Parents Pack on the Pressure

Students begin to feel overwhelmed by the amount of expectations their own parents have for them

 

Our parents have been with us through it all, but it seems that by the time you reach the age of 14, suddenly, all of the expectations they previously did not have for you, have now been placed in front of you that you must fulfill. While these expectations are often in our best interest, they can easily pile up and become too much to handle.

Doing well in school is usually the top priority of many parents expectations lists as we spend the majority of our lives going through the routine of schoolwork. Of course, excelling in school is certainly not a bad thing, however, it does become too much when parents start to check StudentVue excessively, as they make sure we always have perfect grades at all times of the day.

“My parents expect me to have perfect grades all the time, I can’t have any B’s in my classes and I always have to be on top of my homework,” Julia Coleman, freshman, said.

The expectation most parents have after high school is for their kid to continue their education by going to college. While pursuing higher education is always a good idea to think about, the minute you step into the halls of high school when you are a freshman, you suddenly are surrounded by people wondering what you want to do after high school, even if you have no idea yourself.

“My mom expects me to got to college right after high school, and while I plan to, I don’t know what I want to do, or if I will even want to go to college when I’m a senior,” Kerrigen Cooney, freshman, said.

Parents need to know what students are actually dealing with now instead of comparing it to when they were student. The times have changed a lot.

“I want my parents to know that it is not as easy as they think it is. School is a lot different from when they were a kid,” Coleman said.

When parents start recognizing that their children are under too much stress, partly due to their expectations, it will help students realize that their parents are there to help them, and not to stress them out.