作为父母，有责任为孩子建立自信，并对世事保留一份美好的想象，但这绝不等于一味实行赞美教育。父母之责，在于帮助孩子认识世界，培养健全人格，最终使他们以相对平和的心态，独立地面对这个世界。
给家长的忠告：多讲些实话吧
译者：唐萧
校对：倪婷
策划：唐萧 鲁城华
Life is unfair and it’s a parent’s job to ensure children know it
生活并不公平，父母有责任让孩子知道这一点
本文选自 The Guardian | 取经号原创翻译
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Those who evangelise about teaching children
resilience
are typically rightwing commentators who believe children should go to
the school of hard knocks
to “acquire” it. By this token, to take it to extremes, being bullied does you no end of good because it “knocks the edges off you”.
有人总鼓吹，教会孩子
不屈不挠
有多好多好。这种人是典型的右翼评论家，认为孩子应该
历经
艰苦
的锤炼
来习得这种品质。按照这个逻辑，往极端了说，遭遇霸凌让人受益无穷，因为这能“消除你身上的戾气。”
resilience
/rɪˈzɪljəns/ n. an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change 恢复力、适应力
The School of Hard Knocks
(University of Hard Knocks): The (sometimes painful) education one gets from life's usually negative experiences, often contrasted with formal education. （有教育意义的）困苦经历
However, throwing you to the wolves does not make you resilient. It makes you dog meat. “Toughening up” doesn’t mean maximising pain in the hope that you will end up
inoculated
from its effects. Yes, learning resilience is important. However, not only has it been misunderstood, it also seems to have dropped down the parenting agenda (perhaps because of the painful memories of people who, like me, grew up being told to “get on with it and not make a fuss”).
但是，把人扔进狼群是无法培养韧性的，只会让人成为任其宰割的猎物。“变得坚韧起来”并不意味着要历经苦难，以期最终对痛苦
免疫
。的确，学会坚韧不拔非常重要。但人们不仅对这种品质有所误解，而且父母在教育孩子时似乎也没有重视起来。这也许是因为在成长过程中，我们总是被教育“接着做啊，别大惊小怪的”，至少我就是这样的。这种记忆太痛苦了。
inoculate
/ɪ'nɑkjə'let/ v. to give a weak form of a disease to a person or animal, usually by injection, as a protection against that disease 给…接种，给…作预防注射
Parents now can be over-empathetic in the way my parents’ generation
could be under-empathetic. Many parents want to be their children’s friends, which is fine, but insufficient. You have to be their parents, too, and that means making them do things they don’t want to do and, more crucially, exposing them, sooner or later, to truths that they won’t find comfortable.
如果说我的父母那一代人共情不足，那现在的父母就有点共情过度了。很多父母想跟孩子做朋友，这很好，但还不够。你还必须承担做父母的责任，也就是说，必须让孩子去做一些他们不想做的事情，更重要的是，家长迟早要使孩子了解那些也许不那么令人宽慰的真相。
It is true that all children are special, simply because they are children. But most adults are not special, and children end up as adults pretty quickly. Life then can be difficult and even disappointing. The shock of this may account for the emergence of the “snowflake” generation of university students, who are so delicate they can’t handle controversial ideas being put forward in their lectures. Adolescent mental illness is
going through the roof
– another sign that resilience is on the slide.
确实，所有的孩子都是独特的，这仅仅因为他们是孩子。但是大部分的成年人都不特别，而孩子终会长大成人，这不过是转眼之间的事。往后，人生艰难，甚至还令人失望。“雪花一代”大学生的出现，也许就与他们原先没有认识到人生艰难有关。他们太过脆弱，面对课堂上众说纷纭的观点，不知如何是好。罹患精神疾病的青少年人数
飞涨
，这是缺乏坚韧性的另一个表现。
go through the roof
to react to something angrily 暴跳如雷 ; to reach new heights 飞涨
The roots of this fragility run deep in modern culture. To combat it, we need a Buddhist rather than a
Panglossian
approach to the world. “Life is wonderful, you’re special, and if you are a good boy/girl, life will be amazing for ever” is not a message designed to aid bouncing back from failure or confronting catastrophe. Resilience is not about feeding ego – telling your children how wonderful they are – but strengthening it.
这种脆弱性植根于现代文化之中。为了克服这种脆弱，我们要以一种佛教徒式的，而非“
潘格洛斯
”式的眼光看待这个世界。“生活很美好，你也很特别，如果你是个好孩子，生活就会一直很精彩”——接收这种信息无助于从失败中振作起来，也无助于直面重大挫折。教育孩子百折不挠不是通过告诉孩子他们有多棒来满足自我，而是要增强自我。
Panglosse
潘格洛斯(Pangloss)是伏尔泰所著《老实人》(Candide)中的人物,即便最终被处以绞刑,他还是持乐观主义思想,认为世界一片大好。这是一部乐观主义的讽刺性哲理小说,批判了"这世界是所有可能的世界中最好的,同时在这个世界中的一切又都是必要之恶"这个观点。
To achieve this strengthening, our collective vision of the way the world works needs rebalancing. Sooner or later, life has to be faced head on, and if it takes you too much by surprise, you will crumble. This is why what psychologists call the “just world myth” – “If I’m good, only good things will happen to me” – has to be resisted.
为了增强自我，需要重新调整人们对世界运行方式的看法。人迟早都要直面人生，假使生活带给你太多的出其不意，你会崩溃的。这就是为何心理学家呼吁破除对公正世界的迷思，即“如果我是好的，那在我身上只会发生美好的事情。”
This may sound like a pessimistic vision, but it isn’t. It is one that is lodged deep in religious traditions. If, as the Buddha said, life is suffering – although I would substitute “suffering” with “unfair” – every good day is one to be thankful for. The Christian message is also about the acceptance of injustice – for who was more unfairly punished than Jesus, as he went willingly to his fate?
这也许听起来悲观，但实则不然。它有很深的宗教渊源。佛陀说，人生一切皆苦（我更愿意用“不公平”来代替“苦”字），因此要心怀感恩过好每一天。基督教教义中也有关于接受不公正的内容——耶稣坦然接受了自己的命运，谁还能受到比耶稣更不公正的惩罚？
It is in gratitude, and being prepared for the worst that resilience lies. Promises of happy endings, or happy beginnings and happy middles are all well and good. But they set children up for a life of disappointment that they may not know how to deal with.
百折不挠的要义在于心怀感恩，在于做好最坏打算。对孩子做出事事顺利的承诺，那当然是非常好的。但这会让孩子在面对生活的不顺利时，方寸大乱。
I am not suggesting we should tell our children that life is terrible. Life is wonderful – when it’s wonderful. I’m suggesting we make it clear that life is always going to be unfair. There is the unfairness of genes, of poverty, of looks, of health, of accident. The world you are born into is incurably skewed. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight injustice – we should – only that we are never going to get rid of it because it is
intrinsic
