This month, I am asking parents to consider, “How important is your child’s success? Is it important enough to undermine your own personal value system or to erode your child’s ability to distinguish between right and wrong?” I am beginning to see an unacceptable progression. A series of news articles over the last few months on the topic of teenager anxiety made me realize that the pressures our children endure are linked to increasingly immoral behavior.
You, too, have either read the articles or are familiar with the highly-publicized problem. Our children face undeniable stress, and that stress comes from how we, as a society, define success for a high school student. Many high school students today face expectations from their family, their community, and/or themselves to
· Take an increasingly rigorous course load,
· Earn perfect, or near-perfect, grades,
· Assume leadership of an organization,
· Participate in a diverse array of extracurricular activities,
· Attain strong standardized test scores,
· Matriculate to an “excellent” college,
· Choose the “right” major, and
· Secure a job that will ensure self-sufficiency.
No one can refute the connection between our own overly ambitious standards and any resulting mental instability of our children. Some children, and perhaps even some parents, will not be able to withstand the pressure. In many ways, the process is equivalent to the “survival of the fittest,” as college dropout rates continue to soar.
I have not read in these teenage anxiety articles, although evident to me, about the link between our children’s moral degradation and the quest for elusive success, yet I witness that degradation with increasing frequency and sadly see evidence of cultural tolerance.
To cope with the pressure, high school students skip school or class when unprepared for an assessment. Usually due to poor planning but often accompanied with a conflict the night before the assessment, athletic or otherwise, unexcused students skip school or class to avoid a test.
To maintain perfect or strong attendance, presumably in order to minimize required exams, students misrepresent the reasons for absences.
Cheating appears to be escalating as well. Students are often savvier about technology than their teachers and deftly use that know-how to their advantage. They also may exploit accommodations, skillfully explore the internet, ignore take-home test constraints, or otherwise deceive teachers. Where is the line between right and wrong crossed? Are parents at times sitting idly, ignoring indications of immoral decision-making? Are parents going even further at times, aiding and abetting their children’s pursuit of “success?”
Navigating these parental waters is by no means easy, and I am not sitting in judgment, but I hope that by unveiling what I deem to be a very concerning trend, I will at least make parents question each step. As parents, our paramount responsibility is to raise grounded children who move through life with a moral compass and a strong sense of fairness. One look at the daily headlines underscores the importance of ensuring our children’s strong personal values.
Parents can foster their children’s emotional health and security by creating an environment where they feel safe to fail – where a poor performance on one assessment due to inadequate preparation becomes a learning lesson for the next one, and where students may indeed have to take a final exam in lieu of securing the requisite attendance and in lieu of spreading contagions throughout the school.
The success we have targeted as a society is in fact elusive. True happiness and reward comes not from ticking off the above list but instead from a life well-lived.