What should I do with my son's "card collection"

About two or three years ago, I took my son to the stationery store next to the community. After buying stationery, he asked me to buy him some cards. At first, I thought cards were playing cards, so I asked him, "Why buy playing cards when you have them at home?" He told me that cards are not playing cards, but a popular game among children. So we spent dozens of yuan to buy three or four packs of cards. After opening it, I didn't agree: "Isn't this a cartoon character drawn on a playing card?" What's the fun? "However, my son's reaction is obviously different from mine. He found it very interesting, playing cards over and over again, and muttering something to himself.

Later, he often told me about student card collection, proper terms of various card collections, such as Thunder Edition, Nebula Edition, SR, HR, and occasionally bought one or two boxes with his pocket money. Usually when he talks about cards, I just say "mm-hmm" and take it seriously. However, on my child's fifth grade birthday, I asked him what he wanted as a birthday present, and he actually wanted a box of cards, a kind of "black diamond" with hundreds of dollars. It's been two or three years, and he's still so obsessed. It seems that I have to study the magic of this card.

So, I seriously asked my son what magic this card has and why children are so obsessed. As soon as he heard that I cared about what he liked, he was very happy. Just like a bamboo tube, he soon popularized a lot of knowledge about cards for me.

It turns out that these cards are mainly anime, such as Altman and Douluo Mainland. The types of cards collected by boys and girls are quite different. The prices of cards are different, ranging from a dozen cheap ones to dozens or even hundreds of expensive ones, rising with the rarity of cards. But before I opened the box with a card, I didn't know what rare cards were in the box, which was similar to a blind box.

He said that the vast majority of students participated in it to some extent. Some students enjoy it, not only letting parents buy it, but also buying it with their own pocket money and lucky money. Students should be compared to see who has more rare cards, and the students with more rare cards will become the envy of everyone. In addition, students also exchange cards with each other to exchange needed goods. Cards have become one of the most important media for children to socialize. If there is no set card, they may not find the same topic and be excluded from a specific circle.

After my son popularized the relevant knowledge to me, I asked some other children I knew and looked up the information on the Internet. It turns out that children's card collection has become one of the most popular activities among primary school students. However, this has also caused a series of problems, some of which cost too much money, which parents feel is worthless; Some children are too addicted to this, which affects their studies and so on, thus causing many family conflicts.

Let's talk about the problem of spending more money first. According to the data, there are some companies that specialize in making cards, and the annual turnover of a single store is as high as more than one billion yuan. What is the cost of the card itself? According to the person in charge of the business card printing enterprise, the average card does not exceed 10 cent! In the hands of primary school students, the average price of each card is at least one yuan, and a rare card is tens, hundreds and thousands of yuan, which means that the profit is at least ten times, and it is not surprising that it is a hundred times thousand times. From this perspective, it is indeed quite profiteering. However, primary school students who collect cards don't think so. Some cards are treasures in their eyes. I think different times have different ways of playing. Taking foreign paintings or buying instant noodles cards twenty or thirty years ago is essentially the same as the current cards.

Of course, everything is measured. If children are addicted to it, it will not only cost a lot of money, but also affect their study. What should I do if this happens? I think the most basic principle is "sparse" rather than "blocked".

From the adult's point of view, it is a social media to understand the reasons why children receive cards, although there will be some psychological comparisons. Through this medium, children can have a sense of belonging.

At the same time, in the matter of children receiving cards, we should not only see the negative effects, but also learn to play its positive role with the help of force. For example, let children talk about the plot on the card, in addition to retelling the existing plot in the animation, they can also create new plots through imagination and write them down, which not only exercises their oral expression ability, but also exercises their written expression ability.

Usually, the combat effectiveness value of a character will be marked on the card. First of all, we can understand the magnitude of combat effectiveness and compare the winning and losing relationship of individuals. Then we can combine randomly to see how these combinations are possible in the winning-losing relationship based on the combat power value, and exercise the children's perception and calculation ability of numbers. Guiding children to draw characters on cards by hand, or turning two-dimensional pictures into three-dimensional sculptures with clay sculptures, invisibly cultivates children's practical ability and aesthetic ability. By guiding children to understand the ratio of the cost price to the selling price of the card, this paper discusses whether the investment in the card is worthwhile, how to manage their own property, how to spend reasonably, and how to cultivate their financial quotient. Guiding them from collecting cards to collecting stamps and coins can strengthen their study of historical geography and other disciplines. In short, if adults can think more, then children's card collection can be transformed into learning resources, because with the help of children's love, learning must be both happy and efficient.

Some children are addicted to it, and it is more likely that it is not the attraction of cards, but the tension between parents and children in real life, no sense of accomplishment and no sense of belonging. At this time, we can't play all the boards on the cards, we must solve the problem fundamentally.

After discussing the related issues of cards with my son, I told him that Xia Zi, a disciple of Confucius in The Analects of Confucius, said, "Although there are trails, there must be considerable people, and gentlemen are afraid of mud." It may be interesting to study anything deeply, but in order to achieve a longer-term goal in life, we must make a choice. If there were only two activities to choose from, one was playing cards and the other was reading, which would you choose? He told me to choose reading, because reading can be broader and deeper, but cards can't. The son's choice made the father put down his hanging heart.

(Author: Yu, a Chinese teacher in the experimental middle school attached to Beijing Normal University)

(Guangming Daily)