No matter your socioeconomic status, as parents you want your kids to have a better life than you do. But instead of launching a generation of happy young adults who feel driven to succeed, parents who are hyper-focused on doing everything “right” have created a country full of kids who are stressed-out, burned-out, and depressed. According to psychologist and author Madeline Levine, “Our current version of success is a failure.”
In her new book, “Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success,” Levine says that parents are preoccupied with “a narrow and shortsighted vision of success,” and that we rely on our kids to “provide status and meaning in our own lives.” It’s a harmful combination, weighing kids down with serious issues — “stress, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, poor coping skills, and unhealthy reliance on others for support and direction, and a weak sense of self,” Levine says — when we should be trying to teach them to be resilient and independent if we really want them to succeed in life.
When people are too caught up in finding the “right” way to parent, they can end up being physically present — perhaps too much so — but emotionally disengaged. “While you think you’re giving your kids everything, they often think you are bored, pushy, and completely oblivious to their real needs,” Levine writes.
A child’s ability to succeed in life doesn’t necessarily correlate to a parent’s well-intentioned efforts anyway, says Bryan Caplan, a father of three and the author of “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think.”
“Today’s typical parents strive to mentally stimulate their children and struggle to protect their brains from being turned to mush by television and video games” pushing them instead to strive for academic success, he told Yahoo! Shine. “Yet by adulthood, the fruit of parents’ labor is practical invisible. Children who grew up in enriched homes are no smarter than they would have been if they’d grown up in average homes.”
But as parents push kids to succeed — and try too hard to shield them from failure –their kids are soaking up the stress and increasingly unable to do anything without their parents’ input.
“In the name of love, we parents have gutted our kids’ sense of self-reliance and independence,” David Arthur Code, author of “Kids Pick Up On Everything,” told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. “It’s as if we run out in front of our children, removing every obstacle from their path, or else showering them with positive reinforcement if they stumble. Sure, they feel safe and protected and loved — for now — but they never learn how to confront failures in childhood when the stakes are low, so when they become adults, they fold like a house of cards at the first adversity.”
The result: A generation of kids and young adults who are afraid of failure, who engage in dangerous behavior in order to cope with stress they don’t understand, or who don’t know how to navigate life without their parents’ guidance.
“The cost of this relentless drive to perform at unrealistically high levels is a generation of kids who resemble nothing so much as trauma victims,” Levine writes. “They become preoccupied with events that have passed – obsessing endlessly on a possible wrong answer or a missed opportunity. They are anxious and depressed and often self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. Sleep is difficult and they walk around in a fog of exhaustion. Other kids simply fold their cards and refuse to play.”
The solution? Levine suggests that parents step back and reevaluate what’s important to them, create a new definition of success, and then focus on fostering resilience in their kids.
“How would you ever know if you were capable or not if you didn’t have to opportunity to try, fail, and pick yourself up again?” she asks.
Levine says that parents who want to raise kids who can really succeed in life should focus on teaching them these life skills:
Resourcefulness. Teaching kids how to self-soothe, acknowledging that there may be several ways to solve a problem, and making them search for a solution slightly outside of their comfort zone can help kids learn how to make the most out of the situations in which they find themselves. That, in turn, helps them to be successful regardless of which path they take in life. But be patient — children have limited resources, and it can take time to figure out what to do. It’s tempting to try to rush them or, worse, save time by doing everything for them yourself.
Enthusiasm. “Without enthusiasm, kids are just going through the motions,” Levine points out. One major parental pitfall is expecting your kids to automatically admire the same things you do. Instead of pushing your kids toward your own goals, observe their interests and remember that their aspirations don’t have to be the same as yours.
Creativity. Academic excellence is all well and good, but some kids just aren’t cut out for life on the Dean’s list. The skills they learn from creative pursuits can help them learn how to think outside of the box, solve problems, and succeed in non-academic settings. Keep crafts within easy reach, Levine suggests, steer kids toward open-ended activities like reading and building with blocks, and offer plenty of positive feedback.
