My school was considered “high achievement” and took pride in being ranked in the “top 10 high schools in California.” As students, it felt like we were constantly judged by how many AP classes we took and what our SAT scores were. It felt like school was meant to be a competition to get the best grades and be involved in the most impressive extracurriculars. It felt like getting into the biggest name college was the most important event in our lives. If we didn’t get it “right,” nothing after would ever be right.

As a parent and faculty educator at Challenge Success, I hear from teachers, students, and parents that the pressure to get into college has only ramped up over the past 30 years. One student told us, “Our grades are what make up our future, and if you don’t get good grades you won’t get into a good college, and you won’t get a good job, and will lead a miserable life.”

I feel such empathy for our kids these days. Our high schools so often mirror the values we promote in American society: that worthiness and belonging are attached to achievement. In essence, we’re asking our kids to compete for scarce grades, scarce leadership positions, and scarce admissions slots, all so they can feel worthy of love. And that is constantly reinforced by parents, peers, and school. 

The college admissions process is the climax of this. Our students feel their worthiness is judged by where they are accepted. I felt it as a high schooler, and so many of our kids feel it even more intensely today.

All of this, whether we want to admit it or not, is causing emotional harm. The message we collectively send our kids is that if they go to a highly selective college, we will value them more, and they will have a better shot at a happy life. 

Our research does not back that up. 

As we discuss in our white paper, A Fit Over Rankings, college selectivity is not a reliable predictor of student learning, future job satisfaction, overall well-being, or (with narrow exceptions) lifetime income. 

In essence, as we say in our workshop, it’s the kid, not the college they go to, that determines success. What I wish I could tell every aspiring college kid in America is: 

“Despite the prevalent messaging out there, your choice of college won’t determine your life. This is true, despite what you might hear from your peers, the media, parents, teachers, and even your own fears. College is an important step. But it’s not going to make you, and it’s not going to break you. Everything is going to be OK, no matter where you go. Wherever you go, you’re going to learn, get opportunities, and meet interesting people. When you become an adult and look back, you’ll see that how you used college was more important to your success, happiness, and life satisfaction than where you went to college.” 

Right now, for many high school juniors and seniors, college admissions feel like the most important thing in their life. It’s our job as the adults in our kids’ lives to let them know: “Your worthiness is not based on the college you go to. Or whether you go to college at all.”

And they won’t fully believe us. But that’s our job: to lovingly and consistently keep telling them that. 

These messages about achievement and narrow definitions of success as markers of personal worthiness make it harder for our kids to choose a college that is a good fit for them over a more prestigious school. 

Now, in my 40s, I spend very little time thinking about where I went to college.  Almost no one I meet asks where I went. I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience. As the adults in our children’s lives, our job is to provide the comfort and perspective that adulthood affords. It’s a long life and where you go to college will neither make you nor break you.

This is an opportunity to tell them to practice the things they will have to do as adults: make choices that are right for them, embrace dreams, AND accept disappointment. It’s a chance to practice not chasing the status and approval of others (including their parents). It’s a chance to find the things that engage them, challenge them, and motivate them to find the path that was meant for them, not the one meant for anyone else. 

We adults have to have the maturity to believe it too. We have to stop thinking that our children’s choice of college says something about our own success in raising them or about our status or worthiness as a family.  Just as important, we need to stop perpetuating the cycle of judging others’ worthiness by their achievements or external displays of success. As child trauma psychiatrist Dr. Archana Basu says, “We all are fundamentally not just touching children’s lives, but each other. We live within relationships and communities.” By becoming more aware of the biases and assumptions embedded in how we talk to our kids about college, we have more freedom to create what we and our communities truly want to be as a society. And that’s the real work, the internal change that transforms us, our kids, and our future.

