The Perils of Pushing Kids Too Hard (from NPR)
On yesterday’s “Morning Edition,”, as part of National Public Radio’s (NPR) series, “How to Raise a Human,” Allison Aubrey featured Savannah Eason of Wilton, Connecticut, who – as a high school student in 2012 – was strongly considering suicide when her father wrestled a pair of scissors from her hands.
“I needed somebody to do something,” she says, and recalls that the pressure she felt “to succeed and aim high had left her feelings anxious and depressed.”
As Savannah told NPR, “The thoughts that went through my head were, ‘this would be so much easier if I wasn’t alive, and I just didn’t have to do anything anymore.’ ” This six and-a-half-minute audio story, “The Perils of Pushing Kids Too Hard, And How Parents Can Learn to Back Off,” is well worth a listen. Listeners will not be surprised to learn that the ultra-pressured conditions that afflicted high school students in 2012 have only intensified in 2018.
Young Adults Today are at Forefront of Dangerous Mental Health Crisis
In fact, as generational writer, Jean Twenge, states in her recent book, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us,”the children born between 1995 and 2012 are now at the forefront of one of the most dangerous mental health crises in decades.”
I urge you to click on the audio link and listen to NPR’s brief story. When I heard it, I felt compelled to share it as a way – once again – of reinforcing the crisis conditions in which so many younger and older adolescents (middle and high school students) are constantly embedded.
THESE are the conditions of which I have written in detail in At What Cost? Defending Adolescent Development in Fiercely Competitive Schools. Please listen and share with your networks. Thank you.
