A few years ago, someone gifted me with the book The Rabbit Who Wants to Go to Harvard. It is touted as “A New Way of Getting Children to Stop Sleeping and Start Achieving” and it holds such gems as:

Ronald the Rabbit is just your age. Not older nor younger, but exactly your age. In other words, you and Ronald the Rabbit are in competition. You and EVERYONE are in competition. Harvard has only 2,081 slots. Do you know how quickly rabbits reproduce? There are oceans of those guys out there, piles of rabbits, gunning for your spot at Harvard.

While the book is written in extremes to prove a point, there are parts that resonate - sometimes uncomfortably - for a parent who has high expectations of their children. We live in West LA. We send our children to a school that is considered “high achieving.” Many of us carry cultural values around the importance of education and success. And we want the best for our children, so why shouldn’t we push them to aspire to prestigious institutions of higher education, with the expectation that they will then thrive?

I am guilty of holding many of these feelings as a parent. When Maya was a baby, I worked on getting her to say “Barnard.” When I would visit my family in Boston, I would buy her shirts from MIT and Harvard, and when she briefly wanted to be an astronaut, I taught her that Sally Ride graduated from Stanford. This was all before she turned five.

And yet, there is growing evidence that our focus on achievement as a pathway for success is part of what is driving the current mental health crisis in teenagers. Rates of depression, anxiety and loneliness are skyrocketing. There are incredible pressures on our children, academically and socially, which are only exasperated by social media’s constant lens on their lives at home and at school. And while the mental health of teenagers is currently in the spotlight, the pressure to perform, and the patterns of parenting that undergird it, begin from the earliest ages. Hearing that you should go to Stanford to be an astronaut before you are five is not an ingredient to build strong mental health.

But giving up my high expectations for my children feels too permissive. Adult guidance and expectations, when in the right doses, are a necessary ingredient for a healthy childhood. So as a parent who wants the best for my children, how do I balance high expectations with a prioritization of mental health? How do I make sure my children do their best while also providing a home environment that can best insulate against depression, anxiety, loneliness and the pressure they will feel outside our home? 

In her book Never Enough (which I referenced during Back to School Nights), Jennifer Breheny Wallace shares her research on talking with hundreds of children and parents across the country on this very question. And while she hears, over and over, from high achieving students and very loving parents about the pressures to achieve as a path towards success, she also learns that the best antidote to this pressure is a feeling of “mattering” – that we are valued for who we are at our core, and that we can add meaningful value to the lives of others. In other words, our children need to know that we love them the same no matter what their report card looks like, no matter how their sports stats read, no matter what role they play in the school musical. 

After reading Never Enough, I started thinking about the messages I (sometimes unintentionally) communicate to my children and how to shift those messages to ensure that I am creating a home life where my children know they matter. Wallace provides some guidance in her book - advice like “lead with lunch” (instead of asking about tests and schoolwork first thing when your child gets in the car, start with “what did you eat for lunch today?”); “Tell failure Stories”; and “Be a Mattering Spotter” (point out when you see your child adding value around them, not with excessive praise, but simply by noticing). One action to which I chose to commit is “Never Worry Alone.” It is not easy to reach out to my friends with my worries and concerns, and I sometimes feel like I am burdening people who already have a lot on their plates; but I know when I turn to my friends, I am both taking care of my own well-being as well as modeling an important behavior for my children.

And while I sometimes find myself slipping into old habits at times, I simply need to read more of The Rabbit Who Wants to Go to Harvard to remember what is at stake:

All at once Ronald felt how tired he had become from his soccer tournaments, chamber concerts, charity galas, all-nighters in the bio lab, and his intense SAT prep. Ronald hadn’t slept in fourteen years. But it was all worth it.

Ultimately, while I am not willing to compromise high expectations for my children, I am willing to prioritize their mental and emotional health, and I am committed to finding the balance between these two core values. It means being intentional about conveying the right messages to my kids so they know they matter. It means creating space for my kids to show up as the people they are, and not the people I think they could be or should be. And it means redefining what success means. For each of us, that definition will be different, but I do know that our children don’t need to have a childhood like Ronald the Rabbit’s in order to be successful.

*Please join me and Inez Tiger tomorrow morning from 8-9am in Adelson to further discuss this material during our Coffee with Admin session.**