<p>Too long to post who thing, but here is opening paragraph:</p>
<p>As a psychologist who has been treating unhappy teens for more than 25 years, I wondered why this particular child left me feeling so ragged. I live and work in an upper-middle-class suburban community with concerned, educated and involved parents who have exceedingly high expectations for their children. In spite of parental concern and economic advantage, many of my adolescent patients suffer from readily apparent emotional disorders: addictions, anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders and assorted self-destructive behaviors. Others are perplexingly and persistently unhappy in ways that are more difficult to quantify. The fact that many of these teens are highly proficient in some areas of their lives helps mask significant impairments in others – the straight-A student who feels too socially awkward to attend a single school dance, the captain of the basketball team who is abusive toward his mother, the svelte homecoming queen who consistently sees a “fat ugly duckling” in the mirror. Sinking further into my chair, I flipped through my appointment book, searching for clues to my emotional weariness. …</p>
<p>I’m not sure whether there is a correlation, let along a causation or whether (American) parents are more ready to bring their kids to the psychiatrist/psychologist for the same teenage angst that has been around for as long as there have been teens. In other words, are we seeing a reporting issue or a a growing trend?</p>
<p>I didn’t read through the entire article, but I think one of the reasons straight A kids, homecoming queens, and basketball team captains are having emotional problems is because their parents put too much pressure on them to succeed.</p>
<p>This generation of kids is less protected by their parents. They have more unsupervised time and more freedom (use of a car at age sixteen, for example) than other generations. They are also pushed to accomplish more, to be more professional in all they do. And they have been more exploited by business interests as a “market segment.” I would like to know if others – psychologists or other professionals on CC – believe any of these factors have influenced their emotional health.</p>
<p>"This generation of kids is less protected by their parents. They have more unsupervised time and more freedom (use of a car at age sixteen, for example) than other generations. They are also pushed to accomplish more, to be more professional in all they do. And they have been more exploited by business interests as a “market segment.” </p>
<p>There was a time in the not very distant past of this country in which people who were 16 were married, working six days a week in sweatshops or doing 7 days a week of hard labor on farms, and also were likely to be orphans.</p>
<p>The idea of the teen years being a time of relative relaxation is a very new one. People now whine about teens having to take tough classes in school and do ECs, meanwhile most teens don’t do all of those things anyway. It’s only a relatively small group of teens who are loading themselves up with APs and demanding ECs in order to gain admission to top colleges. Most teens get into their first choice colleges. Virtually anyone in this country who wants to go to college can managed to do so.</p>
<p>In addition, prior to about the late 1940s, most American teens didn’t even graduate from h.s., but were in the work world fulltime by age 16, and had major adult responsibilities.</p>
<p>We think our teens face stress because of AIDS but previous generations faced major stress because of things like polio and deadly flu outbreaks. We have terrorism that recently killed a couple of thousand people in the U.S. They had world wars. Anyway, I see the articles about how tough things allegedly are for our teens, and I just don’t buy it.</p>
<p>I agree with the poster who suggested that what’s different now is that psychotherapy is more widely accepted and available.</p>
<p>This generation of kids is less protected by their parents</p>
<p>Train-hopping hobos in the depression were primarily teenagers-- put out of the house by their parents-- a la the jockey in Sea Biscuit. In previous generations, teenagers frequently left home when they were out of school, age 16. </p>
<p>The term ‘Helicopter parent’ is not a leftover from the sixties. Old yuppies are the biggest bunch of mollycoddlers in the history of mankind. </p>
<p>Statistically, cgm, the US does not have extraordinary rates of teen suicide. </p>
<p>Amen Cheers–if anything they are over-protected from birth through college. The idea of having free play time unsupervised just with other kids is now rare.
We had two rules growing up-be home for dinner and during the summer after dinner, be home by dark. Outside that our time was our own. You learned to get along with bigger kids and make your own games and rules.</p>
<p>As a teenager myself, I’ll admit that the pressure for perfectionism is overwhelming.
It’s not because my parents are “too easy on me” and “not overprotective”–it’s just the opposite. They started me off being overprotective, and they lacked mutual communication with me during my early preteen years. I craved the independence that all of my other friends seemed to have. I wanted to prove to my parents that I could be independent, but they never gave me the chance. I felt I lacked everything in life. I felt I was worthless. This was awhile ago. And yes, I’ll admit I was depressed. It felt like everyone was better than me.
From this feeling of worthlessness I began to try and prove to myself that I was worth something. I began building up an “outer shell” of perfection to dissemble the scars inside–the “emptiness”, I suppose you could say. I wanted to be better; I wanted to succeed. I wanted respect. I wanted acceptance. So what did I turn to? Perfectionism.