A strong work ethic. “In addition to focusing on effort, persistence, and discipline, do make sure to notice other components of a good work ethic like integrity or the ability to communicate and collaborate,” Levine writes. Make sure that the work your child is expected to do is reasonable — expecting a kindergartener to perform like a second grader just sets him up for failure and you for disappointment — and be sure to show them that you can embrace hard work as well.
Self-efficacy. Along with having good self-esteem and self-control, self-efficacy — the belief that we have a measure of control over what we do with our lives — is crucial to success. “Don’t project your own anxiety as your child moves forward,” Levine writes. Doing so prevents kids from pushing past existing boundaries and trying new things, and robs them of their ability to solve problems on their own.“We do not have to choose between a children’s well-being and their success. Both are inside jobs. They are developed when kids are guided and encouraged to build a sense of self internally” Levine writes. “Ultimately, it is only our children themselves who pass judgment on their success, or lack thereof, in their lives.”
I was going to write my opinion on this in some detail and I think that’s what Slaus wanted me to do but considering what I’m dealing with personally I don’t have a braincell left to give to this.
Do I agree with it…a lot of it yes. I’m not a parent who believes in it’s my way or the highway parenting style, in most situations. I think the “you have no choice” approach can be harmful to the child.
They have to learn personal responsibility and one of the best ways to do that is to allow them to choose their own path.
What do you think OHN is this some ol new age BS or does this doctor have a point?
Speak on it!
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I believe in gently pushing them to always do better because life is but a series of challenges for us to keep conquering and learning from. When I see my boys slacking in areas I know they can do better in, I push them to be better. Not tigermom style but in this house, a C grade is the same as an F. :: shrugs :: just how I feel.
Still my wife and I look at the things they are very passionate about and we are sure to nurture those things as well. Both of my kids are seriously into drawing and music so… we nurture that. BUT… we know what it takes to succeed in this world and we won't allow them to slack in the Hard Sciences like math.
In the end, there is a balance.
My problem with a lot of parents is when they push their own dreams and aspirations onto their kids. If you were an all american quarterback, and your kid prefers mozart and dungeons and dragons… oh well.
"My problem with a lot of parents is when they push their own dreams and aspirations onto their kids. If you were an all american quarterback, and your kid prefers mozart and dungeons and dragons… oh well."
with all my self-inflicted shortcomings, if there's one thing i DON'T want to do with the tot, that would be it. she has her own plans of what she might want to do or what she likes. all i can do is to be honest about working hard and being honest about it with her. right now, she's into dubstep (at 3!) i'm making sure she listens to who it began with and knows something about its history.
Agreed!
im not a parent, but i somewhat see it.
maybe it's just being older/allegedly wiser person, saying 'well see back in MY day' perspective, but truly the younger generation IS on some different stuff.
they have access like never before, companies that will cater to them, parents who yell at teachers to grade with green ink vs red, redshirting 5 yrs olds to give them an athletic/academic advantage, bombardment of people with no real talent reaping rewards of being rich and famous – has lead to a generation that is very insulated, self-absorbed, and entitled.
this study alone (among many others) shows that we've shaped them to have the wrong set of priorities. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-05-11/ne…
they didn't get there themselves.
"redshirting 5 yrs olds to give them an athletic/academic advantage"
I really hope you are exaggerating. My son's principal held his son back two years in H.S. show he would have such a physical advantage his senior year it would guarantee a four-year scholarship. Some parents are logical nuts.
i REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALY wish i was.
i watched this months ago..and i was shocked. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400898n
if you can't watch the video http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/15/opinion/l… http://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/what-would-kari…
I watched the video. O_o Those parents are the intellectual upgrade of the Toddlers and Tiaras mothers. Smarter, but just as screwed up in the head. I was upset last year because I couldn't get my daughter into Kindergarten early. Now she reads at a second grade level and she's the tallest kid in her class by about four inches. I see no advantage to wanting your child to be over-sized and under-challenged educationally. What happens when the parent can no longer manipulate reality to ensure the child comes out on top? Idiocy.
LOL. that's the best way of putting it!!!!
all it boils down to is people with means using they system to their advantage. but then claiming that certain people/groups are lazy and all they have to do is pull themselves up from the bootstraps to get ahead.