Douglas Tsoi, J.D., is a Parent and Faculty Educator for Challenge Success. Douglas has had a variety of careers, being a lawyer, schoolteacher, and government sustainability officer. He also founded two schools for adult learners: Portland Underground Grad School and School of Financial Freedom. Douglas’s specialties include curriculum development, classroom engagement, and online learning. He’s passionate about helping people develop resilience and a love of learning throughout their lives.

The post What Students Might Not Believe about College Admissions appeared first on Challenge Success.

“97% of the high school students in our Challenge Success survey admitted to cheating at least once during the past year, and 75% admitted to cheating four or more times.

Many students point to examples of cheaters on Wall Street, in government, sports and show business, and tell us that the standards for honesty are different these days:  “Everybody cheats.”

The problem is so prevalent and widespread that many parents and educators tend to throw up their hands in defeat.  But we know something can be done about the rampant cheating in schools. We reviewed the research on cheating from the past 15 years and summarize our findings here to show you what really goes on inside the classroom and to help you find ways to increase honesty and integrity in your homes and schools.”

Explore Denise’s suggestions for how parents can help reduce cheating and academic dishonesty.

Read full article published on October 25, 2012 in the CNN, Schools of Thought page.

The post My View: Cheat or Be Cheated? appeared first on Challenge Success.

“What students do at college matters much more than where they go. The key is engagement, inside the classroom and out.”

Explore Denise’s suggestions for how students should approach choosing a college.

Read full article published on May 22, 2019 in the Wall Street Journal.

The post The Right Way to Choose a College appeared first on Challenge Success.

“While some stress is necessary and good for healthy adolescent development, we know that an undue amount of pressure placed on kids at school, home, or via peers can be detrimental to their well-being.”

Explore Denise’s suggestions for how parents can help reduce their children’s stress.

Read full article published on November 14, 2019 in Thrive Global.

The post How to Help Ease the Stress of High-Achievers in Your Life appeared first on Challenge Success.

Here are a few ideas to help families keep the spark of learning alive this summer while also carving out time for the daily protective factors every kid needs: playtime, downtime, and family time.

• Be of service
• Explore a personal interest
• Learn a life skill
• Find or create a job (virtually or IRL)
• Produce (and consume) media
• (Re)create summer family rituals
• Participate as a camper or counselor in an online summer camp/class

EXPLORE FULL LIST OF IDEAS

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My physical therapist used the acronym SEEDS to represent five vital elements for good health: Sleep, healthy Eating, regular Exercise, Drinking water, and Stress management. He recommended that I follow the SEEDS plan every day to speed up the healing process. Since these are all topics that we discuss in our Challenge Success presentations about “The Well-Balanced Student,” I was already bought in and had a pretty good head start for following his advice. I review the five SEEDS elements below to encourage you to buy in as well and to strive for your entire family to follow the plan.

Sleep

Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep each night, and adolescents need 8-10. It is absolutely critical to try to meet this goal each night and to remember to get off of all devices (phones, computers, televisions) at least one hour before bedtime in order to get better sleep. We know that the blue glow from technology can affect our melatonin and disrupt our sleep and that the content we view on the screens can cause stress or heightened emotions that may make it difficult to fall asleep and stay sleeping through the night. Even though I regularly preach this in my presentations to schools, and had all my devices set to dim their bright lights at nighttime, I would typically do a quick email check before bed. Not anymore. I am now religious about non-screen time at night in order to improve the sleep my healing brain so desperately needs.

Eating

My physical therapist encouraged me to eat more fruits, vegetables, healthy proteins, and fewer fried foods and sugary snacks. I ate a pretty healthy diet pre-concussion, but, in my injured state, I would often find that I would wake up really hungry in the morning and had trouble stabilizing my blood sugar throughout the day. I didn’t realize how much our brains require a steady supply of healthy food to function – and healing brains seem to require even more. A good reminder for students (or any of us) who tend to skip breakfast: we need to feed the brain before we can do any good thinking and learning.

