The Paths to Progress for Our Graduates

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To the Editor:

Re “A Promise to Grads Who Show ‘No Promise,’” by Megan K. Stack (Opinion guest essay, June 9):

Ms. Stack provides a dose of wisdom and perspective for parents, educators and teens about resilience and hope.

A teenager I worked with years ago who struggled in high school with academic and other issues is now a successful adult. He recently got back in touch and told me that the biggest fiction from his childhood was how everyone back then said that if he didn’t excel in high school, he’d never amount to anything.

What changed his life and allowed him to persevere was when his dad got his own help through family therapy and was finally able to believe in him, despite his son’s less than stellar academic performance.

Our youths are works in progress with different trajectories, which adults can tilt in either direction. Kids are sensitive to the implicit messages they get from their parents about failure and what constitutes success. A parent’s sense of exaggerated stakes, driven by their own fears, fuels insecurity in their kids and a mounting pressure to measure up to avoid disappointing them.

Ironically, this mind-set interferes with children sustaining internal motivation and developing a stable sense of self to guide them, capacities associated with resilience in college and future success.

Lynn Margolies
Newton, Mass.
The writer is a clinical psychologist working with teenagers and their parents.