Campus Calm had the opportunity to speak with Carleton Kendrick, Ed.M., LCSW, about why students are increasingly poised for success and the price they pay in the process. Kendrick, author of “Take Your Nose Ring Off Honey, We’re Going to Grandma’s” (Unlimited Publishing LLC), is a licensed psychotherapist, prominent national speaker, social commentator, and author.
Calm Campus: Our first question stems from your article, “High Achievers: What Price Are They Paying? A Harvard Interviewer’s Honest Assessment,” which was published on FamilyEducation.com. Why does he believe today’s high school and college students are increasingly primed for success?
Kendrick: Because there are too many parents who are scared, guilt-ridden, and anxious about whether or not they can guarantee that their children will get into the “best” colleges and have a “wonderful life.” I think much of the hyper-parenting that this pressure cooker produces in children is due more to guilt than anything else. It is the result of parents feeling that they do not spend enough time with their children and that they are not really “good enough” parents.
So if you can’t have loving, fully realized intimate relationships with your children, you can make up for them by treating them, with good intentions, but nonetheless like a commodity, eventually to be “bought” by a university. . You can do this by micromanaging your life from preschool onward. That includes telling them what courses to take, forcing them to excel in a sport, maybe even a position. Some children are sent to summer camps at very young ages to specifically learn skills that have to do with a specific position for a sport, instead of the children playing. There is no time to play now because you have to take care of building your portfolio of successes. Some parents are obsessed with this.
Calm Campus: Is this distributed among all social classes?
Kendrick: In my research and professional experience, this is an obsession that is certainly more pervasive in the “wealthy” classes, although the contagion spreads up and down in all classes. Prestigious scholarships, usually only the wealthy can afford elite schools and camps. Money is a factor and buying into the notion that the right college will give you a great life. Of course, that totally delusional belief is sometimes adopted by people who don’t have money and don’t have a higher educational level.
Calm Campus: What’s the harm in packaging children for success?
Kendrick: Well, I think when you’re handled like a detergent, being created, packaged and sold by an advertising company, it’s dehumanizing at the core. It is an orchestrated attempt at authorship that someone naturally is. He communicates to the children, “You’re not okay the way you present yourself. You need something or someone to trick you.” I think it’s unnatural and ultimately dehumanizing to take kids and basically tell them they’re not good enough the way they are.
Calm Campus: If some parents have hovered over their children for years and now realize it was a mistake, how could they change their relationship with their teens? When your children are used to having their lives scheduled and planned, can they easily switch to being more independent?
Kendrick: These parents have often greatly incapacitated their children, encouraging an unhealthy dependency and relying on them to direct most aspects of their children’s lives. That said, many, if not most, of my adolescent patients, as well as the adolescents I speak with in my seminars, would appreciate it if their parents would stop micromanaging their lives.
I would recommend that parents have a series of conversations with their teens in which they acknowledge their mistakes as restless, micro-managing, anxious parents, and the damage this suffocating parenting has done to their children. Then, I would have the parents tell the children that their role will be supportive, encouraging, and directed at cultivating their teens’ resourcefulness, independence, and resilience. Parents will go through some forms of emotional withdrawal from their former roles as managers of their children’s lives, and teens need to understand that this transition will likely be more difficult for their parents than it is for them.
Calm Campus: How can students begin to see education as an end in itself and not simply as a means to a well-paying job with all the status and supposed happiness that comes with it?
Kendrick: It is very difficult for students when so many people tell them, “This is the path to success.” You go to this school or a school like this. Then they may tell you that you need to go to grad school. You also need to do summer work that shows the schools you’re applying to that you’re dead serious, whether you are or not. This is the equation; this is the formula. Just plug into this and you are guaranteed to have a rosy life.
At some point, we miss teaching children that it is in the process; it is in the challenge and hard work to learn something. The best experience my daughter had in school was working so hard to get a B in Physics when she got A’s in basically everything else. She was more proud of that B- because physics was something she didn’t like so easily. The other things came easy to her, which means they didn’t necessarily challenge her intellectually. Now someone could have looked at her report card and said, “Hey, what happened here with that B-?”
Calm Campus: Each student excels in one area and struggles in another. How can parents and educators encourage them to define and improve their unique abilities without ever labeling them “lazy” or “dumb” in areas they may have trouble with?
Kendrick: There has to be a paradigm shift here and the paradigm shift has to be from the beginning with parents and educators, and whoever comes across the child. I’ve seen enough children to know that children show you who they are very early on and if you’re not paying attention to who they really are, meaning their curiosities and the natural rhythms of their life, and instead you have your role model for them and you basically ignore the natural life of the child’s mind, so you are trying to get the wiring out of your child.
The paradigm shift needs to be in the emphasis on further encouraging and emphasizing the child’s natural abilities and interests and the skill set they are shown early on. That does not mean that you neglect what they could have problems with. You acknowledge their “deficits” but don’t make them the center of attention. Nobody does well at everything.
Calm Campus: A teacher recently wrote me to say that she sees students more stressed than ever about grades. Some of her students started crying when they got a “B” on a test because they were afraid to go home and face their parents. How has this happened and what can we do about it?
Kendrick: We need to change the way we raise our children so that they see the word success. Most people would say that Mother Teresa was successful. Now, if you look at Mother Teresa’s academic background, you won’t see Mother Teresa sweeping any academic institution. Shall we consider that she gave much to the world? Would we consider that the musicians and artists we revere who never finished high school gave so much to the world?
“Wait,” many adults say, “don’t encourage children to think they don’t have to go to school.” That’s not the point. It’s that we all have some inherent abilities and we encourage them and maybe show kids how they can manifest those abilities and tie them together with some sense of purpose and mission that’s rewarding for them, not for their parents and society at large.
Calm Campus: The only way to achieve success in life is to make mistakes and learn to deal with the occasional failure. Do you think that our educational system encourages students to learn to handle this notion? If not, how can schools work to help children take risks and appreciate mistakes as part of the process?
Kendrick: We need kids to know that challenges don’t always equate to an honors grade. It takes bravery and courage and being vulnerable. We need to teach children to be open to “failure.” If you’re only being applauded for your honors, or the schools you get into, or the money you make, doesn’t that put a lot of pressure on what happens when you don’t?
Calm Campus: I want to switch gears for a moment and talk about perfectionism and how it contributes to both male and female students developing unhealthy body images. Campus Calm believes that self-love is a driving force behind success in life. How can young people develop healthy relationships with their bodies and with themselves despite our culture’s preoccupation with outward perfection?
Kendrick: How can a young person who seeks to be appreciated, loved and desired? How do you tell him not to buy the magazine covers and the music videos and that culture of perfection? He is pointing out again that there is something wrong with you. You are in the academic average and now you are not thin enough or your breasts are not big enough or your hair is not straight enough. Or a kid, because I’ve seen a lot of kids take steroids: “You’re not tough and strong enough.” I don’t have any magic answer to how children can’t be seduced into hating, loathing, and loathing of their bodies.
All I can say is that when you can make friends and build relationships that have nothing to do with how popular you are socially perceived, how much of a hero you are athletically, or how much of an academic star you are, keep them around because they are then appreciating you. Whether you put on 30 pounds, get a cap on your teeth or not, whether your dad drives the newest car.
Especially in the area of adolescence, it is our friends more than anyone else who help determine our sense of self. If you can find in your travels someone who truly appreciates you for who you are and who you truly want to be known for, know that this is the essence of meaningful relationships despite the seduction of perfection. Look for those relationships with friends, as they will help you define yourself around those things that you do not have to fine-tune.