Exercise

I walk and hike regularly, but, in my new state, I found that even 10 to 15 minutes of getting my heart rate up could make me feel better during one of my brain fog moments. Many studies show a strong connection between brain functioning and exercise which is why most educators try to incorporate physical movement into students’ daily routine. Recess, mid-class stretches, movement breaks, and PE periods help students focus and prepare to learn. Parents can support this by encouraging kids to walk or bike to and from school, if safe and feasible, and to get physical exercise each day.

Drinking Water

I was told to avoid sugar-sweetened beverages and to drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water every day to prevent dehydration. This is well-known advice for anyone (with or without a concussion). Schools and families can support students by encouraging them to bring water bottles to school and to refill them regularly throughout the day.

Stress Management

I often talk about mindfulness and meditation as great stress-reduction strategies in my school presentations, but I will now admit that I never regularly incorporated these into my daily life. I had tried a few times, but my mind wandered, and if it wasn’t scheduled on my to-do list for that day, it wouldn’t get done. My physical therapist told me not to worry about losing focus during meditation. He wanted me to set a timer for five minutes, sit in a comfortable chair with my feet flat on the ground, and try to concentrate on my breathing. If my mind wandered, simply try to bring it back to focus. At first, it was really hard for me to keep my eyes closed and focus for the full five minutes, but with practice, it got easier. Now I meditate two or three times a day for five minutes, and I have found this to be one of the very best ways for me to calm my brain and handle the dizziness and nausea. I plan to add these daily “brain breaks” to my calendar to ensure that I consistently make time for them in my regular routine.

Another important recommendation was for me to do one thing at a time and not try to multitask. I used to regularly talk on the phone (hands-free) while driving, or check emails while eating lunch, but my injured brain wasn’t able to handle more than one task at a time. When I was finally cleared to drive, I was shocked at how much brainpower and focus it took for me to drive 20 minutes around my neighborhood. I had to come home and take a nap right after the trip – and that was without the radio on or attempting to make a call. Imagine how much brainpower our new 16-year-old drivers are using and how important it is for them – and all of us – not to be distracted on the road. Now I try to focus just on driving, just on eating, or just on listening to work calls, instead of attempting to do multiple tasks at once.

When I speak to students at school assemblies, I always tell them that they have one body that has to last for their entire life. What they do in terms of health (sleeping, exercise, stress management, eating, and drinking) will affect them for years and years to come. This line has a whole new meaning to me now. We all need to be kind to our bodies, including our brains. We need to feed our brain, water it, and give it a break when necessary so it will indeed last a lifetime.

Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Co-Founder of Challenge Success and a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She is the author of, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids. Dr. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. She is a 3-time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award and was honored with the 2012 Education Professor of the Year “Educators’ Voice Award” from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. 

The post SEEDS for Good Health: My Lessons from a Concussion appeared first on Challenge Success.

In an incredible stroke of luck, I landed my dream job right out of college: teaching preschool at Bing Nursery School, the renowned Laboratory Preschool for the Psychology Department at Stanford University.

Our work at Bing was embedded in the new field of developmental psychology, led by pioneers like Stanford’s Eleanor Maccoby and Albert Bandura. These forward-thinking psychologists studied young children as complex beings, capable of creative problem solving. Walter Mischel, PhD, developer of the famed marshmallow test, conducted his research at Bing in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In a play-based setting, we early childhood educators emphasized development of the whole child, a multi-dimensional way of looking at a child’s mental, physical, social, and emotional development. Now we call it individualized curriculum, but I could identify a child just by a sock on the ground.

The Bing kids rolled down grassy green hills designed by a famous landscape architect, swung in wisteria-twined groves, and built elaborate structures in large sand areas with running water. It may have been child’s play, but the underlying educational tenets were profoundly serious.

In early childhood, much of a child’s work is about self-discovery. According to the famed Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget, “Play is the work of childhood.” That is, a young child’s primary developmental task is to discover a sense of self through exploration or play.

