Toxic Parenting Researcher: The Counterintuitive Way to Help Kids Succeed

Many parents worry about their kids, hoping they are on the right path and have the tools to succeed in life. But according to parenting researcher Jennifer Breheny Wallace, when that worry verges into anxiety, it negatively impacts mental health for both you and your child. As she told CNBC, that anxiety can even impact your child’s ability to succeed long term.

Wallace, who graduated from Harvard College, is the author of the book Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It. She worked with a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to survey 6,500 parents across the U.S., and the results have shaped her approach to parenting.

“The future has never felt so unknown and so fraught,” Wallace shared. “Parents today believe that getting their kid into a ‘good college’ will act as a kind of life-vest in a sea of economic uncertainty.”

But over the past decade, mental health issues have been rising for young people nationwide. A recent Healthy Minds Study of 96,000 U.S. college students found that 37% reported suffering from anxiety disorders and 15% had seriously contemplated suicide within the past year.

Anxiety and depression are interlinked, and psychologists say those who suffer from the conditions 1) experience a lack of motivation and 2) can develop a fear of failure that prevents them from the healthy risk taking that is necessary to achieve important goals.

“Unfortunately, what I’ve seen in my reporting, and what the statistics and the studies show us, is that the very life-vest we’re hoping to put on our kids to keep them afloat in an uncertain future is actually … acting more like a lead vest, and drowning too many of the kids we are trying to protect,” says Wallace.

So what’s the counterintuitive way to help your children?

Model for your kids how to cope with stress. Change your own outlook, tamping down your own anxiety so you don’t put too much pressure on them. Your unconditional love and your belief that they have what it takes to be resilient are what they need most to move forward in life.

How do you know if you’re off track in your parenting?

In her book, Wallace interviewed Tina Payne Bryson, a pediatric and adolescent psychotherapist, who offered this suggestion to parents.

Ask yourself four questions to reflect on the values (and the anxiety) you may be transmitting to your children:

• What extracurricular activities are on your child’s calendar? How are your kids spending your time? Is it on activities to “get ahead,” such as tutoring, test prep, etc?
• What are you spending money on for your child? How much is going toward achievement-based activities, like tutoring and coaching and competitive travel sports?
• What do you ask your child about every day? Are you talking about how their tests went, or things that matter more deeply? Do they know you care about them aside from their performance?
• What do you argue with your child about?

“Those four questions [tell you] a lot about what you are signaling to your kids,” says Wallace says.

Most parents are unaware of ways in which they are inadvertently increasing pressure and stress in their kids’ lives, even reinforcing the notion that their worth is linked to how they perform.

Of the students Wallace interviewed for her book, the ones experiencing the greatest struggles with anxiety and other mental health conditions “were the kids who felt like their value as a person was contingent on their performance,” whether in school or sports or other arenas of competition.

The most important thing kids need to thrive – and the number one thing parents need to get across to their children – is that they are loved and accepted no matter what.

“The task of adolescence is to help our teens develop a sturdy sense of self,” says Wallace. “We undermine that when we send them messages — in the wider culture, in our homes, in the classroom — that your value is contingent” instead of unconditional.

 

Read the full article here.

Huddleston Jr., Tom. “Harvard grad, best-selling author and toxic parenting researcher spoke to 6,500 moms and dads: The counterintuitive way to help your kids succeed.”  CNBC.com, 29 Sept 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/29/never-enough-author-stop-worrying-so-much-about-your-kids.html.