A balanced life instead of gilded pressure cooker

I heard part of this story on the radio and was intrigued. So I found it online. As part of the NPR show Here & Now host Deepa Fernandes (I think, she didn’t say her name) talked to Jennifer Wallace about her book Never Enough, When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It. The audio is ten minutes. We can pressure our kids too much. Achievement becomes toxic when a child believes they’re only lovable when they’re achieving. Setbacks aren’t seen as a setback but as proof to the child that they’re worthless. It’s harmful to mental health. Parents think that things like achievement test coaches are a help but each achievement bumps the child into harder challenges and life becomes only about achievement. It can lead to high rates of anxiety and of substance abuse. Kids refer to it as the gilded pressure cooker. Back in the 70s there was more slack in the system. A parent didn’t need to demand perfect performance from their child to be sure the child could do at least as well as themselves. In contrast, modern parents see the middle class eroding with a lot of economic uncertainty. So they try to give their child, starting from a very young age, all the economic advantages they can. That includes everything that might look good on a college application – extra curriculars, sports, volunteer work, and more. The child has no time to be a child. They learn their mental health can be sacrificed on the altar of achievement. Parents of healthy youth recognize they needed teach their children about how to have a balanced life, one without the need to escape through drugs or alcohol. They insist on down time, family time, and outside time. They teach their children they matter outside of their achievements. There is a “mattering movement” that teaches children have value in their core, outside of their achievements. A second component is children are taught to also add value. This protects the children from the anxiety that comes from stress. Some children were never taught that they matter. Others were never taught to add value to people other than themselves. The second part is social proof that they matter. Too many youth associate a good life with going to a top tier college. Parents need to reject that myth. Instead, they need to talk about the components of a good life – good relationships, purposeful work, and a feeling of making a positive impact in their world. Of course, I did a search for “mattering movement” and found it at thematteringmovement.com. It says it is co-founded by Wallace and inspired by her book, mentioned above. The site offers, new in 2024, curriculum for grades 6-12, professional development for teachers, and will soon have a guide for parents. What I saw looks like it is well supported by scientific studies. I went to one of the articles in the curriculum. This one is by Zach Mercurio. It explains what mattering is and why it is important. Then it explains three broad things one can do to help others see that they matter. First, notice them. Make eye contact. Ask how they’re doing. Don’t brush past them on the way to the coffee pot, instead ask if they want a cup. Second, acknowledge their unique strengths and talents. Instead of saying “good job,” describe how their strengths they showed and what the impact those strengths had on the situation. Third, make sure others know they aren’t disposable, that they and their talents are essential to the whole. The radio segment and the movement caught my attention because of how much I’ve been thinking about the social hierarchy and how much effort those higher in the hierarchy put out to maintain their position or to climb higher. A big part of the hierarchy is comparing oneself to others – I’m better than those people. A big part of maintaining their place in the hierarchy is by making the lives of those in lower positions to be worse, also known as oppression. When parents are frantic to make sure their children do as well as they do part of the reason is they don’t want their children to fall lower in the hierarchy. From the audio I got the impression that the anxiety tends to come from families on the upper side of middle class. These tend to be parents more concerned about their position in the hierarchy. So the big question is what does our society need to teach everyone so people don’t need to compare themselves to others, that each person feels they are valued for who they are and what they can do without basing their identity on whether they are better than someone else. People need to learn how to be complete within themselves. This mattering movement sounds like it is a good start. Some fun stuff. A cartoon by Zachary Kanin, posted to New Yorker Humor, shows a king lamenting, “I want to be feared as a tyrant, loved as a father, and revered as a god, but I also want them to think I’m funny.” Tom Gauld of New Scientist posted a cartoon with the caption, “Every Friday, a truck pulls up at the Mathematics Department to collect all the used numbers. They will be cleaned, sorted, and sold on to manufacturers of calendars, rulers, and clocks.” Matt of the Political Cartoon gallery of London posted a cartoon of a couple coming out of a restaurant. The man says, “It was delicious, but the Chinese fortune cookies were alarmingly well informed.” Massimo poses if a person on one side of the world puts a piece of bread on the ground at the same time as someone on the exact opposite side of the world does the same have they made an earth sandwich? What’s the ratio of bread to filling?