Parental Pressure and Students’ Mental Health
Each passing day, we envisage a bright future for our kids and students. We keep a mental picture of an almost perfect child/student.
It’s a great idea to nurture such amazing thoughts for our young future leaders. In fact, without this picture in mind, there is no destination in mind to keep you motivated as you journey through the parenting/teaching journey.
We should however be adept at drawing the line between expectations, encouragement, and pressuring these young minds
I know you expect top-notch performance from your children; you want to see them excel in school work, their chosen careers, and among their peers.
Mounting pressure for excellent, over-the-roof performance comes with a host of negative, unwanted, and detestable effects. Therefore, without mincing words, we must be mindful of the extent to which we mount pressure on them for peak performance.
The tricky part to this is that these effects happen unconsciously most of the time and we are not quick to notice until there is a conglomeration. Yes, I mean a pile-up over days, weeks, months, and years.
A pile-up of parental pressure leads to mental stress/fatigue that manifests in diverse ways. One of such manifestations is low academic performance, low self-esteem, cheating in school, frequent mood swings, anxiety, and emotional breakdown or overwhelm.
In a nutshell, when children are overly pressured to perform outstandingly well without step-by-step nuggets for academic excellence followed by the requisite time for growth, they tend to topple into a state of learned helplessness which in turn dominates their minds with a feeling of overwhelm, lack of vigor, determination, and zeal to get the ball rolling any further. Many students have retired into, “I can’t kill myself jare.”
So how can you avoid pressuring your children or students?
Give them words of affirmation to consistently meditate upon each day. Encourage and praise them for slight improvements and ensure that you engage them from time to time with proven academic techniques, tips, and nuggets.
An additional tip would be to get them exposed to leadership seminars, programmes, and intellectual competitions.
From time to time, get them enrolled in something worthwhile that you hope to see them achieve later in life. Consistent habit is what builds character.
Our dear parents and teachers, it is high time we refrained from mounting pressure over and again on your kids/students, without handing them the tips, techniques, and nuggets that will earn them the much-desired results, and without providing enabling environment (competitions, intellectual contests, quizzes, debates, to mention but a few).
How do you intend to change your parenting and teaching approach to eliminate undue pressure on our lovely kids and students?
We would love to hear from you. Leave your comment in the box.
Cheers!! Till we meet again next week.
Do enjoy your weekend with the family. . .
I’m Olumide Anthony
Psychologist and the Administrative Officer of the Association of Nigerian Educational Psychologists (ANEP).
A pleasure writing you…