"I heard that young people have started to raise mango pits?!" What is this joke?

Summer vacation is the season when a large number of fruits are put on the market, and it is also the season for primary, secondary and university students to have a holiday and relax. Recently, a new game has emerged among young people, which is to comb the hair of mango pits. Some people even share various mango pit diaries on social platforms. Is this a waste of time and spiritual emptiness, or is it a reasonable psychological need and a creative game?

Psychological needs for growth

Combing the mango pit means cleaning and drying the mango pit, and combing the hair with a toothbrush, so that it looks like a furry little animal. You can also dye it with different colors and add different decorations.

Combing the mango pits is actually an alternative to raising pets. Just like humans like other furry living or inanimate objects, it has a psychological comfort effect. Studies have shown that when people touch furry objects, whether cats or dogs or cotton products, fur, etc., they can activate the reward center of the brain and make people feel happy. Further tracing the reasons, this may be related to the fact that humans grew up in the soft and warm embrace of their mothers when they were young, or that primitive people used fur to keep warm.

It is natural for us humans to love dolls. Most modern people have at least one soft doll, perhaps a teddy bear to sleep with, or a rubber duck to play in the water. Even blankets, pillows, and clothes without images may replace parents to meet children's psychological dependence and security needs.

In today's society, academic pressure and competitive pressure are huge, and the relationship between people is not so close. Due to the limitations of time and energy, students cannot keep a living pet to meet the need for intimacy. Anthropomorphic dolls serve as a substitute. In many emerging Internet companies, employees are allowed to bring their own toys to the office. Therefore, the more dolls there are and the more relaxed the office is, the more stressful the work may be. A student who uses a mango pit or a paper dog as a companion may seem outrageous, but in fact he is comforting another self and satisfying the need to be cared for.

Social needs and creative needs

Young people in every era have some novel ways to play games, and are happy to share them with those around them. Before the Internet, when there were no mangoes to eat, wasn't it common for primary school students to make bracelets, make shuttlecocks, sew sandbags, and fold paper cranes or stars out of candy wrappers? After the emergence of social media, sharing your own creative games on the Internet, getting the attention of others, and communicating with others can quickly achieve a kind of social satisfaction.

This is also a creative game of recycling waste. For example, some people add some decorations to mango cores and stick a clip on them to make hairpins, while others dye them and add some wire to make flamingo ornaments. What is the essential difference between this and the art class in school that teaches children to make packaging boxes into pen holders and cans into flower baskets?

Especially in the eyes of scientists, a child and a scientist can share the same surprise. Masaru Tokieda, a mathematician at Stanford University, has collected more than 100 items from daily life, which are both toys and teaching aids. He believes that compared with the sophisticated electronic toys already designed on the market, children prefer to play with packaging boxes because it breaks the rules of the game designed by others and can add autonomy, imagination and creativity.

Parents should try to understand

When parents notice that their children are playing games that may be beyond the experience of adults, they should not easily deny it, thinking that the children are not doing their job properly, wasting time, or mentally abnormal. Instead, they should be tolerant with an open mind, observe with understanding, understand what young people are doing, and even try to play with their children. For young children, help them when they encounter difficulties, guide them to clean up, and cultivate their autonomy and sense of rules; for children in the middle and upper grades of elementary school, just pay attention patiently, and help them when they encounter difficulties and ask for help. If the child does not take the initiative to speak, there is no need to make a fuss.

Children, including adults, are born to love playing. It’s just that adults usually think that games outside of the prescribed tasks are just pastimes and entertainment, but for children, "playing" is not just "playing", but "work", representing emotional needs, the joy of exploration, the courage to persist and creative discoveries, all of which are worthy of attention. Children can experience different emotions and play different roles in games with toys. Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner once said: "If a child can play with all his heart and soul when he is young, then when he grows up, he will also be able to face all the tasks assigned to him with the same concentration."

(The author is a popular science writer and a gold medal reading promoter)