Actually, pressure from parents is as rampant a problem in families from all over the world today. Sometimes parents have their children’s best interest in mind as well as worrying about what is best for the child but pressurizing their kids to the extent has very negative impacts on their welfare.
This pressure can be in form of, class work, other school activities, besides studies, and even the careers that people chose to pursue. When parents demand certain performance level from their children without regard to a child’s passion and capability, then, this comes with pressure, anxiety and low self esteem on the part of the child.
The main areas that are most often under the pressure that is negatively reflected in the child’s mental health are academic pursuits. It is a common trend for parents to have their children perform well in schools as complements to good academic performances.
Actually, some degree of academic pressure is helpful to children’s study motivation, but much pressure will hinder them to have a good sense of study accomplishment and even cause pressure. This kind of pressure may cause negative impact on the child’s health to the extent of damaging confidence and poor performance in school.
Another aspect in which parental pressure can cause issues to the mental health of a child is in the areas of extra curriculum activities. Even in childhood, art, sports ,music and even dancing can be forced down the kids’ throats by their parents in the belief that they will produce well rounded people.
Although participation is other activities outside the classroom may be positive, too much emphasis placed on being the best in each of these may not be healthy for the children. Still, children might think that they need to show their parents that they are worthy of attention, and they maybe so scared of losing their love if they fail to meet the parents’ expectations.
This pressure can of course cause stress and fatigue or even resentment towards the said activity.
Parents can also influence the Career choices and ambitions that the child will have in future. That is because parents may have expectations from their children to go after some professions that they believe to be prestigious or that will make a lot of money. However, not all kids as well as youths may posses the similar intent as their parents.
Many a times parents put a lot of pressure towards ensuring their children achieve particular careers this ends up causing the child to feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled in the future.
Let’s take the instance of Glory, a twelve years old girl, intelligent and bright in her studies but had relatively huge amount of pressure from mother. Glory's mom would always pressure her to be the best in school and extracurricular activities and pretend to be a perfect being in front of her families and friends.
Since she was young, Glory complained that she could feel the pressure of her mother on her back . Ever since I can remember her mom would always criticize Glory by comparing her to her classmates and cousins asking her why she can’t be like them and implying that they had achieved more than she had. This comparison and criticism turned into routine and even with that she would not measure up to her mother's standard. Hence, Glory got anxiety and began to doubt whether she would be able to make her mother happy.
The pressure was especially high for Glory concerning the academic success. This shaming is evidenced by the fact that her mom only believed that she deserved straight A’s in every subjects; anything lower was promptly dismissed, scorned. Glory sat for many hours studying so hard, and feeling stressed throughout because of how she wanted to come out in good grades. This constant drive to be at the top academically caused her a lot where she had to drop her social life because of anxiety, was stressed, had sleeping problems, and had to endure stomach pains.
Her mom also had high expectations with regards to Glory's other aspects of school life. She insisted for her to joined different clubs in school so she could be popular in school.
She was pressured to do all these things that she not have enough time to rest.
But no matter how hard she tried to do what her mother wants, Glory always felt inadequate. It is shown that she was emotional damaged by her mother criticisms and became shouldering doubts in her abilities and her value as a person. Glory's had low self-esteem and doubts herself most of the time. It really affected her mental health and she started having some symptoms of depression and anxiety.
The story of Glory gives an example of how parents can harm a child’s psychological state when putting pressure on them. She felt exhausted and inefficient. And like I said this is a rampant thing happening around us.
Proper encouragement, motivation and direction from the parents is helpful for children but on the part of pressure it is toxic for the children.
And one important thing that should always be highly valued is mental health of a child, and it is important always keep the balance to make the child to be motivated and eager to achieve the best result, on one hand, and to have as many opportunities as it is possible to be inspired by something, on the other hand.