NEVER ENOUGH: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It

There’s no question today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. But how do we teach our kids to strive towards excellence without crushing them? Our guest is award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace, for her new book NEVER ENOUGH: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It. Jennifer Breheny Wallace is an award-winning journalist and social commentator covering parenting and lifestyle trends for the last decade. Her website is jenniferbwallace.com

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
This is Get Connected with Nina delRio on one of six point seven light
f Good morning and thanks for listeningto Get Connected. What are the priorities
for your kid this year? Greatgrades, ap classes and pressing teachers,
being lauded in debate club and chessclub and basketball and learning Mandarin Awards for
drama and debate and dance. Chancesare, it's quite a list. There's

(00:27):
no question today's students face unprecedented pressureto succeed. But how do we teach
our kids to strive towards excellence withoutcrushing them? Our guest is award winning
reporter Jennifer Breheni Wallace for her newbook Never Enough. When achievement culture becomes
toxic and what we can do aboutit. Jennifer, thank you for being
on Get Connected. Oh, thankyou so much for having me. Jennifer

(00:50):
Wallace is an award winning journalist andsocial commentator covering parenting and lifestyle trends for
the last decade and for this book, Jennifer, you interview not only educators
and people studying the field, butnear least six thousand parents that pressure to
achieve. What does it look like? What are kids being asked to achieve
and how are they coping with it? Thank you so much for having me

(01:10):
on this pressure to achieve. Whereit becomes toxic, I believe, is
when achievement becomes entangled with our kids'sense of self worth, meaning that they
only feel worthy when they achieve.You know, we are seeing, as
parents and educators achievement creep going allthe way into nursery, school and kindergarten

(01:34):
and testing for gifted and talented programs, signing six year olds up for travel
soccer, all of these things.You know, if you looked, if
you thought back, I grew upin the seventies and early eighties, and
there was very little of this backthen. It is accelerated for sure in
the last few decades. It's reallyinteresting because I grew up in the seventies

(01:55):
and eighties as a latchkey kid.Right. Your parents may be wondered about
who you were spending time with.There's no phones, that's the worst thing.
They worried about. What started thechange? And can you talk about
the development of that? Yeah?Sure. So I wanted to get into
the deep roots here, so Iinterviewed economists, historians, sociologists, and

(02:17):
there are several reasons for this trend, but the one that resonated the most
with me was the economic differences fromwhen you and I were growing up to
today when we're raising our own kids. So in the seventies and early eighties,
life was generally more affordable. Housingwas more affordable, healthcare was more
affordable, higher education was more affordable, food was more affordable. There was

(02:39):
more slack in the system. Aparent back in the seventies and early eighties
could be relatively assured that their kidscould duplicate their childhoods, if not too
even better in adulthood. Today's parentsdon't have that assurance. We are seeing
the first generation of kids who arenot doing as well as their parents.
We don't know what jobs we're trainingour kids for in the future. AI

(03:04):
is on the same climate change.There are all of these rapid changes in
our world, and it's making parentsfearful, and our fear and anxiety about
our kids economic futures is playing outin our parenting. How are we communicating
that to our kids? So we'rebecoming what researchers call social conduits, meaning
we are absorbing these macroeconomic pressures andwe are becoming much more intense in the

(03:30):
way we parent our kids. Weas parents today feel like it is our
responsibility to weave these individualized safety netsfor our kids so that they can As
modern parents today, we have fewerassurances and so we are now tasked with
creating individual safety nets for each ofour kids. And that comes out in

(03:53):
how we prioritize academic work, howwe prioritize sports, anything that we perceive
could give our child an edge.Examples. So you're a parent to three
teenagers who were in high performing academicenvironments. What was the first inkling that
you had, and you study thisarea, What was the first inkling you

