01/16/2023
My freshman daughter came home from school yesterday and let me know that her teacher pulled her aside. “She wants me to move up to honors next year,” she told me. “She said she didn’t think I was challenging myself enough.”
“Well, that’s a compliment from your teacher,” I responded. “But, what do you think?”
She looked crestfallen. “I just don’t know how I can fit it in because everyone complains about how much extra work honors is. Taking it as a regular class this year gave me some breathing room and it was the one class I didn’t have to stress about. And next year I have driving school and cross country and all my other advanced classes. I have to volunteer for Key Club and I want to babysit to have spending money and….” She went on and on for a few minutes.
“I guess we have our answer then,” I told her. “You are pretty busy already, so you don’t have to add to your schedule.”
“But what about challenging myself?” she asked. “Like, are colleges going to be down on me because I didn’t take all honors classes?”
And I looked at my young daughter, and for the first time in a long while, she looked small to me instead of the young woman she is becoming--more like when she was a scared toddler about to get in trouble.
And I thought, how much more challenged does she have to be?
She is challenged to get enough sleep every night after long school days full of advanced classes.
She is challenged to find downtime because she chose to participate in a high school sport.
She is challenged to find balance in a stress-filled trek to get into a college.
She is challenged by peer pressure and social media and the dangers of simply walking into her school each day.
While I think her teacher one-hundred percent had my daughter’s best interest at heart, I think as parents, we have to start looking at our kids in a more holistic manner.
And the first step is trying to choose my words a little differently when I talk to my teens about their futures.
My daughter (with our input) made a conscious choice not to take all honors classes this year. As parents, we told her she should challenge herself in the areas she cared about the most, which in her case is math and science, and then decide one-off in the other areas.
She has said several times it was the best decision she's ever made, and her grades have backed it up. She's adjusted well to the high school routine, and while she's busier than I would like, she's handled it well.
But we can't overestimate how well our kids are handling stress. One innocuous, well-meaning comment from a teacher she loves inadvertently shook my daughter's confidence and made her question her choices. It revealed how much pressure my daughter was internally feeling.
Not everything our tweens and teens do needs to be challenging or rigorous or competitive. Most of us don’t thrive in that kind of environment, and for sure, our kids don’t.
So, I told my daughter I thought she should take the grade-level course again for the next year. She challenged herself in other areas, and I thought she found a good balance this year in her course selection.
"It's your decision," I told her. "But I promise you your life won't be ruined if you don't take honors English. It could be changed, however, if you get so stressed out you have a mental breakdown or developt chronic anxiety."
And I saw a flood of relief in her eyes.
At the end of the day, it's our job as parents to look at the big picture, but I think as a whole we should be chang,ing the conversations we have with our teens. Instead of jumping at every opportunity to make things more rigorous and competitive, we should look at how much free time they have, their current stress levels, where their passions lie, and how much sleep they get each night.
We should tell our teens that it's great to challenge ourselves, but does it make you happy?
I’m glad that my daughter has teachers that believe in her potential, but I’m also glad she recognizes she has limits.
It’s tough to find the balance in teaching our kids to push themselves to reach their potential without burning out or breaking down.
We need to start putting our kids’ mental health first, and then teach them how to decide what they can handle.
Because if your kid can’t sleep because of stress or starts hurting themselves to cope with anxiety or something worse yet, that “challenging” course they felt they should take or team we pushed them to join or added responsibility they weren't ready for may not be worth it.
I absolutely want my kids to reach for the stars, but I hope they learn to care about their well-being more than anything else.
*Repost from three years ago. Many wanted to know how this philosophy turned out for my girls. Both were accepted to right-fit colleges where one will participate in cross country and track and the other in the orchestra program. They both say balancing their schedules was the best decision they made in high school.
Whitney Fleming Writes
