What goes on in the minds of the parents who push their kids so hard?

Parents Forum
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Since OP is in med school, it is natural that he has been exposed to high achieving kids, some of whom were pushed hard by their parents. At the other end of the spectrum there are plenty of kids who failed to live up to their potential, and sometimes failed to even launch as independent adults, who were not pushed at all by their parents. Yes, they should have had more self-initiative when younger, but they would be far better off now had there been some pushing along the way.

Finding the right balance is a challenge for all parents.

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43

Seems like this thread is about parents who define “failed to live up to their potential” as anything other than some sort of elite (as defined by the parents) job outcome, even if the kid successfully launches into a self-supporting happy adult in a job that the parents consider “unworthy”.

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Maybe. Or maybe those parents are aware that self-supporting takes a lot more money than most teenagers expect, and that their kids may expect a certain standard of living ( house, etc) which their current plans would not provide and which the parents can not or will not subsidize late into adulthood.

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Yeah, while I don’t think roycroftmom meant it this way, this is a really important point - setting up some kind of expectations based on “potential” can be incredibly harmful to some kids. I went to a gifted school from grades 4 - 12. Because all of the students were classified as “gifted” and given a specialized curriculum (which was controversial because it was taxpayer funded, so the school always needed to prove its value with students), they were all seen as have POTENTIAL to do some IMPORTANT. Some did “live up to their potential.” Most probably didn’t - at least not in conventional terms of academic and career “success” and “importance.” And I can’t tell you how many of my classmates broke under the pressure of those expectations. And when I mean broke, I mean dropping out of college due to depression, problems with drugs and alcohol and other unhealthy coping behaviors, people who eventually just couldn’t deal with the big expectations and the pressure of living up to them that had been placed on them their whole lives by everyone around them (and not specifically by their parents in many cases, but a weightier, more vague sense of the expectation of what they should do and who they should be). Fortunately, now as adults far separated from their “gifted” years, many have gotten help and are living decent lives. Not as brain surgeons and rocket scientists, but as store managers and postal carriers and whatever else. But they are finally free. And they are finally somewhat happy. The “failure to live up to potential” can be a trap that can really, really hurt adolescents when they feel pressure to be something that either they’re really not or don’t want to be. And I don’t think it comes from parents alone, but a student who stands out at school or in other environments or just in their own minds as “expected to do something big in life” can face this. And it’s a good place where parents can actually help mitigate - rather than contribute - to it by giving their kids a safe place to land when they don’t live up to expectations.

OK, that was a bit rambling
Just sort of stream of consciousness thoughts on what I think is a pretty important thing people don’t always talk about.

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46

No doubt. But I also know plenty of kids who could have managed to attend college and obtain solid jobs but didn’t bother due in part to low expectations and trust funds. The price of privilege,sometimes.
I understand what you are saying about stress on students. But sometimes parents are so desperate to protect their children from any unpleasant or stressful experiences that they go overboard in moderating their expectations for compliance with things like homework, deadlines, etc. Demanding endless retakes and extra credit opportunities to make up for poor performance initially. All that can have consequences, eventually.

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47

Yes, that is very true as well and I agree that it is a problem when kids don’t learn to be responsible adults and never learn to manage their own lives or to take responsibility for their choices and behaviors. But I think I’ve personally seen this more with kids raised by “helicopter moms” than by more “free range moms” - in other words, in my personal observations (which may be a function of living in the Bay Area, a rather specific cultural environment) is that it is the pushing parents who more often end up with kids who fail to launch as independent adults because their parents have always done everything for them and stepped in to make their problems go away so that their golden child could shine and their special snowflake wouldn’t melt.

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48

Studies about happiness by age show that overall, young and old people are happiest, and the lowest levels of happiness are in your 40s, independent of country, economic conditions, marital status etc:

Everyone feels they failed to live up to their potential, that’s the nature of life. In fact we wouldn’t be as successful as a species unless we had an innate drive to try and make progress (getting richer, more successful and ultimately having more children and grandchildren). Happiness increases once you start to come to terms with the fact that you can’t have everything, and you’ve done what you can with your career, raising children etc.

