Why are Parents and Kids Stressed
Many of us at one time or another have been involved in a family battle over homework? Why are we so concerned about homework and academic performance, anyway? Why can’t we just cut our kids some slack and let them do the best they can?
Is it because the majority of students in the incoming freshman classes at our Ivy League universities are graduates of high schools outside the United States? Is it because many of our technical service jobs, accounting, medical and engineering jobs are going to well trained students in other countries? Or is it because the college or university that we went to twenty or thirty years ago wouldn’t even look at our application today because of the average grades we got in high school?
It is all of those reasons, and more. Parents realize the tremendous pressure and competition their kids face today. How are they going to make it into the college of their choice? How do you spell “stress?”
When parents are stressed, kids are stressed. Kids are stressed with the pressure to perform, in games, sports, school work. There’s no down time, no time to do nothing. They are always racing from one activity to another. As a result, kids are left with the fear of failing, failing their parents, their friends, society, feeling like life is over if they can’t make it. They have to study hard, and grades are always in the back of their minds. When they get into high school, academic success is their number one issue. It’s a sink of swim mentality: if you don’t get the right grades, you can’t get into the college of your choice. The pressure is so great that some high schools are no longer publishing the honor roll, because too many teens who did not make it become suicidal.
Middle school is no walk in the park, either. There is so much emotional and physical change going on for middle schoolers. They learn about complex friendships, sex, drugs, drinking. They rarely take their school work seriously, or at least as seriously as their parents wish they would. There’s too much else happening in their lives. And as parents, we tear our hair out getting them to think about doing their homework. No wonder teenage boys are so sullen and uncommunicative. All their parents do is complain!
As parents, we fear that if we don’t push our kids they won’t succeed, and the academic stress and family battles mount.