Dear Daughter, And to Every Young Person Feeling the Pressure

Junior year of high school can feel like a battleground. You’re loaded up with AP classes, preparing for the SAT, outdoing each other in extracurricular activities and trying to map out a future that everyone says depends on this one year. “It’s make or break time.,” they tell you.  I’ve been feeling frantic, depressed, and anxious about your upcoming possibly worst report card. I’ve tried getting you tutors, taking away your phone, nagging, and locking down the wifi.

You tell me that I’m not helping, and giving you too much pressure–I never intended to add to the stress. This letter is for you, my dear daughter, but it’s also for every teen out there who feels weighed down by the constant drive to achieve. And for every parent, who feels the same weight from another side. You’re stressed, and I am too. It got to the point where I couldn’t even focus on my own work.  We’re all in this together, so can we talk?

The Achievement Trap

Right now, you’re facing sleepless nights trying to keep up with your workload.  It drives me nuts to see how often you’re pulled into distractions—the social media scrolling, the dozen browser tabs that switch back and forth as you study. I know how easy it is to feel like you need to prove yourself in a thousand different ways at once. And I’m scared, too—scared that a bad report card will change the way you see yourself, and that maybe you’ll start doubting your potential or even giving up entirely. I’m afraid you might start hanging out with the wrong crowd—other kids who have given up, which would only make things worse. I’m also scared that if your grades fall, it will reflect my own failure as a parent.

But then I think about myself at your age. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to study for the SAT and played tennis. I thought my happiness depended on whether I was the varsity team captain, got into a prestigious university, or hit that perfect score. I wrote about this in another post, called “Addicted to Achievements”. Back then, I kept setting the bar higher and higher for myself, convincing myself that if I could just meet these goals, life would be all set.

But the truth is, what I thought would bring me happiness never lasted. The struggles in life don’t end just because you hit a target. In retrospect, I became smaller when I let those achievements define me. I fooled myself into thinking that my worth was tied to scores and titles, and the more I chased them, the more powerless I felt. I don’t want that for you because nothing has ever brought me as much happiness as having you in my life.

Balancing Goals and Self-Compassion

It’s not that I want you to give up on striving or aiming high. Ambition is a beautiful thing. But I want you to know that your worth is not defined by a grade, a college acceptance letter, or what anyone else says about you. I want you to understand that your achievements should be milestones, not measures of your value.

It’s hard to find balance in our society. There’s a constant pressure to do more, achieve more, and show the world that you’re capable. But I hope you’ll consider that all that’s really important is that you’re moving forward with purpose, not just distraction. That you’re doing the best you can, and that you’re not losing sight of who you are along the way.

I promise that I’ll try to remember this, too. I’ll remind myself that I love you exponentially more than any pride I feel from your achievements. And I hope we can be gentle with each other, even when things don’t go as planned.

A Shared Commitment: Empathy and Honest Reflection

I don’t have a perfect solution for you, or for myself. I don’t have a simple answer for how we can make these pressures disappear, because they won’t.   In the meanwhile, the best solution starts with empathy—for each other, and for ourselves. Give me a chance before you brush me off. We need to take a moment to stand in each other’s shoes. Trying to do your pre-calculus homework reminded me how much effort you put in, and I know you’re doing your best. I hope you also see that I’m trying my best as your mom, even when I get frustrated or anxious.

Let’s be honest with each other, and with ourselves, about what really matters—about what’s worth worrying about and what isn’t. To all the teens out there, and to my daughter: I want you to know that your parents are worried because they love you, not because they care more about your grades than you. And to all the parents, like me, who sometimes get lost in the expectations: let’s remember that what really matters is that our kids are happy, healthy, and learning to love themselves.

In the end, all I want for you, my dear daughter, is to live and thrive in this world even when I’m gone.  All we’re doing is in preparation for that. Let’s try to remember that, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll find our way through this, stronger and more connected than before. We’ll all be ok.

p.s. Whatever the report card says in a few weeks, you didn’t let me down.  I love you more than anything you might achieve.