Why You Shouldn’t Pressure Your Child to Get Good Grades

Grades aren’t everything.  Most parents believe academic excellence will provide more opportunities for their children later in life and guarantee them a brighter future.  But does it really turn out that way?  Looking back now, I don’t feel that any of my academic achievements even really matter.  Not that I had much of them anyway.  In elementary and high school, I wasn’t the smartest kid in class, but I wasn’t the dumbest one either.  I got average grades for the most part.  Even when I gave 100% effort into it, I would be above average at best.  Now my sister?  She could ace tests with her eyes closed.  We both took Trigonometry the same semester in college, and I just could not understand it.  At first I thought maybe her teacher was just better than the one I got, so I sat in on her classes.  But it wasn’t the teacher.  My mind was just not wired to comprehend trigonometry.  At least that’s my excuse ;)  It was like teaching a dog to meow.  The only way I passed the course was because I gave my teacher a pathetic sob story about how my future will be ruined if she didn’t pass me.  Now when it came to other subjects that I particularly liked, I would excel at them almost effortlessly.  I graduated culinary school #1 in my class because I absolutely enjoyed every bit of it.  To this day, I still don’t understand how trigonometry relates to Hotel & Restaurant Administration, which is what I majored in college.

I’m not advocating for lazy students.  Not at all.  I’m all for encouraging kids to learn the stuff that will help them through life, like reading, writing, math, etc.  But children should never be made to feel as though they are less worthy as a person just because they cannot get the grades we want them to or what society deems as exceptional.  Neither should they be compared to their more academically-inclined siblings either.  I know a lot of kids who had miserable childhoods trying to satisfy their parents by getting good grades.  I don’t think any of the top students I know from high school all through college fared that much better or worse than anybody else career-wise.  All that pressure to get high grades was for what??

Children are more inclined to want to learn if we nurture their inherent curiosities without any threats involved.  Let them be who they are and appreciate them for it.  An orange will never grow into an apple tree, no matter how much you water it with apple juice.  Variety is the spice of life.  We need oranges just as much as we need apples, grapes, pineapples, and marshmallows.