But why do we assume that exploration of self somehow stops in early childhood? In many ways, a four-year-old is not so different from a 14-year-old. When do we stop giving kids permission to explore?

At Bing, we used to tell parents that taking risks is similar to the number of pebbles a child holds in his or her hand. If a child holds a handful of pebbles, she is more likely to “spend” her pebbles — to make a new friend, approach an adult for help, or try woodworking tools for the first time. She is free to use a few precious pebbles, knowing that she holds more in her hand.

On the other hand, if a child holds just one pebble in his hand, he is much more likely to protect that pebble, to close his hand, to shy away from taking risks. Unable to spend his single pebble, he will be less likely to join a new playgroup, raise his hand at big group time, or build a more complex block structure.

Today, many of our adolescents feel that they must approach life holding just one pebble in their hands.

Many are anxious, having internalized our culture’s limited notion of success perpetuated by peers, parents, and the community. They’re afraid to take risks, to try something new, to get a bad grade in life.

Their lives are circumscribed by what Rich Karlgaard, author of Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement, calls “the conveyor belt to success.” This conveyor belts moves students along “a narrow path of success and starves them of opportunities for self-discovery.”

In our culture today, or so the prevailing attitude goes, it’s better to get on the conveyor belt early…and stay there. No room for the late bloomers, the dreamers, the drifters, the kids who love books but eschew extra-curricular activities, the artistic types who prefer clay over calculus.

Challenge Success, a nonprofit affiliated with Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, advocates for a broad definition of success, because, “After all, success is measured over the course of a lifetime, not at the end of a semester.”

For too many of our teens and young adults, this narrow definition of success — defined by grades, test scores, college admission, etc. — is limiting and soul-crushing.

How can a student talented in fine arts find her path when she is consuming a STEM diet of science, math, and technology? How can a budding creative writer discover his gift when he hears that medicine, law, or investment banking is the only ticket to success?

For my own daughter, locked into the high-level track at her Silicon Valley public high school, that meant only three electives over the course of her high school career. Starved for expression of her creativity (a life-long passion), she stuck it out through four years of French and AP Calculus but lived for the relief of Ceramics.

Art classes saved her, she tells me now, 10 years beyond her high school experience. Having an artistic practice allowed her to center herself in the morning (when Ceramics was first period), or de-stress at the end of the day (when Ceramics was last period). A sympathetic art teacher would let her stay late and even occasionally (don’t tell) skip part of her next block period.

In Silicon Valley, the pervasive mantra fail fast puts even more pressure on teens to determine the direction of their lives…and to do it quickly! In truth, no 18-year-old is equipped (nor should they be) to portend their future, to know in high school what major, passion, or career they should pursue.

We don’t rush a baby learning to roll over, or a toddler learning to stand. Why do we forget that every child and adolescent develops according to his or her own timetable?

Even the Magic 8 Ball offers up advice such as, “Reply hazy, try again,” “Cannot predict now” and “Ask again later.” Or my favorite, “Better not tell you now.” There were years when I ran my life based on the morning’s advice from the magic ball.

So, parents, be sure that your child always has a handful of pebbles. They need to be able to take risks, explore their options, learn who they are, mess up and try again. Practice makes perfect, and “fail fast” should never apply to children.

Let your kids step off the conveyor belt, if need be…another one will come along soon.

This article was first published on Medium.

Charlene Margot is the Founder and CEO of The Parent Venture and a current Board Member and former Board Chair of Challenge Success. She is a Palo Alto native, mom of two young adults, and a lifelong advocate of kids, schools, and families.

The post Make Sure Your Child Has a Handful of Pebbles appeared first on Challenge Success.

In “The Bad News About Helicopter Parenting: It Works,” Druckerman — and Doepke and Zilibotti, the authors of the original research she references -— seem to conflate the notion of “helicopter parenting” with “authoritative parenting.” Helicopter parenting, characterized by a hyper-focus on protecting, controlling, and perfecting kids, goes against current research on healthy child development. This parenting style can lead to anxiety, stress, depression, and other mental health challenges as well as disengagement at school.

