A child’s college admission isn’t a measure of success — theirs and yours
May 1 is National College Decision Day, when most schools require a commitment. Soon after, your social media feed might be flooded with seniors announcing their chosen college. Meanwhile, there are the kids who didn’t get into their first — or second, or third — choice. There are parents agonizing about how to pay for it all, when costs can top $90,000 per year. And then there’s the background thrum of relentless academic pressure, while experts are beginning to question whether a decline in free play is causing spiking rates of anxiety and depression among hyper-engineered teens. Maybe a kid got into their chosen school, but at what price?
Academic adviser and author Ana Homayoun’s new book, “Erasing the Finish Line,” confronts the notion that college admission is the ultimate trophy. She offers a different, more enduring, definition of success for kids — and their nervous parents.
Some families place a premium on brand-name colleges. At the same time, we’re hearing how expensive college is; there are books like yours that make excellent points about other ways to envision achievement. But c’mon: Do we really believe it?
I think it’s a great question. I want to acknowledge that it’s difficult to overcome the comparison culture that drives achievement culture. There’s no quick fix.
I’ve been working directly with children and families in schools for over 25 years. I always say: Where are you consuming your content? Who are you engaging with online and in real life? There’s a voyeuristic exclusivity that comes from these conversations.
What is coming up for you as an adult? What are your own unresolved things? We see this with youth sports: vicariously living through something that didn’t happen for you — or something that did.
I come from a place of empathy and compassion for adults, because this is hard. We need to acknowledge and validate it. After nearly 25 years of working with thousands of students and families, I can say, with ease, that nearly all parents and caregivers want what’s best for their children. My work is around reframing the conversation and bringing a broader perspective that focuses on fundamental skills. It’s not just: Do you go to college or not?
There are many ways to go to college, and college doesn’t have to be defined as one way, one time, one space. And if it doesn’t happen for a child at 18, it doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen. That’s not just college; that’s a lot of things. A lot of stress comes from the fact that we have such a narrow definition of success.
Often parents themselves are experiencing their own growth alongside children. We have to remember, a lot of parents haven’t had this social-emotional development, thinking beyond a narrow definition of what success looks like. If you ask parents about how a child is doing, they say, “Oh, great!” And then the next thing out of their mouth is: “They’re getting all A’s. They’re taking honors. They’re on a soccer team.”
The point of my work overall is that, in the long term, when you focus on the grades and test scores, but a child hasn’t developed the skills, the framework, and the mind-set to navigate uncertainty, to know when to reach out for help to build a community of support, a young adult can graduate from an elite school and really struggle.
Your book offers a different blueprint for success. One tip is creating a system based on executive functioning skills. As the mom of a seventh-grader who can’t find his homework, this resonated.
I want to challenge people to think differently around executive functioning skills. We’ve often thought about it as just academic, but it really ties into mental well-being. What I mean by that is, if you feel organized, it decreases your stress.
When I work with kids, I help them self-evaluate: How do you feel in terms of organizing, planning, prioritizing, starting and completing tasks, and being adaptable when something doesn’t go as planned? It gives kids an opportunity to parse their strengths and opportunities for growth. For example, a kid could be really great at organizing and planning, but have no sense of prioritization. A lot of times, perfectionists struggle with being adaptable when something doesn’t go as planned or starting tasks. Fundamentally, it’s the first thing we should focus on, rather than the grades. I always say, if you focus on the habit, the grades will come.
Another tip is building valuable social capital while fostering genuine connections. What does that look like?
It’s really the idea of: How do we help students move beyond transactional socialization and focus on authentic friendships? That often starts from small-talk skills. Today, many kids struggle with small talk. Adults do, too, and small talk isn’t a fake conversation. It’s starting a conversation; it’s having conversation. Two seventh-graders are sitting next to each other in a classroom. Six weeks go by. Neither one has talked to the other, because neither knows how to have small talk. Suddenly, it’s a story of, “Oh, that guy doesn’t like me” or, “That girl thinks I’m mean.” It’s because they haven’t developed smalltalk skills. How do we help kids build a community of people from different perspectives and yet feel a sense of connection and belonging?
