Ease kids’ anxiety, but keep expectations
Reassure them, yet
set high goals — a ‘weird little needle’
So here’s a thing I messed up recently.
I was driving my daughter and her debate team partner to a debate tournament, and they were in a sweat about the task ahead.
One was in tears, one was certain they’d lose all four rounds, both wondered whether they were cut out for debate club in the first place.
They were cramming at our dining room table until midnight the previous night. They knew the material. They just couldn’t shake their fear that certain defeat awaited them.
“You guys,” I said, climbing atop my metaphorical soapbox. “I have a feeling you’re going to do great. And you know what? If you don’t do great? It doesn’t actually matter. There’s nothing at stake here.
“Worst-case scenario: You lose all four rounds,” I continued, my voice nearing a crescendo. “So what? What happens? Your parents still love you exactly the same. None of your friends will shun you. You don’t get kicked off the team. You’re not getting graded.
“It’s practice!”
(I was getting to the poignant part.)
“Practice for future debate tournaments, sure. But also practice for life! You’re learning to look at issues from both sides! You’re learning to communicate clearly and quickly! You’re practicing skills that will serve you in countless, critical ways! You’ve got this! And if you don’t, no biggie!”
And with that, they scurried off — armed with my rousing pep talk; relieved, no doubt, to finally escape it.
I think they won two rounds and lost two rounds. I honestly don’t remember. The important part is what comes next.
Another debate tournament came around and my daughter and her partner spent the evening prior cramming, sort of, at our dining room table.
“How are you guys feeling about tomorrow?” I asked, ready to swoop in with my trademark wisdom if necessary.
“Eh,” my daughter’s partner answered. “It’s not like it really matters.”
“I mean, it matters,” I stammered. “You definitely want to go in there prepared ....”
It was too late. The damage was done. My only hope, at this point, was to stanch the bleeding.
I called John Duffy. He’s a clinical psychologist and author of “The Available Parent: Expert Advice for Raising Successful, Resilient, and Connected Teens and Tweens” (Viva Editions). His
Certainly, I told him, I’m not the first parent to wonder how to walk this thin, ever-moving line: Ease your child’s performance anxiety, but not to the point where they don’t bother performing.
“As parents, we’re all trying to find this lane that is somewhere in between taking the pressure off and keeping the expectations high,” Duffy said. “You’re threading this really weird little needle.”
Yes. Poorly. Help.
“You want them to hear, ‘I know you’re smart and capable and talented. I expect you to try your best and you should expect that of yourself,’?” he said. “?‘And you don’t have to be perfect — in fact, you can’t be perfect. No one is. But you’re not free from trying.’?”
I wasn’t direct enough about the trying, I guess.
“Kids catastrophize, and you want to take the catastrophic, all-or-nothing feelings out of it,” he said. “You took the catastrophic out of it, but you didn’t lay in the expectation.”
Ideally, we set up our kids to experience the direct correlation between effort invested and results experienced.
“You have to give kids the recognition that they’re capable,” he said. “And the agency to know they have some control over how they do: ‘If you did that times table 10 more minutes a day, I wonder if that C could become a B.’”
What should I have said, if not in that first car ride, then later? In the “not like it matters” moment?
Something like this:
“I want you to know that the sky doesn’t fall if you lose a debate,” Duffy suggested. “But at the end of the day, I know you carry a degree of greatness and I expect you to fulfill that.”
By giving your endeavors your time and attention. Not by knocking every one of them out of the park.
It can be equally stressful, Duffy said, for kids to hear that their parents don’t expect them to do all that well.
“Kids internalize that show of no-confidence,” he said. “They need to hear that their parents believe in them.”
My kids hear that in spades. My challenge, should I choose to accept it (I do! I swear!) is to layer in high expectations too.
(Especially, I suppose, when I’m driving other people’s children around and treating them to my pearls of wisdom.)
Lucky for me, there’s a debate tournament — the final one of the school year — coming up in a few days. I’m ready.
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