比尔·盖茨的育儿方针：爱和逻辑

Bill Gates doesn’t pretend he lives in an egalitarian household. When it comes to parenting his three children, the billionaire Microsoft mogul readily admits his wife Melinda has done more than her share of the work raising the kids.

“My wife does 80 percent,” Gates told a crowd of Harvard students last month. Gates spent two years there taking math and computer science courses as a pre-law student, but never finished up his degree (though he was later gifted an honorary diploma from the Ivy League university).

“My eldest graduates from Stanford in June, so I’m optimistic she won’t fall into my footsteps,” Gates joked.

Gates said he and his wife have been quite deliberate about the model they’ve used to raise their three children, who are now 15, 18 and 22.

He says the couple followed a 1970s “Love and Logic” parenting model. It’s a formula that was created by a group of three men — a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a former school administrator. The core idea of their philosophy is centered on the idea that exerting emotional control, essentially minimizing emotional reactions like shouting or reprimanding kids.

“One of the greatest benefits of applying ‘Love and Logic’ is that it helps us learn how to keep a tighter leash on our emotions and on our tongues,” co-founder Charles Fay wrote in a blog post about his model.

Aside from reining in hot-blooded parent tempers, the “Love and Logic” model also stresses the importance of not leaning into rewards for kids, but instead demonstrating unconditional love and admiring kids for who they are, not what they do (or don’t) achieve, like a poor test score or a bad grade.

“Many highly successful people struggled with grades as children,” Fay wrote on his site. “What’s most important is that our children develop good character, curiosity, and problem-solving skills.”

The model is a bit like the Socratic method in that it pushes parents to focus on asking questions of their kids and getting them to think about how to solve their own problems, instead of feeding them answers.

Gates says the “Love and Logic” method is a far cry from the way he grew up, but he knew he wanted to do things differently with his own kids.

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【慎重的】shènzhòng de

deliberate characterized by or resulting from careful and thorough consideration

【大相径庭】dàxiāng jìngtíng

a far cry from very different from

比尔· 盖茨并不假装自己过着平等的家庭生活。这位微软创始人、亿万富翁爽快地承认，在养育三个孩子的过程中，妻子梅琳达承担了更多责任。

上个月，盖茨告诉一群哈佛学生说：“我妻子做了80%的工作。”盖茨曾作为法学预科生在哈佛大学上过两年课，学习数学和计算机，但始终没有完成学业、取得学位（不过后来哈佛大学授予了他荣誉学位）。

盖茨开玩笑说：“今年六月，我的大女儿就从斯坦福大学毕业了。所以我可以乐观地说，她不会步我的后尘。”

盖茨夫妇育有三个子女，分别15岁、18岁和22岁。他们夫妇二人对孩子的教育问题非常慎重。

盖茨表示，他们遵循上世纪70年代的“爱和逻辑”教育模式。该模式由一位心理学家、一位精神病学家和一位曾任学校管理者的人合作创立。它的核心理念是情绪控制，即最大程度地减少情绪反应，如大喊大叫、训斥孩子。

这种模式的联合创立者查尔斯· 费伊在他的博客中写道：“应用爱和逻辑教育法的最大益处之一是能帮助我们学习如何控制情绪和语言。”

除了控制父母的激烈情绪外，爱和逻辑教育模式还强调不要依赖物质奖励。相反，父母应该表达无条件的爱，应该赞美孩子本身，而非他们的成就或失败（例如考试分数）。

费伊在他的网站上写道：“许多非常成功的人小时候成绩并不好。最重要的是使孩子具备良好的品格、好奇心和解决问题的技巧。”

这有点像苏格拉底式的教育方法。父母应该问孩子问题，引导孩子思考如何自己解决问题，而非直接提供答案。

盖茨表示，“爱和逻辑”教育法和他自己的成长经历相距甚远，但他希望为自己的孩子做点不一样的事情。

(chinadaily.com.cn)