Abstract
                                  
In Chinese family, parents always hurt children’s face intentionally or unintentionally. But the satisfaction of needs for face is a common pursuit for all people in our life, especially children. This paper, based on the face theory of Brown & Levison, analyzes Chinese Parents’ face threatening acts against children in family education and puts forward suggestions of strategies for Chinese parents to save their children’s positive and negative face in family education. This can help Chinese parents to build a harmonious relationship with their children and benefit children a lot in the progress of their growth and development.

Key words: family education, face threatening acts, positive face, negative face, face-saving strategies

摘 要

在中国家庭中，家长总是在有意或无意间伤害到自己孩子的面子，但在生活中，对面子的需求是所有人的共同追求，孩子们也不例外。本文依据布朗和列文森的面子理论，分析了在家庭教育中家长对孩子面子的威胁行为，并针对这些行为提出了保护孩子积极面子和消极面子的相关策略，从而帮助在家长和孩子之间构建和睦的家庭关系，使孩子可以更加健康的成长。

关键词： 家庭教育；面子威胁行为；积极面子；消极面子；面子保全策略

1. Introduction
Face is an important aspect of politeness, which has been regarded as one of the most important factors for the successful communications especially for the cross- cultural communication among people from different countries. As everyone knows, eastern people are very famous for their concern about face in order to satisfy their self-esteem and vanity. This phenomenon also exists in family education, which is particularly the case for Chinese parents. As a result, the protection of children’s face counts a lot if parents are to build a harmonious relationship with their children and communicating smoothly with their children is very necessary.