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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ve been trying hard to ignore this thread but people need to hear another good why. I don’t push my kids in the way OP suggests is healthy because last year one of my friends died by suicide. He had a perfect life on paper and had always achieved and pushed for the next level. His father, even in his adulthood, pushed him relentlessly and made clear that he should always be achieving more. Nothing was good enough unless he exceeded the father’s accomplishments, which are too public and well-known to write about here. In our modern competitive world, it would be nearly impossible to pull that off two generations in a row.

We all loved my friend but now he is gone, because he got the message from the time he was a child that he was only his accomplishments and nothing would ever be enough.

I support my kids. I encourage them. I don’t push them because I want them to know they are enough and they are loved for who they are.[/quote]

Thanks for posting this.[/quote]

So sorry about your friend. But normally, people who are mentally ill enough to commit suicide would’ve done it no matter how hard their parents pushed. I have a feeling even if your friend had “gentle parents” they still would’ve died. [/quote]

I disagree.  So much of life begins with nature (genetic predisposition) but is then influenced by nurture (environmental influences).  I believe we may be pointed in certain directions biologically, but our experiences and influences along the way certainly are influential, as well.

For some kids (and adults), external pressure by their parents will have marginal impact, either because they're not particularly sensitive to (natural temprament) it or because their mental health is just not that close to the "edge".  Other kids (and adults) are far more sensitive to parental input and pressure, some of whom are naturally very tightly wound, anxious, or depressed already.

Those are the high-risk kids (and adults) - the ones whose internal voice + environmental influences both tell them a story of "not good enough".  Again, most fall far short of suicide, of course.  But even so, there's a lot of avoidable suffering due to anxiety and depression . . . . [/quote]

Okay. So what do you do when you have a kid predisposed to anxiety or depression? Not push them at all?

The fact is, we all need to do some amount of pushing if we don't want failure to launch kids. Everyone (except for the trust funders) needs to hold down a relatively well-paying job to support themselves. So we need to push our kids to develop the work ethic, discipline, and habits necessary to build up to that. Being predisposed to mental illness doesn't change that. [/quote]

What does "relatively well-paying" mean to you though? There are lots of places in this country where you can live a nice life, own a home, save money, and take vacations while making less than 100k a year. If you marry someone with a similar job, even better. That's a stable and respectable middle class life. There are lots of jobs that do not require you to get straight As, go to an elite college, do internships starting at age 16, play varsity sports and be the class president in order to get them and even excel in them. In fact, this is most jobs. You have to go to school and get a bachelors degree in something and then show up to work and get along with people and not make any glaring mistakes. That's it. It's actually a pretty achievable goal, does not require parents who push you and force you into multiple activities and demand more and more from you every day. You can be a C student, get a degree from a non-selective state school, and then go get a job.

And yes, you can do this and make 50 or 60, marry someone making similar, buy a house for 200k in some exurb or secondary market, and send your kids to mediocre public schools and vacation at Disney install a nice deck that you can grill on and have the neighbors over for burgers and beers. It's totally okay. It might not be a life you would enjoy because you are more ambitious than that (I wouldn't enjoy it either for the same reason) but it's actually probably every bit as worthwhile. Most of us with "well paying" jobs aren't curing cancer or whatever. I do corporate BS to help one companies make more money. I spend my days in meetings and I make a lot of power point decks. I'm a very smart, accomplished, well-read person who speaks three languages and plays the piano but other than making a very impressive salary and being a pretty good mom, I don't think there is anything special about my life. I look at cousins who did succeed like I did academically and make a lot less money, but live in places like Indianapolis or Cincinnati and have really nice lives and seem very happy and are also parents, and I realize that all my work got me to about the same place as them, albeit with a much more expensive home, more foreign travel, and more intellectual friends and colleagues.

I think we could push our kids a lot less than you think and they'd be fine, the problem is making them think a lifestyle like mine (very expensive city, nice house and clothes, lots of high end travel) is essential in the first place. It's not. [/quote]

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