Last week I went to an excellent presentation by Mollie Galloway, Ph.D.
She works with the California based organization:
“CHALLENGE SUCCESS: Championing a Broader Vision of Success for Youth”
There is a lot of useful information on their webpage and I would summarize their mission/ work as follows:
Challenge Success does research that seeks to understand and measure the impact of increasing academic/ performance pressure on our youth. They work directly with students, parents and schools to teach about the negative effects these increasingly high demands are having on our kids, and to suggest solutions for each community, based on their particular needs. www.challengesuccess.org
The primary concern of challenge success is that many students are not developing their whole person (character, health, independence, connection, creativity, enthusiasm and achievement) or allowed the experience of ‘self discovery’ because they are singularly focused on academic and intellectual pursuits to the exclusion of their social, physical and spiritual development.
Here are the research findings I found most meaningful:
PARENTS MATTER
- A parent’s perception about their child’s ability is more important to the child than their actual performance (grades, test scores)
- A parent’s goals for their child and their parenting style strongly correlate to how the child develops related to academics, motivation, self reliance, sense of competence and emotional well being
- If parents are primarily focused on their child’s performance (grades, test scores, status of college choice, ranking in sports, music or other extracurricular activities), their child is at higher risk for depression, acting out, and stress related physical symptoms (headaches, fatigue, illness)
- If parents overemphasize achievement your child is less likely to develop the skills/ desire to take risks or be persistent in pursuit of a goal and they are more likely to cheat, fear failure, have anxiety and may actually have poorer academic performance
PERFORMANCE STRESS
Statistics:
In a survey of 5000 high school students done by Challenge Success:
- 73% said they were always stressed
- 25% said they feel hopeless, sad and don’t care anymore
- 30% get less than 6 hours of sleep per night (9.25 is recommended)
- 70% go to class and pay attention
- 13% said they get any enjoyment from what they are learning
- 93% admit to cheating
Symptoms
The most common symptoms are:
- Fatigue
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Headaches
- Cheating
- Smart kids doing poorly in school
WHAT STUDENTS SAY
“The 3 things that stress me out the most are :
- my parent’s expectations,
- overload in my class schedule/ extracurricular activities
- college application/ selection process”
“I feel like a robot. All I do is what other people want me to do.”
“Everyone is smarter than me. I got a 96 on the test but my friend got 102.”
“I don’t have time to see my friends anymore. I have too much to do.”
“I have no downtime.”
“I have to cheat because everyone else does. If I don’t I can’t compete.”
“I am always tired. I never get enough sleep.”
“If I don’t get an A in this class, I’ll never get into medical school.”
“I feel like I am my parent’s trophy kid.”
“I am afraid to make this decision. What if it is the wrong choice?”
WHAT ARE THE GOALS & HOW PARENTS CAN HELP
These are my THOUGHTS/ WORDS/ BELIEFS based on my experience raising 3 teens (and some of their friends), what I have learned through the parents I coach, several books on this topic by other researchers and the information and ideas shared by the presenter.
GOALS
In moving away from home and parents, the best prepared kids will have the ability to:
- Motivate themselves to achieve what they want. They will work hard at what they have decided is important. This either will or will not match what their parents think is important.
- Successfully live without their parents. This means they need to know how to take care of themselves, manage money, have relationships with peers, be able to make independent decisions and be able to manage their stress (disappointments, change, pressure, loneliness) in healthy ways.
- Make mistakes and recover from them. Since it will be almost impossible to live a mistake free life, learning to take responsibility and be accountable for one’s actions is one of the secrets to a less stressful, more satisfying life.
- Know that there are many paths to success, just as there are many different, equally valid, definitions of success. Kids who have confidence and know themselves are better able to know what they want and follow their passions.
- Maintain perspective about what matters and what does not. College students who can differentiate between small stressors vs. really big ones will have less stress and more confidence. Students who learn that a disappointing grade on one test does not ruin their chances for medical school will be both happier and better able to figure out what they can do to make up for that lower grade.
PARENT’S CAN HELP
- Parents can allow their child to define their own goals and develop their own motivation to accomplish those goals. Kids who live to please their parents, also live in fear of their parents disapproval, which leads them to try harder (or give up completely) to earn their parent’s praise. These kids are likely to feel loved for their accomplishments rather than for themselves. This external focus keeps the teen from learning about what is important to them and what they are willing to work hard for.
- Teenagers need their parents to be their coach and their consultant, not their manager. They need to acquire enough life experience to understand how to be a good friend and how to choose a good friend. They need parents to allow them to spend money foolishly so they can learn to spend it wisely (this might mean sometimes they are broke and can’t get a new pair of jeans or go to the movies, and their parent does not give them the money to make this disappointment go away). Kids need parents to model stress management in ways they would be proud to see replicated in their children. They need some decision making experience before they leave home. My dad says “good judgment comes from bad experiences that usually came from bad judgment.” So parents can allow their children to make some bad decisions that lead to some bad experiences, with the confidence that this is the path to good judgment, eventually.
- Parents who bail their children out of difficult situations (everything from doing their class project at the last minute to not expecting them to confess to a crime they committed) deprive them of the experience and wisdom that comes from managing the impact of their behavior on others. Kids are strongest when parents have confidence in their ability to clean up their own messes. These are the situations that teach kids to apologize, to make amends for any wrongdoing, to learn that they can get caught and that they make choices about how they want to live their lives.
- Parents can set a high bar for excellence while also helping their student create a more balanced life. Lots of kids have high expectations of themselves but when a parent hears their child say, “I don’t have time to see my friends because I have too much school work or too many extracurricular activities” that should be a red flag that their child’s life is out of balance. This is such a perfect example of watching a child miss a key developmental task of adolescence…learning to make and keep friends. Most parents have just the opposite problem and their children are singularly focused on their friends, to the detriment of their schoolwork. In either case, the parent has a chance to help their child develop perspective and manage their stress in a healthy way. Kids get to know themselves through their relationships with others, and their connections with friends are critical to this process. They may have a narrow definition of what success looks like and the price they are paying to achieve it is too high. Parents can help them see alternatives.
These are complex issues, just barely covered here. If you are interested in more information or to talk about your specific child, feel free to contact me.