In contrast, authoritative parenting advocates a balance between supporting kids and setting expectations for them. At Challenge Success, a research-based organization that supports well-balanced, engaged students, we promote authoritative parenting as an effective approach to build resilience, problem-solving skills, and independence in young people. We see qualities like these as part of a broader definition of success or “what works” when it comes to raising young adults as opposed to a narrow definition of success that relies on extrinsic metrics like grades, test scores, and selective college admissions. As parents and educators, we believe in honoring each child’s interests and talents and supporting them to achieve their unique paths to success.

Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Denise Pope and Dr. Madeline Levine, Challenge Success Co-Founders

We wanted to share a longer response to the Challenge Success community to clarify the differences between “helicopter parenting” and “authoritative parenting” and why we believe authoritative parenting “works” to raise independent, resilient adults.

Helicopter parenting refers to parents who are over focused on the successes and failures of their children. According to researchers at Miami University in Ohio, helicopter parents tend to be overly involved in their children’s life, exhibit controlling behavior, and limit their children’s autonomy. A classic example of this behavior would be a parent who contacts their child’s teacher to argue for a higher grade on a paper. This style of parenting is characterized by a level of overprotecting and over-perfecting that is beyond responsible parenting. For instance, asking certain details about your child’s whereabouts is appropriate, such as, “Where is the party taking place and will there be adult chaperones?” but needing to know every detail of your child’s life is over-doing it. Similarly, it is appropriate to take an interest in your child’s academic experience, but correcting homework assignments and expecting only top grades can do more harm than good.

At Challenge Success, we have seen the devastating impact of overparenting and undue pressure placed on young people to achieve a narrow definition of success as measured primarily by things like grades, test scores, college admissions, or money. This kind of extreme pressure can be linked to high levels of anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, and other mental health challenges for students as well as disengagement at school.

In contrast, “authoritative parenting” as originally defined by Diana Baumrind, Ph.D., is characterized by high responsiveness shown through warmth, love, and support, and high expectations shown by enforcing clear, consistent boundaries. Research from the Center for Parent and Teen Communication shows that this more balanced approach that combines nurturing encouragement and sensible limits is linked to development of characteristics that most parents want for their children such as intrinsic motivation, resilience, creativity, and persistence.

As our organizational name and mission indicates, we encourage families and schools to challenge society’s narrow definitions of success and honor each child’s interests, talents, and unique pathway in life. We offer the following tips to parents to support healthy development for kids of all ages. To see more about each tip or download a copy, visit the Parenting Tips page on the Challenge Success website.

• Define success on your terms.
• Maintain play time, down time, and family time; avoid over-scheduling and honor consistent sleep routines.
• Love your children unconditionally.
• Discipline and set limits.
• Cultivate autonomy; allow kids space to develop on their own and make mistakes.
• Build responsibility at home and in the community.
• Unplug.
• Ease performance pressure.
• For older kids – Debunk college myths.

It isn’t easy to find the right balance when it comes to parenting. Some of us err on the side of hovering too closely instead of letting our child make mistakes that they can learn from. Others may have expectations that are way out of line with what is feasible and healthy. Authoritative parents temper their demands and responsiveness in order to tailor fit them for each child. So, next time you are tempted to swoop in and rescue, ask yourself, “Is this really in my child’s best interest?”

Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a Co-Founder of Challenge Success and a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning.  She is the author of, “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids. Dr. Pope lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. She is a 3-time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award and was honored with the 2012 Education Professor of the Year “Educators’ Voice Award” from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. 

The post Authoritative Parenting vs. Helicopter Parenting: What Parents Should Know appeared first on Challenge Success.

Parenthood is, from my perspective, an impossible place within which to reside — yet once we bring children into our lives, we have no choice but to reside there. No amount of  instruction — whether it is in the form of parent education, of neuroscientific research, of mindfulness training, or of anything else — is ever going to simplify child-rearing. The natural state of parenthood is its very impenetrability, its insurmountability.

