Under Pressure

The hype around getting into college is more intense than ever. Both news media and social media fuel this frenzy to achieve the ultimate status symbol: acceptance to a top twenty U.S. college or university. The competition is fierce, and the stakes are high.

Parents want the best for their children, so they push for the grades, scores, and extracurricular activities. How else are we parents meant to prepare our children for a life that is so challenging? The future feels so unpredictable that we want the best opportunities for our children. So, we push. We push because we worry, and we hope that our children will have access to the best, because that is what they need and deserve.

The problem is that in our ardent hope to provide our children with opportunities, we have created what researchers are calling “toxic achievement culture” in our children’s lives. We are the primary perpetrators of our children’s pain.

Adverse Childhood Experiences

 This documented and researched phenomenon is so detrimental that it has earned a place on the list of experiences that thwart children’s development and their ability to succeed in school – what educators refer to as Adverse Childhood Experiences.

To give an idea of the severity of what is considered an ACE, or Adverse Childhood Experience, which denotes a child “at-risk,” some examples are having an incarcerated parent, witnessing domestic violence, being exposed to gun violence, or living in poverty with daily hunger. Any of these factors (and often combinations of them) contributes to stress in the home environment that causes children to struggle, either socially, emotionally, academically, or some combination of the three.

Therefore, when researchers found that children who were/are victims of “toxic achievement culture” were experiencing detrimental stress symptoms comparable to the signs of stress caused by an ACE, they added “toxic achievement culture” to the list of factors that determine a child is “at-risk.”

It is noteworthy that children coming from families and homes with “all the advantages” are now experiencing such severe anxiety and stress that they are also considered “at-risk.”

Some examples:

A girl posting YouTube videos about how she is so anxious when she sees a new assignment pop up on Canvas that she must complete it immediately, otherwise she can’t relax, and she’s always on a hamster wheel of never relaxing because there is always another assignment to do.

Students regularly feeling anxiety, anger, fear, depression, insecurity, loneliness, emptiness, panic. Some kids report starting to experience these feelings and this kind of stress as early as 10 years old.

…smiling on the outside, screaming on the inside…

Leahy Ph. D., Director of The American Institute for Cognitive Therapy NYC, states, “The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s.”

Back in the 1950’s, patients showing those symptoms were institutionalized. Now, they’re applying to college.

What Can I Do About My Child’s Performance Anxiety and Stress?

The good news is, there is absolutely something you can do. In her book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic, and What We Can Do About It, Jennifer Breheny Wallace reveals the secret to breaking these poisonous patterns.

It all comes down to showing your child that they matter. She emphasizes that children learn very quickly how to please or disappoint us based upon external performance, such as doing well on a test, or pitching a no-hitter. We have to find ways of helping them see that they matter and are needed in the world apart from how they perform or how they score. Some ideas:

Spend time with your child that is just quality time – whatever you like to do together.

Set aside designated times in the week when you will talk about school stuff, such as progress on applications, and the rest of the time – discuss non-performance-oriented things.

Encourage your child to get involved in something that brings them joy, where they are needed by others, and feel a sense of belonging. (A team, a community service group, a massive Lego project with a few friends.)

These activities are about feeling significant – feeling needed. Feeling as though one matters. This type of connection grounds a person and reminds them of the things that are important in life, and that they matter too.

Building these positive feelings equips a person to handle the challenges that today’s college applicants experience because they become aware that they matter apart from external achievements, and this feeling of mattering will ultimately make the highs and lows of the college acceptance process easier to tolerate. To further ease the burden of applying to college, assign your child’s essay writing process to me. Writing the essays can be less stressful for you and your child. Simply reach out to me at stacey@stepbystepessay.com. It will be one less thing to worry about.