Back to school and the achievement game

As we begin to prepare our children for the back-to-school routines, there can be a mix of excitement and trepidation about the year ahead. Schools and their structures reflect a meritocratic culture that is shaped by goal setting, ‘personal best’ and accumulating a resume of skills and achievements. Now none of those things is a problem in and of itself, but at times our young people, who are forming their sense of identity, can become incredibly overwhelmed by a sense of needing to do more and be more. 

The core business of being a teenager (and increasingly that lovely pre-teen age too!) is figuring out who you are and what you believe in. It is an exciting and daunting time. For some young people the start of a new school year might feel like a fresh start, a chance to start something new, learn something new or pursue a skill they have already been developing. For others a new year brings with it anxiety about whether they will be in the top class or make the representative team or finally get an award at the end of year assembly. This scarcity mindset—focusing on what you don’t have and the fact that you will always need more—can be crippling for some. At times even activities that are meant to be fun, like playing an instrument or being a part of a debating or sporting team, can become the setting for proving one’s ultimate worth. 

It is a challenging tightrope for parents and educators (like me) to continue to walk: wanting to encourage young people to find their strengths and passions, push themselves to learn more about the world God so intricately created, cultivate their own unique skills and work hard as we are designed by our Creator to do, while at the same time cutting across the messages that our meritocratic culture bombards them with—that you are the sum of your achievements. As a parent, it is right and proper for us to want good things for our children to help them navigate the precarious years of the quest for personal identity; we want to help them cultivate their God-given gifts and abilities. 

But as parents who are raising their young to know and love the Lord, we have a unique opportunity and, dare I say, responsibility to not allow our children to be consumed by a culture that tells them that their worth is found in their next achievement or success. To cut across these messages by helping them to look outside themselves to understand the experience of others, to cultivate humility and look for opportunities to put others first. Because when Jesus says, ‘So the last will be first, and the first will be last’ (Matthew 20:16) he upends the status quo of the rat race that shapes our children’s experience of the world and, too often, our parenting. 

Much of the literature on this topic from experts in the field of psychology and adolescent development (see suggestions below) emphasises the importance of helping young people to develop a deep sense of ‘mattering’: mattering to a community, mattering to others and seeing themselves as a part of a bigger story. We need to help our kids to look up and out. To know that they are uniquely and wonderfully made by a loving Creator who knit them together in their mother’s womb (Genesis 1:27; Psalm 139:13–14). To see themselves as a part of God’s big story and as part of a community of believers whom God is holding in the palm of his hand. To help them to cling to the sure and certain hope that as children of God, even when they fail or mess things up, they are infinitely loved and matter to him. 

So, as we start a new school year let’s remind our children (and ourselves) that we are not the sum of our achievements, even when it seems that the world, and perhaps sometimes modern schooling, is telling us that we are.

Perhaps we can do this by:

• being conscious of how much and what we are celebrating or praising about our children. Are we focusing on their character or their achievements?
• telling them why they are loved and matter to us and to God and reminding them that they don’t need to earn this love
• alongside participating in healthy competition, participating in communities where competition is not the goal 
• teaching them to serve others in practical ways, to use their gifts and skills to build others up 
• helping them to see complexity in the world and in relationships and not always laying blame or fault at the feet of others
• regularly connecting them to the gospel story through youth group, church community and spending time in the word
• praying regularly that they would know their worth is found in a life-giving relationship with their Creator God.

Helpful books about achievement culture for parents raising teens/ pre-teens:

Dr Justine Toh: Achievement Addiction
Dr Jennifer Breheny Wallace: Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do about It
Dr Judith Locke and Dr Danielle Einstein: Raising Anxiety: Why Our Good Intentions Are Backfiring on Children and How to Fix It
Dr Lisa Damour: Under Pressure: Confronting an Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Teenage Girls
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Jessica Chilton is the Head of Student Wellbeing at an independent Anglican girls' school in Sydney. She has been a high school teacher and in various pastoral care roles in schools for almost 20 years. She is married to Dave and is mum to three boys (10, 8 and 6) and lives in the inner west of Sydney.
 

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