But my perspective has always been that while information brings knowledge, stories bring wisdom. I see each of these aphorisms as a miniature story that might, as it is being reflected upon, percolate some wisdom up to the surface for you, wisdom that will guide and support you and your children through the impossibility of parenthood and into the most mystifying but satisfying regions of family life.

In a way, I see the sum total of the ninety adages that comprise the “Unsolvable Love” posts as a series of hard truths that, if acknowledged, can work to ease your mind.

So consider giving them some thought … and see what happens.

1. Children prefer to feel something rather than to feel nothing.
2. While our love was sufficient to give our child life, it will not be sufficient for her to live that life.
3. It is important to restrain your child from what is not allowed, but to also hope that she never refuses to fully forego the forbidden.
4. Children need us the most when they are the least easy to be with.
5. We are valuable to our children when we help them to see what is right with them rather than what is wrong with them — which is what helps them to understand and address what is wrong with them.
6. It is not a problem when children fail. It is not a problem when parents fail. It is a problem when our collective imagination fails to behold the path towards compassion that is illuminated by our failures.
7. Children defy adults in order to define themselves.
8. Empathy for children is not conveyed by the words, “I know what you’re feeling,” but by the words, “I don’t know what you’re feeling — but I would like to know, if you ever decide that it is worth telling me.”
9. What you define as your child’s problems has more to do with your own problems than you think. So think about that …
10. Children get angry with their parents when they try to fool them and can’t. Children despise their parents when they try to fool them and can.
11. A good day for most children is determined not by what they have successfully accomplished, but on how successfully they have avoided humiliation.
12. Telling children what to do has nothing to do with showing them who they are.
13. Most children would rather stumble being themselves than triumph being someone else.
14. This is how you can be sure you are close with your child — when from time to time you allow yourself to see her behavior as entirely resistant to comprehension.
15. Children are troubled most deeply not by what they learn, but by what they fear they will fail to learn.
16. What we ourselves desire should not come at our child’s expense.
17. Children find freedom through acquiring self-discipline. Children acquire self-discipline through experiencing freedom.
18. Family love depends upon moments of hatred. The thrill of hatred is both shameful and wonderful, and absolutely necessary for growth.
19. There are no significant family alterations without significant family altercations.
20. Try to re-learn how children learn, try to re-discover how children discover. You knew this once. On your own and by dreaming.
21. There is absolutely nothing you can do about your child’s grades. Parents can earn good grades by realizing this.
22. Every child senses the end of childhood — that awareness is the source of her heartache, but it is also what awakens and ennobles her, and leads her towards wholeness.
23. We all have a way in which we are determined to love someone else — parenthood will insist and demand that we find a different way.
24. None of us completely outgrow the fear that we can suddenly become unlovable and undesirable, even in our most trusted and loving relationships.
25. It is your acknowledgment of your powerlessness over your child that lays the groundwork for her respect. Complete power elicits complete fear, not respect.
26. When the parent colonizes the child’s self-image, it will be difficult to quell the inevitable rebellion.
27. When you seek to find the truth of your child, you will find truths about yourself that you did not know and may not fully understand. Incomplete understanding is the best position from which to raise a child and to more fully accept yourself.
28. Children experience little contradiction between their desperate need for their parents and their desperate need to be rid of their parents.
29. When we let our children go, we are less likely to lose them and more likely to find them, just as they become more likely to find themselves.
30. When it comes to determining whether or not you are a good parent, there should be evidence on both sides. If not, take a closer look.

Dr. Brad Sachs is a Challenge Success Advisory Council member, and is a psychologist, educator, consultant, and best-selling author specializing in clinical work with children, adolescents, couples, and families. He is also the Founder and Director of The Father Center, a program designed to meet the needs of new, expectant, and experienced fathers. www.drbradsachs.com

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