When our son was in middle and high school, we saw many of his friends taking honors or AP courses galore. I don’t have any issue with honors or AP classes per se, but when the child feels pressured to take on as many of those classes as possible, I start to question why. Our son had friends that would deal with hours of homework every night, along with extra-curriculars at school and other activities. I always wondered why. Why the push?
We all get the same amount of hours in our week. If a young person is asked (or pushed) to fill up many of those hours with homework, resume fillers, and college app bullet points, then when does that young person get to just be a kid? We only have a few precious years to be young and (hopefully) carefree. We have decades to be stressed, nervous, overworked, and short on sleep. Why make those things start in middle school?
If I move away from academics, there are still parents that push their kids in athletics. Working on a sport for several hours a day, six days a week accomplishes the same thing as heavy academics—not much time to be a kid. And don’t get me started on the kids that just have to be varsity athletes and carry a 4.0+ G.P.A. I don’t think those kids have two minutes a week to just be a kid. Some parents seem to want their child to have more responsibility and stress than the parents do while still in high school. I don’t get it.
If the kid wants to do things—play a sport or be in all AP courses—all on his or her own, fine. But too often I see parents pushing, in both subtle and overt ways, for their kid to be all things all the time. Well, all things but a kid, I should say. So why the push? Why not relax a little and let kids be kids for the (entirely too brief) time they get to be kids?