Put Pressure On Children, And Crush Them Into Diamonds In The Shell?

‘Why didn’t you get a ten? At your age I was the smartest student in the class… You just have to work (even) harder…’ Keep studying until you’ve mastered your math perfectly… You really shouldn’t make mistakes (anymore)…’ – and so on. Psychologically stressed children hear such critical phrases – and (indirect) reproaches – countless times during their early years and adolescence.

Of course, in principle, parents have the best intentions for their beloved offspring. Through the enthusiastic – or even fanatical – encouragement, they hope that their son or daughter will excel and achieve success at school, in the sports club, or wherever. It is really not their intention, or intent, to make their offspring suffer. This more or less imposed pressure and high expectations are often based on unresolved or even traumatic experiences and childhood memories of the adults themselves. Thus, unfortunately, a certain “complex” keeps repeating itself from generation to generation.

Pressurized Kids: When Even Perfection Isn’t Enough

After weeks of hard studying, every available hour dutifully devoted to preparing for the next test, Peter was relieved to receive the ‘ten’ that his parents had actually demanded of him. When he came home satisfied with the result in hand, his parents looked at him and said – instead of congratulating him – ‘we hope that from today on this is the number you will always show us.’

Agnes is a girl whose parents forced her to practice ballet. Almost from the moment she could walk independently, she regularly wore the typical pointy shoes, ponytail, and was dropped off several times a week to take long classes, and even individually, in front of the mirror, to train extra afterwards. . Once back home, she is actually forced to listen again and again to the piece of music on which she has to perform the so prestigious performance at the end of the year.

On the cardinal day of the performance, the whole family nervously makes their appearance at the theater. After the final chord, the parents quickly find Agnes and whisper a warning in her ear: ‘Next time you’ll have to outperform your friends, understand?’, even though the teacher has given her the lead role – because of her talent and class. .

Henk and Maria’s children, for example, are implicitly obliged to take tennis and piano lessons respectively because those were their dreams when they were little themselves. The children don’t like playing sheet music and swinging a racket around, but apparently that doesn’t matter. They must – almost retroactively – fulfill the former desires of their mom and dad vicariously. Henk and Maria’s secret, and largely unconscious fantasy is that their children will realize their own, failed, ideal future or profession. So that they can say: I am the father, I am the mother, of such and such a celebrated athlete or classical musician …

The specific scenarios above may have been drawn from the pen of this humble writer, but they do reflect a fairly common, common truth, and situation. In most cases, parents do not realize, or not sufficiently, how this mechanism causes serious harm to their children, both in the short and long term.

Stimulate or push children?

Of course, no parent has the intention to deliberately disadvantage their children, but out of ignorance and powerlessness they create a troubled grown man-or-woman, who will be permanently plagued by lingering complaints, including chronic grief and an inability to self, and his or her family. to accept personal problems.

The question that remains is: when does positive stimulation and healthy boosting turn into compelling and undermining exhortation? The thin line between these two forms of ‘motivation’ turns out to be – in practice – above all a question of the right attitude. Madeline Levine makes a helpful and clear distinction in her book ‘The Price of Privilege’. When the parents bond with their children in a beneficial way, and participate supportively in their activities and adventures, then it is a bona fide process of ‘stimulation’.

If, on the other hand, the parent tries to mold the child into the straitjacket of his or her pent-up and frustrated wishes, and is constantly on top of his or her lip, then there is false and bad ‘pressure’.

Is this parental pressure something new, or is it timeless?

In the course of the twentieth century, it has become more and more common for children to be given a variety of extra-curricular pursuits from a very early age: English, sports, music, painting, Boy Scouts, dance, drama – the list is almost endless. On the one hand, this can be explained by full-time jobs of the parents, who have little (free) time left to take care of their children. On the other hand, it happens with premeditation, to ‘get the best out of the child’, and to overwhelm it with a variety of development and development opportunities.

There is nothing wrong with physical exertion, or with learning to speak a second language fluently. But forcing or encouraging children – even against their will – to do something that they themselves have not asked for, or that do not make them happy at all, tends to be manipulation. Especially when they are told that they are ‘disobedient’ and ‘ungrateful’, or ‘don’t deserve it, too bad for it’.

How to avoid this pitfall: the I-want-perfect-children syndrome

Before we (attempt to) mold our children to our particular image of perfection, we should first carefully examine inwardly what exactly we mean by that, and especially why. Wouldn’t it be much better if the children are just happy with what they ‘coincidentally’ do, and what they are naturally most attracted to? Apart – probably – from certain preconditions and limits, such as: they are not allowed to drop out of school, not use (hard) drugs, not engage in crime, etc.

Wanting the best for your children – in every way – is common to virtually all parents. But what is the price that we—or rather the child—must pay to secure ourselves that prosperous future so ardently desired by us? Encourage them to do their very best, without being blinded by the results, or by so-called projected ‘guarantees’. Don’t saddle your kids with negative labels and judgments if they don’t get the highest score. Inquire – and listen carefully – to how they are feeling, in class, at school, during this or that project, and if they have any idea what they might want to be ‘later’. Leave it open, and free.

From this mindset and disposition, you will eventually raise adults-to-be who can independently overcome obstacles, who will appreciate their potential without having to neurotically compare themselves to others, and who—most importantly—will find peace. with the future they have chosen and created for themselves.

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