Your child is greater than the sum of their talents

trigger warning: suicide, depression, anxiety, mental health

My elementary school daughters brought home a flyer this week about making time for self-care. Not hygiene and organizing your school work, but actually mental health self-care. In the school newsletter they included a “mental health” checklist for parents that might help identify if our kids are struggling with anxiety. And I am grateful for these tools, but it is also alarming to me that it is needed at all. Why is anxiety and depression on the rise in our children and young people?

As a parent, it has been heartbreaking to hear several stories in recent months come out about young people with big, successful; seemingly ideal lives; tragically die of suicide. It’s already difficult as a parent to worry about all the wrong things that could hurt our kids as they grow up. Things like online predators, addiction, physical injuries, car accidents, or abusive relationships to name a few. But even if they do all the “right” things, maybe the “right things” end up hurting our children some day too?

So how do we raise kids in a pressurized society that leaves them stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed before they even get out of elementary school?

Under severe pressure

Let’s consider for a moment the severe pressure that our children and young people are under in the state of our current way of life:

• the awards assemblies every marking period
• the travel teams, all-star teams, and year-round leagues
• the red/yellow/green behavior charts displayed in the front of the classroom for all your peers to see your struggles
• the recess that gets taken away for taking too long to finish your work
• test prep, standardized testing, and high stakes academics
• the jam-packed schedule on weekdays and doubled on weekends
• the peer pressure to have all the latest technology
• the dopamine drip from likes, comments, and follows
• the constant barrage of everyone’s highlight reel “life” displayed on social media
• the idolization of internet ‘influencer’ or youtube star status

And let me be honest, the pressure is on for us parents too and in all the same ways and more. Even more, we feel the pressure to make sure our kids are signed up for the travel teams, and all the clubs and activities, and to somehow PROVE to everyone that MY KID IS AWESOME!

All this pressure is sucking the life out of our kids’ joy. Our kids are left worrying about how they can prove that their life and talents are “good enough” both to you (their parent) and to the world. Even more, we – as parents – are on a hamster wheel running round and round trying also to prove that our kids’ talents (and ultimately our own parenting, right?) is “good enough” to everyone?

Generation Burnt Out

As a public high school teacher, I have experience with young people from all different kinds of interests, talents, family dynamics, and challenges. In our society, we often hear our young people described as having an ‘entitlement’ problem. We hear a lot about the helicopter and lawnmower parents getting rid of every obstacle from kids’ lives today. We hear a lot about participation trophies and political correctness and anti-bullying efforts. And sure, all of that has led to a generation of kids that expect an adult to bail them out when the going gets tough.

But what we don’t really talk about is the level of burn out in our kids at increasingly younger ages. Most of my students’ first question when I give them any work to do is, “How many points is this worth?” as they decide how much of their energy they need to use on this particular task compared to the rest of the other tasks they have to do for the day.

I have had young people break down in tears after class because they got a 98% on a test instead of a 100%. I have had athletes quit sports at the varsity level because they’ve been playing the sport since they were 7 and it’s just not that fun anymore. I check in with my students once a week on a mental health chart and every single week I have kids reporting that they are struggling because it all feels too heavy. (the friendships and relationships but also the grades, the sports, the overscheduled evenings, the pressure to build up your resume for college applications).

Literally every aspect of our kids’ lives these days is set to competitive mode and then catalogued through social media (either by themselves or by their parents) to hold up and compare to everyone else’s journey. Not much is left for our kids that is just for the fun of it. Our kids have to win or at the very least, prove that they’ve progressed. Our children’s days are chopped up into timeframes all of which have a purpose and all of which they are expected to be “on.” We have apps that track their every move on the smart phone they carry at all times. They are monitored, measured, tutored, managed, and adjusted to make sure they are giving their maximum output at all times in all activities.

The pressure is so severe that, in my experience, our young people are responding in two ways:
(1) working relentlessly and in a near-constant state of anxiety. Operating on a High-Low scale of being super up when things are good and super down when things are difficult
(2) already burnt out and apathetic. Hoping to do the bare minimum just to get to adulthood where they believe they will “just be able to do things they like”

The whole child is greater than the sum of their talents

Your straight A student is more than just a brainiac – they are might also be a good big cousin, an impressive stand up comedian specializing in one-liners, and a stellar UNO player. Your first chair violinist is more than just a musician – they might be master juggler of tennis balls, and an exceptional internet sleuth for their friends when it comes to ex-boyfriends, and the one in your home that always remembers to water the plants. Our sons and daughters are living lives in which they are more than just our sons and daughters (their own story!) and in those lives, they are certainly more than their biggest talent that so obviously makes us (their parent) proud.

For a personal example – our oldest son is athletic, always has been, it’s in his DNA as a child of two collegiate athletes. And I knew from the beginning hints of this athleticism that I did not want that to be the thing that defined him. He might hear an awful lot from other people “how great at sports he is”, but it is my personal mission that he knows deep inside himself that he is great at lots of other things too. He is also a great friend, and a loved grandchild, and a fishing mentor to his little brothers, and a volunteer within the church youth group, and really good at making breakfast casserole on Saturday mornings, and an encouraging teammate, and a student who is respectful. But unless we take some of our own focus and attention off of the talented athlete version of him and remember to put some focus and attention on all the other parts of him too, it will be pretty hard for him to internalize all the other stuff. Sure, we are proud and we love to see him excel at sports, but the sum of his success in sports does not amount to more than all the other things that make him exactly him.

And this doesn’t only apply to sports. I am continually trying to remind our oldest daughter how to set boundaries for herself. She is generous and kind to a fault; definitely one of the people the flight attendants are talking to when they demonstrate putting your own mask on before helping others. But she gets so much positive reinforcement from helping and being a role model; from us, from her teachers, from family members. I can see it is a lot of pressure for a ten year old. And yes, we want her to be a generous, helping role model, but she can play and be silly too. If she wants to be lazy all Saturday afternoon and watch 90’s romcoms while eating 13 bowls of cereal – we need to make sure she gets the time and space and encouragement (!) to do that too. We have to remind ourselves to set our own boundaries for relying on her help (so hard to do when she’s the kid that complains the least about pitching in!)

challenges, risks, and competition are still good things!

I don’t believe young people should be shielded from challenges, risks, and competitions. These are all very important parts of growing up, learning your own abilities, and striving to be your best. I’m simply suggesting that we could do much better job of drawing boundaries around the parts of growing up that are supposed to be the carefree and fun parts of childhood.

So many of my high school students talk to me about the dread they have to get any older. Most adults talk to them about how hard being a grown up is (“you think high school is hard? wait until you have to get a job and be an adult!”), but my students are already exhausted and burnt out. Being an adult is worse than it is now!? That is depressing and overwhelming. They are already working so hard to prove themselves. So many young people are thinking – does life ever just feel carefree or peaceful?

As parents, we need to make sure that not every aspect of our kids’ lives is a competition. It’s good to win and sucks to lose, but it’s always fun to play the game at all. Everyone has talents that are unique and vast and they might change over time as you meet new people or travel to new places or become curious about something you read about someday.

Release the pressure gauge

If you are ready to ease up on that pressure that your kids undoubtedly feel, here are three small things you can do today. Start off small and keep moving in the direction of giving joy back to your kids’ childhood. Put joy in and release the tension from your own parenting too!

Related posts:

Intentional Parenting: Personal Email for your tween Fun Parent Friday: Empty Hand Surprise Parenting an Athlete: A Game with Bad Calls Tween Communication Tool: Shared notebook