What we don’t really focus on is: How do we help kids navigate connections that are authentic, genuine, built over time, not built on this transaction or social currency that’s shortterm? That happens a lot in middle school: “This person is popular, so I want to be friends with them — even if they’re mean to me, because I really haven’t defined what friendship is or what being a friend is.”
What can a parent do to help foster real connections?
Help kids define what friendship looks like for them and how they show up as a friend. That’s the first thing. Making and maintaining friendships is an executive functioning [skill]. You have to have inhibitory control, which means you have to be able to emotionally regulate. If someone doesn’t do something that you like, you can’t just explode. As you get older, people don’t want to be around the person who explodes.
You need working memory, because you have to be able to remember things about your friend; you have to be able to be in conversation. We underestimate how making and maintaining friendships is something, as adults, that we need to talk to kids about: They can opt out of friendships. They can define what being a friend is. But they also need the self-awareness to say: “Am I a good friend? How can I be a better friend? That person might not be a good friend for me in this moment, and that’s OK. Friendships change. That doesn’t mean that either one of us is bad people. It just means that things have evolved.”
Parents can make sure they’ve given their child the opportunity to create multiple, non-overlapping circles of connection, so that they’re not only meeting kids who go to school with them, whether it’s cousins, whether it’s people they do a summer program with. That’s the biggest protective factor: Do they have multiple places where they feel a sense of belonging? If they don’t, and something goes down in one little corner of their social community, it’s a lot more overwhelming.
You talk about expanding perspective through immersive exposure. What’s that?
It’s about understanding that there’s not one definition of what success looks like. The people who love their jobs the most? It often grows out of something they liked to do in middle school. If we’re constantly [pursuing] a narrow definition of what success looks like, we’re not actually exposing ourselves or having experiences and saying, “I really enjoy that” or “That was great, but not for me.”
We have somehow, in this comparison culture that leads to achievement culture, created the messaging that you have to be really good at everything — and you have to be really good at everything right away. You need to start playing basketball when you’re 4 years old.
This is where parental modeling is so key. My parents are in their 70s. They are the busiest people I’ve ever met. They have hobbies. My dad is learning Italian. My mom paints. And they’re always learning new things. Kids watch that. Are you constantly exploring, and in doing so, learning new things and having an expansion of what you bring into your life?
Your last point is about being adaptable in the face of disappointments and setbacks. Not getting into your top college is a biggie. And parents might also have stabs of envy or competitiveness when their best friend’s kid gets into Yale.
Over the years, there have been times when I’ve had to counsel parents far longer about a disappointment when their kid has moved on. The kid has great options, and the parent is held back by thinking that their job well-done as a parent is [reflected] by this 18-year-old’s “report card” that they’re getting. I’ve had stories of parents unfriending other friends whose kids got an early decision at the school of their child’s choice. Adults really struggle to do the work.
It is OK to be disappointed. It is OK to be sad. The key is to help every child realize that they have options. Regardless of circumstances, there are options. That is the biggest and first thing that all parents can do.
Who are the happiest kids?
I love this question. They have the ability to connect across differences. The example I give is Andrew, who really struggled with test scores. It actually changed his college options. He was a kid who worked really hard for his grades.
Then, he applied to graduate school to get his MBA. He was waitlisted. Eventually he graduated and had connections from 15, 20 years ago. He’s the kid who remembers the kid from fifth grade who he’s still in touch with. He has this big network of authentic connections. So he’s now at a job where literally everybody else — I think it’s kind of funny, because you think about this “finish line” — went to these elite schools. I assumed, when I went back to meet Andrew, it was his family connections. Absolutely not. He built a spreadsheet out and said: “I basically met with anybody who would meet with me.”
We underestimate this. A lot of times, we assume that kids who come from resourced backgrounds have lots of connections built in, which is true. But the kids who’ve been the most successful have the innate ability to authentically connect. It isn’t the family making the connection.
It’s the child themselves being able to connect.