Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids: Dealing With Competition While Raising a Successful Child

By Wendy S. Grolnick

Book Overview

It begins harmlessly. Parents chatting on the playground compare their babies' first milestones: "Has Erin started talking? Addy's already using five-word sentences " Inevitably, Erin's mom and dad feel anxious. Later, as report cards, standardized tests, tryouts, playoffs, auditions and social cliques fill their child's world, parents' anxiety intensifies. The older kids get, the more competition they face, whether in sports, academics or the arts. Hovering in the background is the race for admission to a top-tier college. To help panicky parents deal with the torrential emotions stirred up by our competitive society, and to give them scientific knowledge about their children's growing years, leading child researcher Wendy Grolnick and educational and parenting journalist Kathy Seal offer this illuminating and accessible guide to channeling competitive anxiety into positive parenting. While evolution has given parents a genetic predisposition toward this protective anxiety whenever their children face today's heightened competition, the authors guide parents to avoid pushing and pressuring, turning their fear instead into calm guidance. Distilling the results of thirty years of research in child psychology, the authors focus on three essential feelings-autonomy, competence, and connectedness-which parents can foster in their children to maximize the child's chances of success and minimize family conflict. They explain that granting kids autonomy lets them feel that they can solve their own problems and are responsible for their own actions. At the same time, providing structure gives kids the guidelines, information, limits, and consequences that they need to act in the world, instilling them with a feeling of competence. Finally, support from adults in the form of time and other resources provides children with a necessary feeling of connection and helps them internalize the ideas and values of their caring parents. Reassuring and empathic, Grolnick and Seal show parents how to avoid the burn-out-in both parents and children-that afflicts so many in our highly competitive society, while raising children who thrive and excel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591025664
• ISBN13: 9781591025665
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: The Globe Pequot Publishing Group, Inc.
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Turn Over a New Leaf in 2010

This book explains why we pressure our kids and how our competitive drive, when it comes to our children, which is manifested as pushing them too hard and controlling them too much, causes us to worry. Beyond simply explaining why we do the things we do, however, it provides helpful advice on how to overcome our anxiety and be the best parents we can for our kids. Learn how to transform worry and fear into positive parenting, aid your child in developing intrinsic motivation, maintain a strong relationship with your child while at the same time encouraging his or her autonomy, and to avoid the parent-child conflict we all dread. We're always trying to be better parents. Let's make 2010 the year we do it! Lucy Adams, author of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny

Helpful, Sensible, Smart

Pressured Parents, Stressed-out Kids: Dealing With Competition While Raising a Successful Child As a therapist in private practice, I deal with many stressed-out parents who are worn out, frantically trying to raise children who can compete. They've bought the myth that they need to micromanage their children. Grolnick and Seal have written a wonderful antidote for these parents. I especially like Chapter 10: "Calming Down," because it gives these parents sensible and practical help in achieving the calm they need to follow the advice in the rest of the book. Well done, authors. I'm going to recommend it to the parents in my practice.

Right ideas about learning, creativity, happiness

My kids are grown, but I'm always on the lookout for books for parents that focus on "the right stuff," that is, how to raise kids who are critical thinkers, intrinsically motivated, and creative. This book by Grolnick and Seal do just that. In a quickly changing world, it does no good to emphasize achievement for the sake of grades. We need kids who can think, who can find happiness by exploring their own passions and interests in depth, who can relate to others in open-minded ways. Above all, we need parents who can do their crucial job with much less anxiety. An anxious parent makes an anxious child, and when everyone's running around anxiously, no one is thinking very clearly. This book is a valuable asset to the parental bookshelf.

From a Discerning Reader

From Discerning Reader This book is a very fluid read. It's different from a lot of other parenting books because it never makes you feel you're doing something wrong but yet you feel like you've learned something in every chapter. It explores some previously uncharted territory about parents and children. I found much of it fascinating, like the explanation of why we sometimes get unbelievably anxious about things involving our kids - for example when my son participates in a judo contest. Sometimes I really do get more anxious about stuff like that than he does! The authors say this is an evolutionary response that comes from our ancestors protecting their kids in the jungles and wilds. It gives you lots of practical tips to handle situations that you face with your kid, dilemmas about whether to push him to do things or just let her go him own way.

Insightful & engaging

A young patient of mine, one who is highly stressed by having to excel in competitive sports, saw this book in my office, read the first paragraph, about a swimmer whose mother yells "faster, faster!" and begged to bring the book to her mother. The mother and I later discussed her goals for her daughter, understanding that it was natural for her to want her daughter to win, but that her pressure was contributing to her daughter's non-compliant behavior in other areas. Since then I put several copies of Pressured Parents in my waiting room, and parents have told me that they could not put the book down, and that they found this to be one of the few parenting books that was truly helpful. The authors are extremely thoughtful; their advice is insightful and the vignettes are highly engaging.