“If I don’t get into a good college, my life will be ruined.”
In more than 30 years of working with adolescents, I’ve heard some version of this more times than I can count. I hear it especially often this time of year when high school seniors are working on college applications. I understood it differently, however, when the teenager overwhelmed by academic pressure was my own child.
During her senior year, my daughter was taking many AP classes and spending 20 hours a week on extracurricular activities. She was doing all this because she believed she had to get into a “good college.” She was often sleeping fewer than six hours a night, was increasingly irritable, had circles under her eyes, and seemed miserable.
My wife and I are both therapists. My wife specializes in stress management. So we did all the “right” things: we encouraged our daughter to sleep more, take breaks, see friends, study less, and try meditation.
She wasn’t interested. The more we pushed, the more she resisted. All we accomplished was a series of big fights, which cost her even more sleep and left her feeling even more stressed and further behind.
We wondered what we were doing wrong.
What we eventually realized was that sometimes the most helpful thing parents can do is stop trying to change their child’s experience long enough to understand it.
The pressure is real
The pressure driving my daughter wasn’t just in her head. It came from her friends, her school, and our town. The environment surrounding many of our teens is a pressure cooker.
In a survey of more than 270,000 high school students between 2010 and 2023, the nonprofit Challenge Success found that “students consistently report overall workload, homework, tests or quizzes, finals, and assessments as their top sources of stress.” In a 2023 scientific review, 48 of 52 studies reported a link between academic pressure and mental health problems in adolescents.
Drawing on her own research and that of others, psychologist Suniya Luthar wrote in 2020:
“Major policy reports now list students at high-achieving schools as an at-risk group, alongside children in poverty, those experiencing trauma, and those in foster care or with incarcerated parents.”
I couldn’t believe this when I first read it. Most of us think of attending a high-achieving school as an advantage, not a potential risk to a child’s mental health. Luthar continued:
“Rates of clinically significant anxiety and depression can be as high as six times the national norm in many high-achieving schools (HASs), where children’s mental health is severely affected by ongoing, ubiquitous, and unrelenting pressure to achieve.”
When our kids say they’re drowning at school, they’re not exaggerating.
Good advice that’s hard to follow
What should parents do about all this academic stress and pressure? Based on its research, Challenge Success recommends reducing “‘unnecessary stress’ stemming from factors such as unreasonably heavy course load, high levels of pressure around admittance to elite universities, and piling on of extracurricular activities for the primary purpose of building a college resume.”
They also recommend PDF: making sure kids take time for (P)laytime, (D)owntime, and (F)amily time.
This is excellent advice. It’s also almost exactly what my wife and I told our daughter. The problem often isn’t knowing what stressed teens need.
It’s that our help can feel like more pressure
Looking back, I could see that our daughter didn’t feel we understood what she was up against. To her, feeling unprepared for a test was way more stressful than losing sleep. Our attempts to get her to live a more balanced life felt like more pressure, not help.
Many parents are similarly surprised by how their interest comes across. A 2014 Harvard survey of more than 10,000 middle and high school students found that three times as many agreed with the statement, “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I’m a caring community member in class and school,” than disagreed with it.
Teens are highly sensitive to evaluation, and when so many of our questions to them are about tests and assignments, it’s easy for them to experience our interest in school as if it’s all we care about.
This gap between what we mean and what our kids hear is why checking in with them matters so much.
Ask this question
Pick a calm moment, not right after a bad grade or in the middle of a particularly stressful week, and ask your teen: “How important do you think your grades are to me?” Then just listen.
This question brings into the open something that your teen may already believe but might not say. Asking communicates that you care about how they experience you, that you are open to feedback, and that you are interested in more than their grades. Hopefully, it also invites a conversation.
The hardest part isn’t asking the question; it’s being open to the answer. Your teen may say something that surprises or stings: “You only care about my grades” or “Nothing I do is ever good enough.” Their picture of you may feel unfair, or even distorted. Resist the urge to correct them. The moment you defend yourself, the conversation ends.
Instead, stay curious: “Tell me more. What makes you feel that way?” When they’ve finished, say back to them what you heard and check whether you’ve understood: “Do you feel like I get it?” If not, ask, “What am I missing?” Your goal isn’t to convince your teen that they’re wrong. It’s to understand why they see things that way.
Paradoxically, feeling understood and validated is what makes people open to seeing things differently. You may not change how your teen sees you in one conversation, but you’ll have shown them that you’re on their side.
Keep the door open
A close, supportive relationship with parents is one of the most consistent protective factors for teens’ mental health. Asking the question opens the door. A few everyday habits keep it open:
- Ask permission before offering solutions. “Would it help if I shared an idea?” Giving your teen control over when and how they get your input actually makes them more receptive to it.
- Have 25 one-minute conversations instead of one 25-minute one. Many teens resist long, serious talks. Short check-ins that end on a good note build momentum without feeling like an interrogation.
- Talk about things other than school. Ask about their friends, their music, what shows they’re watching. Every non-academic conversation reinforces that you care about who they are, not just what they achieve.
When it’s more than stress
Some stress is normal. It can be a sign we’re challenging ourselves. However, if your teen shows sadness, irritability, or hopelessness lasting more than two weeks, withdraws from normal activities, has big changes in sleep or appetite, or says anything about self-harm or not wanting to be alive, it’s time to get help. Reach out to your pediatrician or a mental health professional immediately.
The takeaway
With our daughter, we stopped trying to force stress management on her and pivoted to listening to what she was going through. We asked her the question, and her answer surprised us. She didn’t feel that her grades were all we cared about. She needed us to understand how important they were to her. Once we did, our relationship got better. She kept pushing herself, but over time, she came to see us as a reliable source of support and not pressure.
We can’t remove the pressure our kids face, but we can make sure we’re not adding to the load. Our relationship with our kids is one of the best buffers against the negative impact of academic pressure, and it’s the thing that pressure most often erodes, as it did in my house. Protecting our relationship is the most important thing we can do for our children. Not so they’ll perform better, but so they can thrive.
