Ambient Pressure

In December 2015, The Atlantic published an article by Hanna Rosin about a cluster of suicides at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California. I read it at the time, and thought about it this week at it pertained to the Boy. Rosin uses Gunn as her example, but says the pressure kids face there isn't much different than pressures faced by kids in high-achieving schools in affluent neighborhoods in New York, Dallas or Seattle. One of the quotes from the article was "Gunn is a distillation of what elite parents expect from a school." While I haven't seen the movie Race to Nowhere, it is about the pressure affluent kids with high achieving parents face to do well in school and get into a good college.

But is it really the parents or the school that are pressuring the kids? Am I pushing my kid to succeed and is that what is driving him to such high levels of stress? My guess is no. Like most parents, I just want my kids to be happy and successful at whatever they do.

In some ways, I wish the Boy would grow up to be a movie director, as that was a dream I had for myself in my twenties. Sometimes I wish Claire Adele would become a romance novelist when she grows up. She has written some really nice Gothic romances for school assignments. Maybe she could turn one of them into a book? I never told the boy about directing films--he is way too interested in rocket and robots and things that fly to take an interest in movies beyond enjoying watching them. But my dreams aren't theirs and vice versa.

I would say the pressure kids feel is ambient--it is just there in the community. It isn't so much what we say that causes the pressure--it is who we are. People for thousands of years needed to fit into their tribe for safety and protection. Modern teens are no different, except our tribes have become much more stratified and less hetrogenous. The school doesn't directly put pressure on the kids, but everyone heard about the awards the eighth grade band won at the competition last weekend. What happens when this year's seventh graders don't do as well next year?

Plus, the Boy has the own pressure he puts on himself. PTA's mission is "Making Every Child's Potential a Reality." It is a beautiful and simple mission. But what if a child's dreams exceed their ability? What if their ambition exceed their potential? Not every kid who aspires to an Ivy League college or medical school gets in. What then? How do we let these kids know that even if they don't become a doctor or architect or own their own business that things will be fine? That it is okay to be a carpenter, an electrician, a car mechanic or a UPS truck driver? We can tell them that, but will they believe us when they see otherwise? I pick those career examples because I know intelligent, talented and hard working people who do those jobs, and we need stuff built, fixed and shipped. But with rising rents and real estate costs, you better go to a good college and get a good job to afford to live here. How is that welcoming them into the tribe?