I thought long and hard whether I wanted to share this experience I had the other day. My decision was made when I realised this was an example of all that is wrong with society and how we define whether someone has ‘succeeded in life’. This is a massive problem with our expectations of young people right now, and the stress they are experiencing.
At the time of writing we have had no wifi coming in the house for over two weeks. It has been a challenge to say the least, trying to work, connect with clients online and attend various meetings and events, it makes you realise how much we rely on it!
So, I have decamped to different hotels and spaces to take advantage of their wifi whilst availing myself of copious cups of tea!
And it was during one of my stints in one of these places that I ‘overheard’ a rather loud conversation going on between two women.
Now, please don’t get me wrong, I don’t deliberately listen to others’ conversations, but the volume was such that I could not avoid the content, and when they started talking about teenagers, my ears pricked up!
Basically one was sharing with the other their concerns about their child’s management of exam year, that she wasn’t working ‘hard’ enough (never sure what that means) and that their results may not be what ‘they’ expected.
The other lady listened and commiserated. I then tuned out at this point as I was concentrating on something else. I tuned back in when this second lady was continuing to empathise, using the example of a friend of hers child who was, and I quote ‘brilliant at everything’. Apparently this means being the captain of all the sports teams, popular and straight 9’s at GCSEs. Great stereotype of what some people truly believe is the definition of a ‘successful young person’. However, it was what she said next which astounded me. Apparently this young person, with all their successes fell from the pedestal of eternal success when they failed their driving test. This, apparently, was a good thing according to these two women as you have to fail at something to ‘get used to it’ and this successful young person needed this to happen!
I was horrified. Not only about a young person who wasn’t even their own being spoken about in this way, but also because there was a justifiable enjoyment of their failure because it taught them something they ‘needed’ to learn.
Is this really what we have become? A society which can only see a young person having succeeded and failed based on a set of results and other people’s decision making about who is ‘good enough’ and then looking for the moments of failure just so our young people know ‘what it feels like’?
I have said it before and I will say it again. Our child’s ability is not defined by a number or letter. A child who gets all 9’s or A*’s is not better or worse than a child who does their absolute best and has a range of numbers and letters to their name, or none at all! All we are doing here is defining a mentally damaging environment for our children based on the needs and desires of us as an adult society to focus on what we believe is important, academic achievement, being the ‘best’ and measuring success against someone else’s perceived failure.
This is the most outdated and punitive approach which has led to our young people being in crisis right now. The healthiest young people I see are the ones who are encouraged to take ownership of their strengths and abilities, regardless of what others are doing around them with parents who ignore the vicious and unhelpful comparisons and truly support each other to support their young people.
What results your children receive is none of anyone else’s business, it’s only yours if your children chooses it to be. Parental peacocking and judging other people’s children needs to stop, it’s preventing us being the parents we need to be to our children during these difficult times.
Rant over and enjoy your week.
Love Clare x