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Interesting comment. I have read that by and large–absent any major event–what you become is largely genetic-based. I have noticed that children of immigrants tend to be very ambitious even in the later years (ie wanting to go into difficult medical fellowships, even though these fields don’t necessarily pay more compared to non-fellowship fields).

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You’re a med student, so you should understand genetics and inheritance well enough to know that this claim is, at best, inaccurate. If this were true, that would mean, essentially, that everyday environmental factors have no effect, that maternal effects do not exist, and worse of all, that there is a gene for every trait.

One of the parts of the body which is most affected by its environment, including pre-birth, is the brain and brain function. Ambition, tenacity, abilities in retaining and synthesizing data, personality, etc, are all brain functions. Therefore, environment will affect each and every one of them, even without some major event.

Moreover, what would you call a “major event”? Something that happens over a day?, a month? five years? Would a childhood with food insecurity be considered an “event” even though it occurs over 15 years? Is fetal alcohol syndrome the result of a “major event”?

There are lower-level impacts. Having parents who constantly questioned a kid’s achievements and abilities will have profound effects on the kid’s actions, and capabilities later in life. Yet this in no “major event”, it’s a low level background environmental factor for the kid.

Even traits with simple inheritance, and relatively simple set of genes, like height, are dependant on a whole range of environmental factors, including emotional effects (not getting enough affection can stunt a child’s growth). It doesn’t need a “major event” for a kid to not follow the height patterns of their parents. A brain has far more complex inheritance patterns, and is affected by far more environmental factors.

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51

Oh yeah, thank you for this very thoughtful response.

I was mostly referring to salary and IQ. In particular, I am thinking of twin studies and the Wilson effect. Of course, as you mentioned, if you are born in different environments, that does play an important role. Luck plays a huge role of course. It’s impossible to say, I guess!

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Since the parents provide the environment as well as the genetics to the kid, assuming that the influence on the kid’s outcome comes from only one or the other is not a safe assumption.

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That’s why they study twins raised in different environments.

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Well, they claim to study twins who were raised in what they claim are different environments. There is a long list of things for which they do not control, a long list of factors which may result in these correlations, which bring into question the reliability of these studies. There are also issues with the weakness of the correlations themselves, the lack of proof that these tests are actually measuring anything but the ability to perform well on tests, as well. Of course, there are, ever so often downright fake data (like in the Cyril Burt stuy).

None of the studies would be considered by life scientists to have the controls that would justify the claims. Since any study which would have the required controls would never be approved by IRB, this isn’t at all surprising.

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I don’t see how that would be any different from a bachelor’s degree. 2 years for a broad liberal arts education + 2 years for major specific specialization. Many allied health programs follow the 2+4 model including pharmacy, optometry, and veterinary medicine. There’s no reason why an MD couldn’t follow the same model. Afterall, an MD is still considered an undergraduate degree.

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Could you clarify this. I feel like I’m missing something here.

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My point being that a standard undergraduate degree is 4 years, not 8. If an MD is considered an undergraduate degree then why does it need to take 8 years to acquire?

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MD is not considered an undergraduate degree in the US, where the prerequisite undergraduate study leading to a bachelor’s degree functions as an aggressive weed-out process for the huge number of physician aspirants.

In some other countries, medical education is a 4-5 year undergraduate degree (often called MBBS or similar).

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59

So true! Every kid is unique and you have to parent based on your kid’s personality. Pushing your kid too much might not work with just any kid

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60

I just want to point out also the very real possibility of such kids snapping and then committing suicide or something. A lot of times, these ambitious (selfish, in my opinion) parents push their kids and the kids are very intimidated and will hide the pain they are feeling. Then one day the kid does something like lash out or self-harm.

This happens pretty often among parents who push real hard, but people often don’t know about it since these things remain hidden. I have a few friends in the mental health professions and they tell me its pretty common.

A lot of these parents are very cold/cruel to begin with and only see their kids as items like a car or house or something. So when the kid doesn’t perform they will really crush them.

So these parents can really turn their kid’s life into a living hell. A lot of times the parents are aware of the stress and misery but they don’t care.

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Sorry you are correct. At some med schools in Canada you can be admitted after having completed 3 years of undergraduate study though in most cases successful applicants do have a 4 year undergraduate degree. Regardless of that fact it’s still considered, like many other first professional degrees, to be an undergraduate degree.

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