《你好，李焕英》：父母只希望你“健康快乐”，是真的吗？

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春节档的《你好，李焕英》很多人都说太好哭了，哭完我就在想李焕英在穿越以后对女儿的期望只是“我希望她健康快乐就好”，跟之前希望她学习好考重本有极大反差。

是因为人之将死其言也善吗？

其实不是的。看完这部电影也让我更好地理解了父母家人对我们子女的期待。

Many of us may feel the same way as Li Huanying. We feel like our parents always have very high expectation on us. They want us to have good grades, go to the best school, and have a well-paid job, even though sometimes they may neglect how we feel about their arrangements.

或许很多人都和李焕英有过类似的感受，父母总拿他们和别人家的孩子比，希望他们考个好成绩，去个好学校，有个好工作，可现实是很多时候子女都觉得自己让他们失望了。就像李焕英，甚至觉得“如果妈妈换一个更争气的女儿，她是不是能过得更幸福？”

看完李焕英我又重新回去看了一个TED演讲叫For Parents, Happiness is Very High Bar--对父母来说，幸福很难。

The speaker says there are guides that teach parents how to raise a disease-proof kid, a bilingual kid, a financially savvy kid and a science-minded kid.

And all these has made parents very anxious about how they can raise a kid in a proper way. It seems like if they haven’t done enough things to raise a kid, they are failures.

总有各式各样的书籍教父母们如何培养一个抵抗力强的孩子、一个会双语的孩子、一个懂财经或者懂科学、最好啥都能懂的孩子。

好像只要自己没做到位，就是作为父母的失败。所以父母们总是很焦虑。

Well, what has led to a situation like this? For starters, there has been a major historical change. Kids worked, on parents’ farm primarily, but also in factories, mills, and mines. Kids were once considered economic assets.

And later we recognized kids had rights, so we banned child labor, we focused on education instead, and school became a child's new work.

在禁止童工以前，尤其在农耕时代，孩子其实是一种经济资产，帮家里面干活，也到工厂之类的地方打工。后来随着经济的发展，才开始鼓励教育，禁止童工。所以接受教育又成了孩子们的新工作。

Rather than kids working for parents, parents began to work for kids.

They realize that if they want their kids to succeed, school is not enough.

But they don’t know exactly what they need to do.

原本是孩子给父母打工，现在变成了父母为孩子们工作，而且他们不知道在这个新时代孩子到底需要哪些技能以后才能“健康快乐”。

They have no clue what portion our wisdom, if any, is of use to their kids. The world is changing so rapidly, it's impossible to say.

They teach their kids chess, thinking maybe they will need analytical skills. They sign them up for team sports, thinking maybe they will need collaborative [kəˈlæbəreɪtɪv] skills, you know, for when they go to Harvard Business School.

只是成绩好是不够的，是不是还要学点围棋培养分析性思维？是不是还得学点团体性的运动，以防……谁知道呢，他们哪天上哈佛商学院了没准需要团队合作技能？哈哈。

尽管他们知道自己在自己成长起来的年代，自己也不会那么多东西，现在一样过得好好的。

可在当下、在未来，谁又能预测还行不行得通呢？

That’s why they’re so anxious. They feel like if they aren't trying everything, they're defaulting on their obligations to their kids.

所以李焕英对孩子的期望是“健康快乐”是真的。可是她又担心如果贾晓玲儿没有达到那些条条框框的好成绩、好学校的条件，就没办法实现这个“健康快乐”的愿望。

而孩子们却总是难以理解父母们的焦虑。

那又该如何面对这个让双方都焦虑的困境呢？

这位研究父母和孩子关系的演讲者Jennifer Senior说：

In our desperate quest to create happy kids, we may be assuming the wrong moral burden.

当父母们竭力追求培养幸福快乐的小孩时，或许总承担着错误的思想负担。

It strikes me as a better goal is to focus on making productive kids and moral kids, and to simply hope that happiness will come to them by virtue of the good that they do and their accomplishments and the love that they feel from us.

更好的目标应该是培养富有创造力和品德高尚的孩子，然后只要祝他们幸福，通过他们的德行善举、他们的才能成就，以及感受到我们对他们的爱来获得。

Absent having new scripts, we just follow the oldest ones in the book -- decency, a work ethic, love — and let happiness and self-esteem take care of themselves.

没有新的教案，那么就沿用书中最古老的箴言吧—— 教他们保持礼貌、职业道德和爱——幸福和自尊就会自然成长。

这又让我想起了豆瓣评分第一的韩剧《请回答1988》里面的正锋。他爸妈为了让他能考上大学，连续复读了七年，考上了一个好学校的法学系。

终于达到了父母的期望。

可他真正的热爱却是创造美味的食物。他的爱好总是很特别，是百科小王子，也懂得各种生活小技能，为了研究食物还特地到寺庙去进修。看起来似乎都是没办法让他上个好学校找个好工作的技能。

可他毕业后投身餐饮行业，最后成了业内大名人。

他父母给他最好的礼物就是爱，以及培养了他的高尚品德和创造力。其他都是水到渠成。

Parents may never know what skills their children would need in their future, but they can focus on making productive and moral kids, and simply hope that happiness will come to them.

And we, as their children, need to better understand their expectation on us, and to better communicate with them.