Social media is a great platform to brag about our kids. I’ve seen posts from friends and family that their kids have been accepted to Ivy League colleges, graduated top of their class, and are part of the honors program. You will even see public posts from various sites on your timeline about all the fabulous kids that have done extraordinary things. I think it’s wonderful and everyone should be proud of their children.
But why don’t we see the posts about the ordinary kids? The ones that are trying their hardest to keep the pace and fit in. The children with learning disabilities or ADHD that go to school everyday and push themselves just to maintain a C average. How about the kids on the spectrum that can be brilliant but deal with the world differently? You go into the store and it’s easy to find mugs and T-shirts labeled with children’s accomplishments like, “proud mom of and honor roll student”. But where are the mugs and shirts to celebrate the average or below average kids? Certainly everyone cannot be the next Albert Einstein?
The pressure that we put on our children today to be above average is enormous. In my son’s last elementary school in San Francisco I would see droves of vans labeled with titles like “ Genius kids club” picking up children for their after school program. When speaking with other parents I would find out that their kids already spoke 4 languages fluently at 7, tested at genius levels and were star athletes. It’s wonderful that a child can be so advanced like that at a such a young age and a parent certainly should be proud.
It’s human nature to push our children and to want them to be better, smarter and achieve more than we did, but when is it enough? As a parent are we a failure because our child isn’t above average? When we choose that our child have outdoor playtime instead of enrolling them in a two hour after school STEM program are we a bad parent?
You read that children are committing suicide and are experiencing anxiety and depression at young ages. Can all the pressure to keep up be causing this? We focus on the milestones as our children develop and are concerned if they are behind. The states require testing of our children constantly to make sure they are maintaining the expected stride and Gold ribbon schools are concerned that their statistics will drop if a child being enrolled has an IEP. How do we express to our kids that it’s o.k. to be average?
Does being above average in school determine ones success as adult? A person can go to the best universities and graduate at the top of their class and still not be successful. When you talk to accomplished professionals you find that many of them were average students or had a learning disability. What separated them from others to achieve their goals was grit and perseverance. It wasn’t because they were in a honors class in high school. They worked hard and believed in themselves. They had parents that supported and believed in them as well.
We need to stop measuring our success as a parent by what our children have accomplished at school because the correlation really is not a valid one. There are amazing parents that nurture and encourage their average children in the hopes that they will be successful and productive adults. Maybe what we need to focus on is that we are raising empathetic, kind individuals that are not self centered. In this world full of superficial garbage let’s stop comparing and focus on raising good human beings. We need to celebrate our children regardless of their abilities.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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