And now I guess it’s truly a part of me.</p>
<p>BTW eating disorders are often associated with perfectionism, and according to research, this includes “high achieving” students.</p>
<p>There have also been studies conducted regarding Ivy League students (and students from other top colleges) and it seems that eating disorders are abundant in those campuses.</p>
<p>In my early twenties, I made my parents so angry–they stopped speaking to me. They actually disowned me. I had to find another home for the holidays. About six months later, they got over themselves. We are all good now. Luckily, I don’t hold grudges ;).</p>
<p>The path to independence is dotted with conflict, Cht, not perfection. If you want independence–dare to TAKE it. A gem is polished by friction, is the saying. </p>
<p>Yuppies understood that when they were young but they have fed their kids another line about the attainability of perfectionism.</p>
<p>CGM, I thought it was a very intriguing article, too - though I was skeptical of some of the conclusions. It fits too much in a certain genre which is to describe a societal ill attributed to the current younger generation, then ascribe blame to parental lifestyle choices. </p>
<p>And around these boards, which are filled with affluent parents who are highly involved with their kids’ lives and have high expectations of achievement for the kids, some of the allegations cut to close to home for comfort. Hence the reaction to your posting.</p>
<p>I do think that the psychological evaluations of the negative affects of too much parental indulgence or interference, in terms of undermining a child’s ability to develop a sense of self, and self-confidence. Obviously that is fairly obvious: parents who hover too much end up with kids who lack self-reliance. You’ve got to kick the fledglings out of the nest if you want them to learn to fly. </p>
<p>But the problem with the overall theme of the article is that the “trend” is determined from the changing nature of the writer’s practice, ignoring the fact that she probably gets most of her patients through referrals. If she is good with one angst-ridden affluent teen, she gets referred another – and pretty soon word is out that Dr. Levine is really good with neurotic teenagers. Then she calls all her colleagues and they too are seeing more of these cases: hence, a 'trend". </p>
<p>Only the psychologist employed by the county hospital at an inner city clinic isn’t seeing this trend among the affluent. The doctor whose client base comes from a different demographic sees an entirely different set of clients with a different set of problems. </p>
<p>So while I think Dr. Levine’s therapeutic techniques and suggestions may be sound – the “trend” spotting seems to be just another case of someone generalizing based on their subjective viewpoint and experience. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the teen suicide rate is but I would want to know which teens are committing suicide before ascribing any increase to the effects of affluent parenting styles. That is, unless suicide rates are up among the affluent in way that is disproportionate to any increases among the poor, it isn’t evidence to support Dr. Levine’s hypothesis. (Note: from what I can find on the internet, it appears that teen suicide rates have been going down over the past decade, not up – but it’s hard to get a handle on the data.)</p>
<p>This article struck a chord with me as a parent and also looking back on my own teenage and college years. Like my kids, I was busy, motivated, excelled in school, cute, popular- my parents were so proud of me. Looking back now, I think my substance use was linked to a strong need to get off the merry-go-round. I had no self esteem issues, and certainly peer pressure did not motivate me to sit in a dorm room and get stoned on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. What I really wanted was to chill for a few hours- to stop thinking about what I’m doing next, what I need to be doing now, how I look, how I did, how I will do. To just stop all the BUSINESS. All during my kids’ childhood, I would read about how parents have to keep their children busy all the time, how kids get involved with drugs and alcohol because they’re bored. In my case, I wanted to BE bored, for once! </p>
<p>I had a friend in hs who was not particularly attractive, overweight, very intelligent but did just OK in school…what people would call a slacker. I was soooo jealous of her- her ability to enjoy herself and not care what others thought. I wanted to be like her! She eventually got it together and now has a career that eclipses my wildest dreams. So I wonder sometimes whether my own children feel the same needs as I did- to just STOP being “perfect” once in a while. Hopefully they don’t use the same means as I did. It’s a scary thought.</p>
<p>Removing all of the psychobabble, the article has a point.</p>
<p>You guys talk about how, in the “bad” old days, teens were told to fend for themselves. Perhaps, maybe, possibly, that is better than not fending for yourself. We are products of biology and evolution - in many ways, we are programmed to be independent and adult during the late teen years. We are used to having more responsibility, more independence, and more autonomy. Remove the ability to be self-reliant, and you get a lot of frustration.</p>
<p>Let me tell y’all something - working for grades stinks. If your big rewards in life are the satisfaction if obtaining socially-approved letters and numbers, your life is frustrating. </p>
<p>I think one of the things that helped me through high school was that I didn’t care about the grades so much as the learning. It showed - I wasn’t valedictorian - that was reserved for the people who put grades before learning; grades before honesty. I also really enjoyed working during the summers - even though it was at a lousy, minimum wage, no overtime on Sunday job. </p>
<p>I’m not sure why the article is “news.” If anyone feels that they are doing things for other people and feel that love is conditioned on a lot of really silly things (like grades), they will be depressed. Not rocket science.</p>
<p>So what if it is based on subjective viewpoint and experience, mnay things are</p>
<p>If this article opens eyes, get people to pay attention, shows that pushing, coddling, and super high expectations do not ALWAYS leave us with the results we hope for, and see the warning signs so as to prevent tragedy</p>
<p>On this site, we all seem to have perfect kids who are self motivated who rarely cause their parents problems, who are all chipper</p>
<p>I wonder how much of that is really true…</p>
<p>As for suicide rates, sure perhaps they are going down, but isn’t ONE suicide one too many?</p>
<p>Even if this article focuses on one niche of society, does that make the points shared any less valid? </p>
<p>It is interesting that whenever anyone points out that putting too much pressure on young people may not always be the best thing and can in some cases cause problems, many people are afraid to admit there might be validity to the points</p>
<p>With all the perfect, high acheiving, selfmotivated, super involved, models of what a student should be on this website, statistically, one parent here is going to be shocked when they really take a close look at their child</p>
<p>CGM, if you haven’t, you should read “Reviving Ophelia.” It makes a similar point (although in a lot more detail) about how the “perfect” girls are really hurting.</p>