Toxic Parenting Researcher: The No. 1 Phrase We Need to Get Rid Of

The U.S. Surgeon General has warned that American kids are in the midst of a mental health crisis. While social media is under scrutiny for its role, in a recent survey, when asked what stressed them out the most, kids cited academics as most likely to negatively impact their mental health.

The pressure many kids feel – often from a very young age – to get into a ‘good college’ may be exacerbating the problem.

That’s why there’s one phrase that parents need to remove from their vocabulary, parenting researcher and author Jennifer Breheny Wallace told CNBC: “The first thing we need to do is get out of our heads that there is such a thing as a ‘good college.’”

In the process of writing her book Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It, Wallace worked with a Harvard Graduate School of Education researcher to survey 6,500 parents across the country. (Wallace graduated from Harvard College.) That research has changed her parenting.

At home, she tries to “dial down the pressure around college admissions” for all three of her children, including a senior applying to colleges this year. She and her husband take pains to “deflate that myth that college prestige is the secret to success,” reminding them that college rankings are subjective, and that your success and life happiness are determined by where you go to school.

It’s not where you go to college but what you do there that matters

Research shows that attending a prestigious university – or any college at all – does not predetermine an ideal future.

“We all know people who went to these highly selective schools whose lives did not turn out as well as they had hoped,” says Wallace. “And we all have adults in our lives, who [went to] schools we’ve never even heard of before, whose lives turned out extraordinary.”

If you choose to go to college, it’s all about the experiences you have while there that matters, a 2014 survey of 30,000 U.S. college graduates by Gallup and Purdue University found. Satisfaction depended on things like meaningful extracurriculars, engaging learning experiences or internships, or a mentor who helped make learning come alive.

“Basically, it boiled down to: Did those students [feel] like they mattered to their campus?” Wallace says.

How to discuss college in a healthy way

Wallace and her husband are mindful of not creating additional stress for their high school senior. Unless their son broaches the subject, “We are always available to him, but we really watch how many times a week the word ‘college’ comes out of our mouths.”

When they do discuss college, Wallace says they try downplay school rankings and to emphasize “this idea of mattering on campus.” They talk about what school feels like the best “fit,” where you feel like you can make an impact.

“We can be deliberate about what actually leads to the good life we want for our kids, based on decades of science,” Wallace says. “And that is having good relationships, having purposeful work, and feeling competent in those pursuits.”

Read the full article here.

 

Huddleston Jr., Tom. “Harvard-trained parenting expert shares No. 1 message for her own kids: ‘There’s no such thing as a ‘good college.’” CNBC.com, 16 Oct 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/16/toxic-parenting-experts-advice-ignore-myth-of-college-rankings.html.