Here’s a 2012 Today Show segment featuring teen psychologist Madeline Levine who is a founder at Challenge Success and the author of Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More than Grades, Trophies, or ‘Fat Envelopes’.
Even before recently becoming a new parent myself, I knew there was no manual my wife and I would be issued when our son was born. And it’s become clear to me just how many disparate styles and reportedly expert theories exist for everything from pregnancy, to child-rearing, to helping your teen become a happy and successful adult. What works for one family may not work for another. And as parents, we’re all just doing our best.
But I’ve also been working with and around teenagers for 15 years at Collegewise. My counselors and I have worked with thousands of families from all different backgrounds, with kids of all different levels of academic achievement, and with parents of all different styles of parenting—from the hands-off to the helicoptering. We’ve never looked at this work like a research study, but if we had, I think this would be a statistically sound sample group.
The students we see whose parents support without hovering (as Levine describes in the clip and in her book) are happier, more confident, and from our perspective, more prepared for college.
Do they necessarily get into more selective colleges? No. But neither do those with the helicopter moms who orchestrate their kids’ every move. Some of those helicoptered kids get into the most prestigious colleges. Most of them—like everyone else in the applicant pool—do not.
If your goal is to see your kid attend a prestigious school, it’s entirely possible that helicoptering and ratcheting up the pressure might work. But a growing body of research—and anecdotal experience with counselors at Collegewise—shows that the risks (depression, anxiety, inability to cope with day-to-day challenges) of that parenting style are real.
This is the point in my life when I am least likely to judge another person’s parenting. Your kids are your kids after all and you know them better than anybody else.
But if your goal is to raise happy and healthy kids, kids who may or may not go to an Ivy League school but who are far more likely to challenge themselves confidently, to deal with failure maturely, and to progress successfully through the trials and tribulations of high school, college, and life, I think it’s pretty clear which route to take. It’s the route I’ll be taking at home and the one we’ll keep encouraging other parents to take.
I won’t do it perfectly and neither will anybody else. But maybe that’s a lesson kids can learn from our example? You’ll screw up along the way. But if you try your best and are good to your family, you’re always welcome at our dinner table at the end of the day.