By Kate Fernan
All around the world, children and adolescents face large amounts of stress and mental health issues more commonly than not. Parents however, sometimes struggle to see that. Guardians tend to pile onto their child’s already stressed brain by pushing them too much with unrealistic expectations and pressure. In this article, I will go into detail on how much this behavior from the student’s parent or guardian can affect their children negatively.
Mental health issues are unfortunately very common in adolescents and teenagers. With added academic tension given by a student’s parents, it will only make them feel worse. Unrealistic expectations, excessive pushing, and strict parenting are all root causes of these mental health issues regarding academics. In a cross-sectional survey from Karnataka, India conducted in 2015, researchers found that adolescents who were under academic stress were 95% more likely to be diagnosed with depression than adolescents not undergoing academic stress. Parents with strict unethical parenting tend to force too much on their children, expecting too much and resulting in a mental breakdown from the student.
Mental health plays a massive role in the performance of a student, effectively dictating how much of a chance they will have to succeed. A ninth grade student at BHS when asked how strict parenting and academic pressure would affect their school experience stated “It would demotivate me significantly, especially if I am already struggling with school work. It would exhaust and tire me out.” This is firsthand evidence that harsh parenting methods involving academics are not at all reliable methods for maximizing student learning. By exhausting the student/child, they are significantly less likely to be personally motivated to do anything, let alone finish school work productively.
Being too intense as a parental figure is a massive conductor in the decrease of a child’s mental health. Forcing a child to only focus on grades, sports, or academics in general while simultaneously taking away other sources of enjoyment like screen time, time outside with friends, or grounding them can result in the child breaking down, and not being able to process or learn more. The most efficient way for a student to learn is if they are happy and mentally well. An article by The Learning Policy Institute states, “When left unaddressed, mental health issues can lead to negative outcomes for students, including academic and behavioral challenges, delinquency, and permanently leaving or disengaging from school.” This text reinforces the realness of negative mental health side effects that can come from being too harsh on a student. In the worst cases, some parental figures push their own children to a depressive state as a result of their unorthodox strict parenting style.
Harsh behaviors from parental figures of students can harm a child’s mental health significantly, as children undergoing academic stress are more susceptible to depression, academic pressure from parents can be mentally and physically exhausting, and can lead to negative outcomes from the student like disengaging completely from school. Most parents and guardians only want the best for their child and for them to be successful, which is why these harsher sides of them tend to show. However, this is not an excuse for the unethical treatment of millions of students around the world. Students should be free to learn in whatever way is most comfortable and successful for them, so they can have the best education experience possible.
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