therefore slightly-saner – world.

　　In the course of an emotionally-healthy childhood, we could expect some of the following to occur:

　　– Someone will put themselves profoundly at our service. If as adults we have even a measure of mental health, it is almost certainly because, when we were helpless tiny infants, there was a person (to whom we essentially owe our lives) who pushed their needs to one side for a time in order to focus wholly on our own. They interpreted what we could not quite say, they guessed what might be ailing us, they settled and consoled us. They kept the chaos and noise at bay and cut the world up into manageable pieces for us.

　　They did not, all the while, ask that we thank them, understand them or show them sympathy. They didn’t demand that we enquire how their days went or how they were sleeping at night (they weren’t much). They treated us like royalty, so that we would, later on, be able to submit to the rigours and humiliations of an ordinary life. This temporarily one-sided relationship guaranteed our eventual ability to form a two-sided kind.

　　We may think of egoists as people who have grown sick from too much love. But the opposite is rather the case; an egoist is someone who has not yet had their fill. Self-centeredness has to have a clean run in the early years, if it isn’t to haunt and ruin the later ones. The so-called narcissist is simply a benighted soul who has not had a chance to be inordinately and unreasonably admired at the start.

　　– In an emotionally-healthy childhood, someone is on hand to put the best possible spin on our behaviour. We’re given the benefit of the doubt. We are assessed by what we might one day be, not by exactly what we are right now. Someone is kind.

　　A harsh judge might, for example, say that we were ‘attention-seeking’. Our caregiver imagines that what we most stand in need of is probably a hug and some encouraging words. We might have acted rather meanly. Our caregiver adds that we must, in the background, have been feeling a bit threatened. It looked as if we were negligent; the caregiver remembers that tiredness could have had a lot to do with it.

　　Our carer constantly searches beneath the surface for a more sympathetic set of explanations. They help us to be on our own side, to like ourselves – and therefore eventually not to be too defensive about our own flaws, whose existence we grow strong enough to accept.

　　– In a good childhood, the relationship with our caregiver is steady, consistent and long-term. We trust that they will be there tomorrow and the day after. They aren’t volatile or fragile. They are almost boringly predictable and happy to be taken for granted. As a result, we develop a trust in relationships that spreads throughout our life. We are able to believe that what has gone well once can go well again and let such an expectation govern our choice of adult partners. We aren’t mesmerised by people who are off-hand and unreliable; we don’t relish being punished. We can pick out candidates who are kind and nurturing – and don’t judge them as weak or deficient for being so.

　　And if trouble strikes with our kindly partners, we don’t panic anxiously or avoidantly turn away. We can confidently set about trying to repair a love we know we deserve.

　　公眾號：英語學習

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