(04:15):
had that you were even sort ofpushing that onto your children? Oh,
my gosh, I would have sleep. I'm sure my parents were never sleepless
with my grades dropping from an aid. It would be in a subject that
I loved, So that would beone thing. Another thing was every fall
right around now, when my kidswere in middle school, I would start
to panic about their after school activities. Do I have them signed up for
enough? Too many? Are thesethe right activities? It felt like every

(04:39):
parent I knew had had found outwhat was uniquely different about their child and
what they should be investing their time, and and I wasn't so sure.
And I remember with my oldest whowas in seventh grade at the time,
he was really interested in architecture anddesign. And so I thought, how
could I foster that? Isn't thatthe kind of passion. Isn't this job

(05:00):
as a parent to encourage that?And so I called around schools in New
York City and I found one thatsaid it was an intro to Architecture and
design course, and they said Icould sign up my seventh grader as long
as I sat next to him inthe classroom. And so and he walked
in. When he walked in afterschool the first day of seventh grade,
I said to him, Honey,you're never going to believe this. I

(05:20):
found a course for you, introto Archchitecture. And he looked me straight
in the eye and he said,Mom, I love architecture. Please don't
ruin it for me. So Ihave gotten caught up in this achievement pressure
myself. Our guest is Jennifer BrahenniWallace. She's a frequent contributor to The
Wall Street Journal in the Washington Post. Began her career in television at sixty

(05:41):
minutes and her new book is neverEnough, When achievement culture becomes toxic and
what we can do about it.You're listening to get connected on one oh
six point seven light FM. I'mInnadel Riyo. You also bring up a
story in the book from a motherwho would put notes in her kids lunch
boxes, thinking of you, Ihope you're having a great day, and
at the end she would add thislittle signature that had personal excellence and she

(06:02):
meant it to be encouraging. Butnow that the kids are older, they're
you know, they're like mother.That was so much pressure on us.
What parents might see as support,some kids see as a constant push.
Parents think their job is to pushkids. But what is that line between
expectations, high expectations and excessive pressure. Yes, that is a question that

(06:26):
I wrestled with myself as the motherof three teenagers. And where I've come
down on that question is the ideathat yes, parents do need to have
a bar our kids will rise toour expectations, but that bar needs to
be unique for each individual child.It needs to be movable, it needs
to factor in all that that childis going through. And what I have

(06:48):
found is that bar really only workswhen we intimately know our kids, when
we get what I call a PhDin them, when we know what their
strengths are, what their weaknesses are, how they are coping, how they
are not coping. So really thebar can only be up there when we

(07:10):
really intimately know our kids. Ithink this also touches on the idea of
mattering. What is mattering and howdoes this world sort of undermine it?
Yeah, so I went in searchof the Healthy Strivers for the book.
I wanted to know what, ifanything, they had in common, What
was home life like, what wasschool like? What were the relationships like

(07:31):
with their peers? And I outlineit all in the book. But it
boils down to this idea of mattering. This is a psychological construct that's been
around since the nineteen eighties, andit's this idea of feeling valued for who
we are, deep at our core, by our families, by our friends,
by our communities, valued for thingsthat are separate from our achievements.

(07:57):
Also important to mattering is being reliedon and depended on to add meaningful value
back to our family, to ourfriends, and to our communities. So
the kids that I met who hadthis healthy level of mattering, they were
thriving. It didn't mean that theydidn't have setbacks, It didn't mean they
didn't make mistakes, but mattering actedlike a protective shield, almost like a

(08:22):
booie that would lift them up andmake them more resilient. The kids who
were struggling the most were those whofelt like they're mattering was either contingent on
their performance as in I only matterwhen, or kids who felt like their
parents valued them but no one dependedon them to add value back to anyone

(08:43):
other than themselves and their resumes.So those kids lacked social proof that they
mattered. Can you dig down onthat a little social proof thing? I
think it's interesting. Later in thebook you talk about, you know,
this ultra competitive world. It's alsoa focus on yourself and the concept quinses
have that extreme self focused This iswhere you're going. That's exactly right.