-_-
I'm a parent and understand that there are just certain things my little girl won't be able to do. Just like there are ABSOLUTELY some things that are not within my realm of competence.
I have a very hard time with math and always have. My mother understood this, as it is her weakness as well. My father and stepfather REFUSED to believe that I just could not seem to understand my trig homework. They pushed me so hard and my continuous failure made me feel like an idiot because I just could not understand it at all. My memories of that experience have shaped the way I parent and teach my daughter. It is quite possible to push your child too hard, and I don't think many parents realize it. Everyone learns in different ways, which is something that needs to be reinforced.
Ugh, maths. My mum was the same way as your father and step-father, but realized way too late that I was just a dunce at maths PERIOD rather than lazy (I mean, come on – I was passing everything else!). If I could have learned/been taught maths at a slower pace, it would be great. But the education curriculum waits for no one. *sigh*
i wasn't good at math until much later in life. IN school my math bordered on remedial at best other than geometry and physics. for some reason those subjects clicked.
BUT I also know that a big part of me not getting math was that I didn't learn and understand mathematics like most people therefore i can't be taught it like everyone else is. But when it clicked.. it really clicked.
which is why we will get a math tutor, send our kids to one on one math camps if that is what it takes.
but nawl….. math is far too important to allow anyone to slack. I don't believe for a second that Asians, Indians and Nigerians are just all around better at math. Nawl… if you know any Asian, Nigerian or Indian parents you simply realize that kids aren't given a choice in the matter.. it's math or nothing. Want to play soccer? cool.. long as your math grades are there. Want to participate in the art competition? cool..long as you get that B in algebra.
That's just me though. I know that doesn't work for everyone.
It took me EONS to get my multiplication tables down pat, and I had to work extra hard just to scrape a B. It was going somewhat well until Grade 10, when I got hit with a chicken pox/pink eye double-whammy that took me out for a month. You'd think I was out for 6 months with the way I fell waaaaaaaaay behind in maths. >_< Try as I might, I never could catch back up.
I don't have any children yet, but there has to be a better way to teach that subject. Don't want my babies feeling like a dumbshyt for two decades, like I did.
My daughter starting kindergarten this week and my son going off to college Saturday sparked a conversation between me and my supervisor the other day, as he has kids the same age. He said the most important thing to him is that his kids are happy and have a solid sense of self, and everything else will take care of itself. I told him I want my kids to know what it takes to be successful and how to deal with failure, and the rest will take care of itself. Of course the optimal thing is to have balance between the two. But you can give a child a mindset and an environment that will make them happy, but when they leave that environment… then what if they have no tools for success?
I believe you should focus on giving kids the tools to be successful while exposing them to various experiences that may or may not make them happy. Since I defined success for my kids as giving your best effort toward whatever it is your working on, whether they got A's or C's never mattered as much as whether they tried their best… but of course trying their best results in more A's than C's. I won't ever tell them what they should be, where they should go, etc., but if they don't have to tools to succeed in the path that they choose, they won't be happy anyway. I just make sure I push them away from mediocrity.
I'm not a parent, but I can see this…look at some of the posts on here. Parents going on interviews with/for their child, everyone wins – protection from failure…parents wanting to be their kids friend
Those children are in for a rude wake-up call from life.
That is so setting them up for failure. When my daughter started middle school; as hard as it was for dad and myself, we let her resolve her own academic challenges, only intervening when asked. Last month I went with her to her new student orientation for college. I couldn't believe how many parents were freaking out when they found out they would not be consulted for things they have always had control over and that the students would be responsible for themselves (gasp!) . One woman actually asked if she would be notified if her son didn't attend classes.
i wasn't best student in school. hell, there was a point where i settled for mediocrity in subjects i knew i could pass so it could match my idiocy and near-failing grades in math and science. my SAT and ACT scores were low (759 and 22 repectively), so i knew college was out of the question right then. i failed physics and algebra 2 in high school and my mom put me in sylvan because i didn't understand the basics required for those kinds of subjects. my only outlet away from the failure was piano and dance. if i didn't have either, i would've flunked out of school. i have an associates degree (i couldn't afford to keep going for my bachelors), despite reluctantly giving up on my dreams of being a vet. even with all the tutoring in the world, i couldn't get the hang of math past algebra 2 and if i couldn't get that, the sciences that went with it were impossible, let alone a waste of money to attempt.
