“I would love for her to go to MIT,” Rhea’s mom told me.
But Rhea was losing motivation.
Her parents had her at a pressure-cooker high-school, taking all the most rigorous classes on offer.
At any other school Rhea’s GPA would’ve been a 4.5.
At this school, it was a 3.6. Not bad, but demoralizing for Rhea, who so badly wanted to meet her parents’ high expectations.
Given all this, I had to break it to Rhea’s mom: “MIT would be a terrible environment for your daughter.”
I explained how pushing Rhea to be someone she’s not was only making it harder for her to succeed, develop confidence, and locate her strengths.
For Rhea to stop struggling and start thriving, her parents would first have to let go of their Fantasy Child.
The Fantasy Child represents a parent’s own rigid ideas of success.
- The Fantasy Child might:
- Get into the hardest college
- Never stay up late, wake at 5am
- Do all their homework well in advance
- Be highly social and outgoing
- Play a certain sport or two
- And so on and so forth!
The problem is, when a parent is waiting for their Fantasy Child to magically appear, they aren’t creating conditions for their real child’s strengths to shine. What’s worse:
Teenagers internalize those impossible ideas of who they “should” be.
They start to feel like they’re never enough. In response, they might work themselves to the point of burnout and eventually become disengaged — like Rhea did.
I see this pattern with neurodiverse students perhaps more than anyone. When parents are overly concerned about their kid’s challenges, they miss out on their unique gifts — aka, the very things that could give them an advantage in the right context.
That’s why if you really want to influence your kid to apply themselves:
Don’t push them to seek your holy grails.
Encourage them to find their own.
We all need a healthy balance of being challenged and feeling safe for our best selves to emerge.
Your kid’s best-fit college will provide that healthy balance. And THAT will set them up for career resilience so much more than a harsh or mismatched environment ever could.
So ask yourself: does your definition of success need updating?
Are you so attached to what your Fantasy Child would do that you’re missing out on what would work for your real child?
And if you’re afraid letting go means lowering your standards and setting your kid up for failure: let’s talk.
We only guide kids towards skills, colleges, and courses of study that we’re confident will serve them later in life.
Hop on a call with us and let’s take a careful look at whether your kid is on the best path for them.