(09:03):
So our kids, you know,we are as parents, we are told
that the ultimate job of a parentis to raise independent, self reliant adults.
But what I found in the healthystrivers that I met was that their
parents instilled in them the skills ofinterdependence. That means that means feeling like

(09:24):
these kids could rely on others andhow to allow others to rely on them
in healthy ways. So when weraise our kids to be stoically independent,
first of all, it's not reality, it's not the way the world actually
operates. And two, it makesthem so self focused that their self esteem

(09:45):
can become entangled on every success andfailure, this up and down of a
life that's exhausting. What interdependence doesis it helps you to zoom out and
create this kind of other oriented lenswhere you see yourself as part of the
bigger hole, meaning that every successand failure is put into perspective. You

(10:05):
are not your successes, You arenot your failures. Even when it comes
to adults, you know, forpersonal achievement, I'm not sure we know
what success really looks like. Wedon't know what is enough. How do
we know as adults? But howdo kids know when enough is enough when
they've done their real best? Well, I think you hit the nail on

(10:26):
the head. We adults have toreally do our own work in figuring out
what were the messages we were sentabout achievement in our childhoods. Right do
we do? Is our worth entangledin our achievements, and we need to
do that work so that we canbe better sources of support for our kids.

(10:48):
One if I could tell you onelittle anecdote that a mother that I
met gave me to sort of helpmake this thinking visible to kids, that
they matter no matter what. AndI think it's also true something we could
do for ourselves. She reaches intowhenever her kid is a setback, it's
a bad grade, doesn't make theeighteam. She reaches into her wallet and
she grabs a bill, whatever bill. She has a five dollar bill,

(11:11):
ten or twenty, and she holdsit up to her child and she says,
do you want the money? Andthe child says yes, and she
says, okay, hang on.She crumps up the bill, she puts
it on the floor, dirties itup, dunks it into water, and
then very theatrically holds this soggy,dirty, wrinkled bill, and she says
to her child, do you stillwant it like this twenty dollar bill?

(11:33):
Your worth doesn't change whether you feelknocked down, wrinkled up inside, whether
you get cut from a team orrejected by our friend. Your worth is
your worth, no matter what Ithink we have to remind ourselves of our
own worth, and we also needto surround ourselves with friends and close ones
who can remind us of our worth. We only have a couple of minutes

(11:56):
left. I do want to getto parents a bit here. One of
the things that was really interesting tome was about mother's in particular, because
even if a mother works outside thehome, the weight of a child's success
bears more on mothers than fathers,and whoever is mostly as soon as the
caregiver in the household. All thatsacrifice that one parent will generally put in
going above and beyond, what isthe impact on the child? Is that

(12:18):
self sacrifice? Actually, how doesit impact either one of them? Actually?
Right? So I found this sosurprising. The number one intervention for
any child in distress is to makesure the primary caregiver, most often the
mother, that her well being,her support system, her resilience is intact.
Because a child's resilience rests on amother's resilience, and mother's resilience rests

(12:43):
on the depth and support of herrelationships. So no one has served when
we run ourselves ragged. Something Iwish I had learned twenty years ago and
not just four years ago writing hisbook. To sum it up, if
you could take a look at allthe conversations you had with students while doing
the research, What do student healthystudent achievers have in common? What is

(13:03):
their mindset? And how do theycope with stress? They believe they matter
no matter what. They are surroundedby family, friends, and communities that
remind them of their mattering. Evenwhen they have stepbacks, even when they
have failures, their resilience rests ontheir relationships. Our guest is Jennifer Brehanni
Wallace, author of Never Enough,When Achievement culture becomes toxic and What we

(13:28):
can do about it. Thank youfor joining me on Get Connected. Thank
you so much. This has beenGet Connected with Nina del Rio on one
oh six point seven Lightfm. Theviews and opinions of our guests do not
necessarily reflect the views of the station. If you missed any part of our
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one six seven lightfm dot com.Thanks for listening.