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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

Do you think kids can go backwards? Your kids would be happy with life Cincinnati? I wonder if that’s my first mistake - moving out of my version of Indianapolis.[/quote]

I think the first step is not to think of it as going "backwards". When I talk to my peers in DC, I encounter people who crave a slower pace of life, less competition, more ease. I absolutely encounter people who are like "maybe Indianapolis?"

Yes, I also know lots of people who can't imagine living in the midwest or giving up big careers. But these tend to be people who "made it."[b] I know lots of other people who work in professional jobs, went to law school or business school or just pretty elite undergrads, but who have just never found the professional success they were looking for in DC or NY. Some of them have already moved, to places like Denver, Minneapolis, or one of the Portlands. Smaller markets with more affordable housing where they can be a big fish. They don't think of it as going backwards but as choosing mental health and a more appealing lifestyle over the rat race. I might join them one of these days, to be honest.
[/b]
When people talk about pushing their kids, I think there is a fixation on certain kinds of success -- getting into certain colleges (which, because of the sheer number of applicants and test optional, have become a crap shoot for even very accomplished students anyway) and going into certain fields (law, medicine, finance -- all fields that are very high stress and often require long hours and years of education that will also require enormous debt). As thought this is the only path to financial stability. It's not. It's increasingly a risky proposition due to how these fields are shifting and how global the marketplace is these days.

Most of us would probably be better off focusing on getting our kids to a baseline level of professional competence (educated enough to pull a B average at a middling public college) and instead focused on ensuring they have very strong mental wellness, know how to take care of their health, and are personable people who make friends (and eventually, find partners) relatively easily. If you really want your child to be stable and happy in the long run, you should stop pushing beyond just making sure they do their homework, spend time socializing with peers, and get some exercise and eat right. Normal parenting stuff. Not tutors and private schools and elite specialty camps and pulling strings to get them unique internships, etc. There is just very little evidence that the latter is going to make them better off, and plenty of evidence it will make them miserable.

The truly ambitious kids will push themselves. We should let the rest of them just be average. I think it would be a relief for them.[/quote]

OP here. You make some good points, but I think ultimately wealth inequality (and the rising cost of living and stagnating wages) make it so that pushing our kids into one of a few elite careers is becoming more and more necessary.

The examples you gave me -- moving to Denver, MPLS, or Portland -- stand out to me because of their recently rapid rise in housing prices. Bay area transplants have made Denver/Boulder super expensive, and Portland (Oregon, IDK about Maine) has become extremely expensive as well over the past two decades. Getting a modest 3 bedroom house zoned for a good school district in those two cities has become infinitely harder now, and pretty much requires a tech/finance/Big Law/medicine salary (the first two of which don't really require lots of student debt, FWIW).

And I speak from personal experience as well. I'm originally from Columbus (Ohio) and my DH is originally from Richmond (Virginia). Both of these two cities used to be very affordable, but in the past decade, housing prices in those two areas have soared. Many of the lower-achieving students I went to high school with have been priced out of the inner ring suburbs of Columbus and have had to move to a Columbus exurb (which will only get more expensive in the coming years). I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years, Columbus residents were being priced out into undesirable Ohio towns like Toledo or Dayton due to housing costs. A similar dynamic has been happening in Richmond for the past decade. Both Columbus and Richmond are facing soaring housing costs because DMV/East coast transplants are moving to these cities since housing is cheaper than Boston/NYC/DC.

In other words, the economy is coming for your kids. And in order for them to survive, they increasingly have to go into one of a few select professions. I push my kid because I want him to have the best chance of survival in an increasingly Dickens-esque society. [/quote]

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