Bad Parents
By Tom McGrath
Page 8 of 9
To be fair, in one way, this generation’s fears are justified. Thanks to the sheer number of kids now coming of age and the growing number of educated, affluent families aiming for the tippy-top, it is harder than ever to get into an elite college. But in another way, they’re delusional: Study after study has shown that what really makes a difference in whether people thrive in life has less to do with where they went to school than with what internal traits they possess.
That’s a message that some parents, alas, never grasp — even when their kid is so stressed out that he ends up with headaches or stomach pains or much worse.
“There are parents who perhaps themselves went to very prestigious colleges and who struggle with the notion that their child lives in a very different world and may not have access to those schools,” says Nolan. “In many of those situations, the student will say to me, ‘I know I’m not going to get in.’ Obviously, they know they’re going to end up disappointing their parents. That’s a heavy burden.”
The great irony is that many of those kids have been so over-parented that it’s the first time they have to deal with real adversity, so they’re literally at a loss how to handle it. It must seem to them like the ultimate bait and switch: You asked nothing of me … until you asked everything.
Then again, maybe the ones we should really worry about are those kids who manage to jump through all the achievement hoops, the ones who are so focused that they actually grasp what we’ve told them they should be reaching for.
“You show me a kid gunning for Brown, and I’ll show you a kid gunning — first, last and always — for himself,” says Caitlin Flanagan, author of To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife and one of our keenest observers of contemporary domestic life. “Which means 20 years down the line, he’s going to have a pretty good chance of feeling hollow.”
KEN GINSBURG SAYS he has seen signs of hope. The AAP statement about the importance of play received an enormous amount of attention from the media and the public. “It touched a nerve,” he says. “It was about the feeling parents have that we’re going in the wrong direction.” He’s seen signs of recognition in his private practice as well, even if parents aren’t quite sure what to do about it. “The most common reaction I get is, ‘I get it. I’m stressed, but I don’t know how to help my kid succeed. I just don’t know how to get off this treadmill, because all the neighbors are doing this.’”
The solution, Ginsburg believes, lies in redefining success. What matters more than anything else is that we listen to and support our kids, while holding them to high expectations — not on their résumés, but in traits the world has long recognized as worthwhile: generosity, compassion, kindness, creativity, responsibility.
Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Next
User comments
|
