When I talk to my grandparents or parents about the work we’re doing at school, club meetings, and all the activities that people at my school are involved in, I tend to hear, “When I was your age, we never were under as much stress as kids your age are nowadays.” As getting into college and getting a successful job are getting more difficult, the pressure to succeed in everything we do is growing as well. Now, the media, teachers, and their families are teaching kids that if they don’t do well at something, they are failures. These pressured kids believe that if they aren’t perfect, their school life will be miserable, they will have trouble getting accepted into college, and they will end up miserable, with a low-paying job and no friends. I’ve had my fair share of freak-outs after doing horrible on a test, telling myself that this one test will prevent me from ever getting a job, only later to be reminded that this thinking is ridiculous. Unfortunately for some children and teenagers, these near anxiety attacks are too common.
In our world, we are taught to be a certain way, to fit into a mold. We believe that there is only one way to be, and there are certain steps we have to take to get there. Often, parents are the cause of this intense pressure young people feel. Parents sign their kids up for sports the day the baby picks up a ball, scold them harshly when a bad homework grade comes home, force them to join every club in the school, and praise them when they beat all the other kids at something. Kids from families like these, often end up rebelling or becoming obsessive about making sure their schoolwork, athletic ability, or performances are absolutely perfect. It seems to only get worse as these children grow into teens and adults.
Sometimes, it’s not the family or anyone else who puts the pressure to be perfect on kids, but the kids do it to themselves. Their parents may be the most accepting, carefree, supportive parents in the world, but the kids have this drive to succeed and think that nothing else matters accept doing well at everything. Teens like these often get teased for their school projects being wonderful all the time or making all A’s, but these responses only reinforce their will to succeed and keep up their reputation. They can’t fail a paper because they are afraid someone will find out and think, “He/she is not as smart as we all thought.” Many teens end up doing things that they hate or don’t care about, only because it looks good on college applications.
As kids grow up, they need to be taught to do their personal best and that being happy means more than being successful. Some young people feel like they have to be perfect in every aspect of their lives: they have to look good, be smart, be athletic, be popular, and appear happy all the time; if they aren’t all of these things, they think they have failed life and no one likes them. It’s time to lessen the pressure we put on kids and ourselves, otherwise, we will grow into a generation of obsessive-compulsive robots that step on each other to get higher on the social and economic scale. Yeah, I don’t want to live in a world like that either.

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