Stressed Out Teens (and Parents)

In a high-level academic environment where the main purpose is college preparation and much of the focus is on college acceptance, we are inevitably faced with problems of our teenagers being “stressed out,” to use the common phrasing; and many of our conversations, approaches, and even some of our programs—particularly advisory—are centered around how we can best support our students and provide them with the tools they need to navigate through these too-stressful years and prepare them to meet head-on the challenges they will encounter in college and in careers and a future that is ever-changing and uncertain. In many meetings and conversations I have with parents, this is a main topic of discussion. What is often revealed is that it is not just our teens who are stressed out, but that we are, too, and it is often doubled—we are stressed out for them, but also with them. We worry about their work, their performance (in classes, on the fields/courts, on stage), their social lives, their behavior, their grades, how they are viewed by their teachers, and how they will be judged by college admissions officers. Our worry, of course, only compounds their anxiety about their performance now and about their future.

So, how do we help them?  I would argue that, first, we must help ourselves.

When I check in with students about their experiences and how they are doing, many (far too many) of them mention their fear of failure and feeling like they have to be perfect. I often hear comments such as, “Colleges won’t accept me if I have any grade less than an A,” and especially “I’m afraid of letting my parents down.” But, what adults know (and what we as parents must continually remind ourselves) is that teens are not perfect; this is the time in their lives when they are developing and in our parenting lives when they are at their most difficult. In her book The Blessing of a B Minus: Raising Resilient Teenagers, Dr. Wendy Mogel understands that “there is a strong temptation to treat [them] as if they are products to be developed and packaged for inspection [...] and pushing for anything else feels like dereliction of parental duty,” but argues that “it is not loving to expect a child to be good at everything all the time—to be a smooth and sleek academic, social, artistic, and athletic machine. It is not realistic to expect perfection of anyone. When we do, our teens suffer.”

It is ok for a student to get less than an A. And, it is better than ok for a teenager to not be good at something, as long as we have taught them to work through it and to not give up (and especially avoiding the parental temptation to fix it for them).

So much of the focus during the Upper School years, ours and our teenagers’, is on college acceptance, as if it is the finish line or final goal. But, we need to reverse our thinking: college acceptance and the graduation or commencement ceremony in May is the starting line. All that happens during this time—the lessons learned not just in classes but also about organization and procrastination, how to manage stress, what leads to failure, and what habits result in success—these four years are the training leading up to the race. We are the coaches that need to train and guide them, not to clear the path for them to avoid problems and not to fix problems for them when they arise. We don’t go to college with them, so we need to remember that our job during these difficult and wonderful years of raising teenagers is to help them to figure out how to navigate these things for themselves. It won’t be perfect, and that’s the point. The struggle is where the resiliency they will need in college and in their lives beyond is developed.

-Dana Larson
Upper School Director