After Fifteen Years of Free-Range Parenting, My Son Is Finally "Aspiring to Learning"
Today is my son's fifteenth birthday. His mother finished online classes in the morning and then busied herself at home making a cake for him. Because of the pandemic, no childhood friends came to celebrate with him. The three of us ate our homemade birthday cake; although it was not as lively as in previous years, it still felt wonderful.My child is in ninth grade, preparing for the high school entrance examination. After three or four months of online classes at home, he likes to lock his door so that we will not disturb him; he manages himself. His exam scores have taken another big step forward, and he is now among the top three, with full or near-full marks in every subject. The later-developing advantage of a child raised with "free-range" parenting has emerged. My son's self-discipline is truly good: he finishes the day's tasks on the same day, with no record of procrastination.I remember that a couple of years ago the child's grades were mediocre, and his mother was very worried, asking me to pass on my own study experience to him. I feel that my only experience was that I figured everything out on my own, without being controlled or influenced by others. So I urged his mother to patiently wait for the flowers to bloom and not to dictate to him.Over the past year or so, my son has indeed re-entered a good state of learning. I am a hands-off, carefree father. From kindergarten to now, I have never concerned myself with my child's grades. I only tell him, when he comes home after failing an exam, to be strong inside, not to be defeated by failure, and to believe in himself; everything else I leave to him. I do not sign him up for tutoring classes, nor do I help him with his homework. Some people feel that raising a child this way is a gamble, but I gambled on it with great daring.I often tell my child that Confucius said of himself, "At fifteen I set my heart on learning." It does not matter if one is a bit playful before the age of fifteen, but I hope that after fifteen he will "set his heart on learning." If by fifteen one is not yet aspiring to learning, it is easy to let the years slip away in vain.Happily, the child has achieved this. Around the age of fifteen, after going through a rebellious period of two or three months, he developed an interest in learning on his own and is able to study independently and manage himself effectively. I no longer supervise him, and I do not even control his online gaming, yet he has proven to us that he can control himself. Because he has been less constrained during his upbringing, he has also retained his innocent nature. I am not worried about his future.I hope that our world will become better and better, and that human civilization will continue to progress. By the time my son enters society, he will not have to experience everything we are going through now. I hope his generation will see the dawn of a "great harmony world," free from narrow-mindedness and ignorance, and not having to live in fear.After the pandemic, there are two things I most want to do: first, continue studying medicine and write popular science as much as possible; second, support the development of education in underdeveloped regions. Without knowledge as a foundation, there can be no true rationality in society. If society does not have enough rational people, fundamental change is also difficult to bring about.The diary I wrote at fifteen has been kept until now. Occasionally I flip through it and see my youthful self, full of ambition, hoping to accomplish some great undertaking that would benefit the country and its people. Reading the grand words I wrote in my diary back then, my face still grows warm. In the blink of an eye, my son has also reached this age. He too is full of ambition, eager to do something to change the world. It shows that most young people in this world have a passionate heart.It is just that social progress is the result of everyone working together; it requires thousands upon thousands of ambitious young people to strive together. So at my age, what I most hope is that, while making my own efforts, I can also create, as much as possible, the conditions for more ambitious young people to grow, with one generation after another jointly pushing society forward.The undertakings that cannot be completed now, we can hope to complete in the future. The more deeply one loves this land, the more patience one must have.