The Pressure Cooker Before College: How to Navigate and Actually Help Your Teen

The senior year countdown to college brings out parents’ worries and fears alongside teens’ own anxieties and self-doubt. During this time of escalating pressure and stress in families, parents can fall into common traps that defeat their intention to help and interfere with teens developing capacities that are the foundation for succeeding once they’re at college. When the dynamics associated with these traps are at play, parents become part of the problem rather than a resource for help. Approaches that seem instinctive, or even necessary, paradoxically derail teens and increase their need to avoid parents. Awareness of these traps and being prepared with positive alternatives empowers parents to brings out the best in teens, install an experience of parents as someone they can turn to later on, and foster psychological growth that makes it more likely that teens will adapt to college. Common parenting traps: Trap 1. Overfocus on achievement, getting into a prestigious college, and/or pursuing the right career path. It’s easy to get caught in the frenzy to get teens into the most competitive college or be blinded by our own vision for them. Teens are embedded in a cultural agenda where success is defined by perfectionism, status, and how things appear. But parents’ attitude and state of mind can either ground them or ramp up the pressure.   The fear driven need to “secure” our teen’s future sets up a high stakes’ equation with dire consequences if the...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Children and Teens College Parenting Perfectionism Self-Help Stress Student Therapist Students Success & Achievement Source Type: blogs