Recently, I have developed increasing concern for our teens and the level of pressures they feel. In my conversations with parents, I hear comments such as “Don’t provide him with accommodations for his dyslexia; he needs to do it on his own, or he’ll never learn;” or “I know she has executive function deficits and sometimes struggles to turn in her work on time, but she’ll learn, if you just give consequences;” or “I’m going to put him in another independent school before he goes to college, or he will never make it in life. He doesn’t need all these supports.”
While these may seem reasonable at the time, however, they may negatively affect the student with dyslexia, ADHD, and executive function deficits. Or, how do they affect students with slow processing speed or language deficits? Pressures often placed on teens may be good intentioned but not helpful in the long run. These could be, “You need to take all honors and two AP courses,” or “You’ve got to make all A’s and get a high ACT score to get into Vanderbilt,” or “That college requires a great high school resume.” Based on my own experiences over the last 45 years, as well as recent research on pressure and stress and its effect on teens, I now accept that when the pressures placed on students exceed their time availability and the student becomes so overwhelmed that he/she cannot function, then we need to help the teen work through this and possibly back off a little.
We live in a performance-based culture where children are expected to be at the top in everything they do. Dr. Denise Pope is author of the book, Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students. Dr. Pope administered a worry and stress survey to 10,275 students with 87% high school students and found that 67% of those taking the survey reported they were often or always stressed about school. Sometimes the stress is self-imposed, especially for the perfectionist. There were many times when my oldest daughter was in high school that I had to tell her to put away her books and get some sleep. Dr. Pope recommends that every child, regardless of age, have PDF (playtime, downtime, and family time) every day.
Because our culture is so performance-based, our youth may be unable to attribute success to anything but academics. Discuss with your teen other attributes of a successful life that is not always about performance. These can be the values you have within your family, such as personal growth, spiritual growth, time with family, being a good friend, etc. These relationships and attributes help to reduce stress and help each family member see many other ways for success.
A few of the practices the Upper School is implementing to help with the pressure our teens feel include the following:
- Explore Classes - One of the purposes of the Explore Classes is to help students experience joy in learning when a grade is not associated with it.
- Mentoring and Seminar Classes - These are aimed at helping students develop a positive relationship with another adult and learn to value themselves just as they are.
- Limiting Homework - So that students have time for PDF, we recommend that homework not exceed 1.5 hours per night and should be useful.
- Office Hours - Providing students who need it with some extra support in their classes.
- Block Schedule - With this approach, students have a maximum of four classes per day, which is less overwhelming.
- Downtime - Breaks (e.g., snack, lunch, afternoon break) are scheduled between each class so that there is downtime before the next class.
- Parent Sessions in Annette Eskind Institute - Many of these sessions are specifically for parents of teens. We all need continued education.
- Identifying talents and strengths - Giving students the opportunity to find their passion and to just be a teen.
