My goal as an academic coach is to give my high school students a broader, more informed perspective. I strive to help students find life-school balance. I help them realize, for example, the connections among physical fitness, consistent sleep, and a sharp mind. I build their self-awareness about their own academic interests, their learning needs, their organizational skills, and their study habits. I also wade through homework assignments alongside students to identify the teachers’ goals, to ensure thorough completion, and to assess within the assignments where students are most apt to falter.
In recent years, though, I have watched my interactions with students lean increasingly toward therapy. Although I am not a therapist, I find myself spending more time reminding students of their strengths, boosting their self-image, and instilling renewed confidence. I make recommendations to them about how to handle interactions with teachers, parents, and friends. And I calm their nerves. Test anxiety, social anxiety, and a lack of confidence are so prevalent among today’s high schoolers that my primary job has often become to help my students relax first. They must relax in order to be ready to learn, and then I help them find ways to optimize their high school experiences.
I have tried to pinpoint why we face on the heels of the COVID pandemic a new pandemic, a pandemic of anxiety. I believe that today’s children are bombarded with societal and parental expectations, so much so that they can do little more than move robotically, at times, from assignment to assignment and from test to activity. I also believe that a certain amount of cynicism exists toward education today that undermines the school experience. Students and parents question assignments, grades, and curricula, which derails the system and which causes students to question the value of their assignments and the need to take assignments seriously. Such uncertainty can add to anxiety and detachment and result in a lack of focus and discipline. The levels of anxiety I observe should not exist, in my opinion, in the absence of homelessness, abuse, or food scarcity, but they do.
If it takes a village to raise a child, our village is failing our children by disseminating negativity, prioritizing social media platforms, and demanding unrealistic expectations - that every student earn straight A’s and attend an esteemed university. Most of the children with whom I work seem weighed down by the pressures that they put on themselves (due to societal expectations), but they are also reading subtle but constant parental cues to determine what we deem important, too.
While I believe in setting a high bar for our children, in these times, our children would benefit greatly if we as parents exercise some restraint and focus instead on role modeling. If we want for our children, as surveys suggest, ultimate stability and job satisfaction, we need to model stability and job satisfaction and model setting high but reasonable expectations for ourselves. And if we want to calm our children’s fears, we should care less about our social media presence and especially less about posting accomplishments. Our pride over familial accomplishments will mean more to them if it is celebrated quietly within our own homes. We should parent our children by emphasizing values, such as discipline, compassion, resilience, and integrity, instead of accomplishments.
We need to preserve our children’s childhood, so that they do not feel critiqued 24/7. By focusing more on our own lives and by freeing ourselves from social media, we can demonstrate the healthy lifestyles we want for our children.
Let’s loosen the reins just enough, so our children can gain the confidence they need to leave our nest and to spread their wings. We may be making this parenting thing harder than it needs to be.