Abstract: The left-behind children in the rural China is a special group whose parents or only father/mother went out to the urban and leave their children behind in the hometown. They generally have been taken care of by the other person even by themselves. The present study summarize literatures about the historical background, the definition of the rural left-behind children, some conclusion on their mental health, self-consciousness, emotion and social support, social behavior, personality, achievement and interpersonal relationship in school, family and life etc. The characteristics of former researches appear the “22N” model which has some problems. It certainly has some shortcoming and limitation of practice. As a result, new ideas of theoretic research and intervene strategy are：the left-behind children are not the problematic group, and they have individual difference. Most of important is they hold psychological resource of development and mature. However, the correlated researches and intervene must be on the basis of social needs.

Key words: left-behind children in the rural China, psychology, intervene, protective factors