looking back now, i wish i didn't give up so easily. and now that i have a child, i'm afraid that my lack of skills would rub off on her because i lack abilities to teach and guide her. there are times when i worry about pushing her too hard because i know she knows, but she takes forever to tell me what the answers are and then she shuts down ad then i get frustrated with her. but on any given day when i'm not teaching, she reciting her numbers to twenty, her alphabets and saying and spelling her first and last name. so while i think she'll be ok, but if these are the types of habits she has and i can't curb them, i'm afraid of what she's going to be like when she starts kindergarten next year. but this article does provide quite a few helpful tips i can use to try and help out relationship as her primary and supplementary teacher.
Based on the perspectives you have on issues, and the way you express them, you are obviously more intelligent than most folks, and much more knowledgeable and well read than many people with advanced degrees. Lack of skills won't rub off on your daughter, but desire to learn and express what you know will. My younger son used to frustrate me when he was little because he took a long time to pick things up and he mumbled his answers, said words wrong, and said the wrong words. Well, now I still can hardly understand what he says, but he is an honor student that gets better grades than his brother, me, or my brothers ever got. I had to learn how to raise him over time, and you have to learn how to raise your daughter. I guarantee of everything you have tried to teach her, she has learned how much her mother cares about her. Even now you care enough to keep learning how to teach her better. She is fortunate to have you for a mother. Hope you don't mind my input.
of course not, i welcome input. but the one thing you said "Lack of skills won't rub off on your daughter, but desire to learn and express what you know will", i will definitely keep that in mind as well. sometimes, she sits with me on my language lessons and picks up a word or two of what i'm learning. with that, i think she'll be ok. thanks, DT
Not a parent, am an Uncle. I have watched my nephew being guaged, measured, tested, examined and judged, week on week, month on month, year on… You get the picture? He's now fifteen and he hates school, just hates it because he's never been allowed to just enjoy anything and he has now had enough and can't be told. He was a smart little boy, I don't know about genius but interested in things, good with maths and music, not stupid. They've killed his joy and he feels a failure because he's not flying at the top of the class even though his results are acceptable. Acceptable is not enough these days. Yet I look around the world now at people from every nation who were told that education was a way up and out and have found that it's no longer true at all. It's just another con, because the opportunities are just not there to be had. In the meantime we crush their souls in a hot house to overqualify for ultimately unremarkable jobs. I saw a lecture recently where a gifted scientist said that given global warming, uncontrollable demographics, international migration and financial instability, the best skills that he could pass on to his son was to learn how to use a gun. Thank God I never had kids, the stress would have killed me by now! I need to lie down.
I believe in frank talks about actions, consequences, pros and cons – that's how I was raised. I always knew that if I applied myself to UVW, XYZ would be the reward – but whether that reward was worth it was my problem/choice. My mother stopped monitoring my homework/learning activity after 1st grade basically, and only helped me when I asked her to. When I wanted something or start a hobby, she'd always tell me upfront to really make up my mind – and if I still wanted it after a while, to make that money COUNT (because we never had much).
The only thing she pushed me into/towards was social activities (sports clubs etc.) because she didn't want me to become as socially 'impaired' as she had been as a kid. (To call those attempts miserable failures would be the understatement of the decade though…)
I was aware of the long term consequences of my actions from a very early age, but I was raised to learn to make decisions, to acknowledge failure and mistakes as lessons and to make up my mind rather than kept on a narrow path.
In some ways, I'm thankful because that made me become the free spirit I am.
In other ways… man, sometimes I wish I'd have had the pressure to apply my capacities instead of knowing my alternatives… and become something that earns the big money. But that's only sometimes.
My family is not big on 'success' – my family is about being your own person, being a good person, fending for yourself and working on your character as long as you live… we don't measure as much importance by societal achievement as we do by character and backbone.