Sonja Haller

The Republic | azcentral.com

Want a well-adjusted, high-achieving kid? Back off the pushy parenting when it comes to academics and extracurricular honors, new research suggests.

Children who believe their parents value compassion and kindness as much as or more than academic success have higher grade-point averages and suffer less from anxiety and depression, an Arizona State University study found.

The ASU study, published in December in the online edition of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, measured the academic success and emotional and social well being of middle-school students against what the students believed their parents most valued.

"Essentially, what we are finding was that if even one parent emphasized achievement over social skills and kindness these kids did poorer in behavior as well as their grades," study co-author and ASU Foundation Professor of Psychology Suniya Luthar said. "It was surprising."

The research did not show that encouraging achievement, academic or extracurricular, is bad. Rather, that if achievement is prized above other social traits that could be detrimental to the child. Those students had lower grade-point averages and were reported by teachers to have more learning problems and disruptive behavior than fellow students who thought their parents valued compassion and decency.

Luthar said parents were, perhaps unknowingly, "sowing the seeds of stress."

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"Think about it," she said. "If you are depressed or anxious, doesn't it show in your work? Academic performance is so intimately tied up with a child's emotional and psychological state."

Luthar has this advice for parents:

Stop pushing a do-more, accomplish-more mindset on your child. "It is our job as parents to give them a sense of balance. As in, 'No, it is not essential to go to one of the top universities. If it happens, great, but we're not going to drive ourselves crazy trying to do that.' "

Don't buy into the do-more, accomplish-more mindset yourself. "Children emulate what they see," she said.

Question your values. "Examine what your beliefs really are. If you tell yourself that you don't emphasize achievements as much and then get upset because (your child) doesn't make the top math group, it is going to show through."

Set boundaries for yourself and your child. "Consider carefully and honestly what your expectations are and where you would draw the line and pull back to have a life that is more balanced than running yourself or your child ragged."

Luthar co-authored the study with Lucia Ciciolla of Oklahoma State University; Alexandria Curlee, an ASU psychology doctoral student; and Jason Karageorge, a private-practice psychologist in San Francisco.

The study was conducted two years ago among 506 sixth-grade students in an affluent area in the northeast United States. The students were asked to choose the top three of six things, which included good grades, a successful career, kindness and decency, that their parents most valued for them.

Researchers then compared the students' grade-point averages, in-class behavior and emotional well-being against the things student perceived as most important to their parents.

Reach the reporter at sonja.haller@arizonarepublic.com. Follow at twitter.com/sonjahaller.

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