Spouse pressures child to attend the perfect school
DEAR CAROLYN: My spouse has always advocated for letting our children work out their problems, find their own way, etc. EXCEPT when that approach has led to “suboptimal” results.
As you might imagine, anything less than a perfect score is “suboptimal.”
We have a rising senior with very high test scores and high grades in a rigorous program. My spouse spends 10 or more hours a week trying to “make sure” our child gets into the “best school possible” even though in the abstract we both agree (agreed?) there is no such thing. This has led to nights with four hours or less of sleep and a general irritable attitude toward everyone — including our child, who my spouse has been calling “ungrateful” many times a day.
What can I do to rip out the hamster wheel? We have three more kids; this issue is not going away.
— Suboptimal
DEAR READER: Your spouse is torturing your kids; verbally/emotionally abusing them (“calling [child] ‘ungrateful’ many times a day”?!); setting them up for low self-esteem, which often leads to substance abuse, depression and anxiety; and superimposing the spouse’s own life goals on them, which can make it difficult for them to recognize and heed their own inner voices.
Even if you didn’t have three more kids, waiting it out until your kid graduated would not be a valid response to your child’s needs.
Please skip the DIY tactics and find a therapist. Ask your pediatrician for names — and help. If your spouse refuses to go, go solo, and add a lawyer to your referral-request list. Do not mess around.
I don’t mean to vilify your spouse, who I’m guessing is manifesting significant anxiety of his or her own, and sees achievement as a hedge against a scary world. Which of course it isn’t and, even if it were, wouldn’t result from or justify emotional abuse.
The emotional cost to children forced to carry such heavy parental expectations can in fact negate the benefits that academic achievement is supposed to deliver.
So, please, be fierce in protecting your children and unflinching in directing your spouse toward help.
Re: Success:
But surely no one can be considered a success if they remain as they are as a 12-year-old. My parents let me do my own thing, not wanting to push me or pressure me, and as an adult, I realize how much I missed out on by not being part of sports, etc. (Mom and Dad believed sports were “just for the glory of the parents, not for the kids.”)
— Missed Out DEAR READER: I’m not saying parents should just sit back as kids raise themselves. It’s more like … reflective listening on a 20-year scale. Pay attention to your kids; see where their attention goes and what they might need for that; respond with appropriate tools for that phase; then step back and reassess.
It’s when parents get a vision of how they want their kids to be and then run with it, to the exclusion of new information and feedback from the kids themselves, that the relationship starts to sour — between parent and child and between child and school/ sport/hobby/talent.
By the way: Your parents did push you, didn’t they, based on ideology and expectations? Just away from sports (etc.), not toward.
Chat online with Carolyn at 11 a.m. each Friday at washingtonpost.com. Write to Tell Me About It in care of The Washington Post, Style Plus, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071; or email