Jennifer Wallace speaks on pressure students face to Burlingame School District

Moderated by Marla Silversmith, superintendent of Burlingame School District, and Burlingame High School Principal Jen Fong, Wallace spoke about the power of “mattering” and feeling valued regardless of achievements is necessary for the well-being of students. 

Though the pursuit of higher education is often cited as a driving force for jammed-packed schedules and stretched-thin lives, as a parent of three, Wallace wanted to figure out if there was something deeper.

“How is it that parents are now going to jail to get their kids into USC?” she said. “I wasn’t buying the narrative that was in the press that parents just want to live vicariously through their kids. I felt like there was something deeper at play.” 

Adolescents in high-achieving schools were named as an at-risk group by researchers in 2019 as more prone to have clinical anxiety and depression, or substance abuse disorder, Wallace said. 

In academically-focused areas, students can feel the pressure to succeed regardless of whether it comes from their parents or not, Wallace said. 

“Just because your child attends a high-achieving school, does not mean they will have anxiety or depression and substance abuse disorder,” Wallace said. “It just means that there’s something about swimming in this pond.” 

In researching the book, which was published in 2023, Wallace considered various influences on how these environments can become saturated with pressure. One aspect she believes most distinctively drives this fight for success is the economic state of the country. 

With a different economic reality and increasing uncertainty about what the future job market may look like, parents have an “understandable instinct” to protect and prepare their children as much as they can. 

“Parents were betting that that early childhood success, getting their kids to a ‘good college,’ they hoped would act as a kind of life vest in a sea of economic uncertainty,” Wallace said. “They felt tasked with making their kids a success.” 

Despite the intention of protecting kids for an uncertain future, that life vest “was acting more as a leaded vest” and had unintended consequences on how adolescents viewed their self worth. 

Though leaving these high-achieving, “pressure cooker” areas can literally remove children from “toxins,” another way for parents to explicitly speak about intrinsic values at home regularly. Differentiating between external and internal values can help prioritize where energy is expended. 

Rather than a once-a-year lecture, Wallace recommends discussing values in 100 one-minute conversations to “talk to your kids about your values just like you would about any other high-risk behaviors like drinking or sexual activities,” Wallace said. 

Additionally, making children, who are in the midst of finding themselves, understand their “unconditional worth” is important in shaping how they see themselves outside of their academic success. Wallace recommends “getting a Ph.D. in your kid.” 

“Researchers say the self becomes stronger less by being praised, which can feel like pressure, and more by being known,” Wallace said.  

For the benefit of the children, Wallace said it’s necessary for parents to prioritize their own mental health and establish their support systems first. A child’s resilience is often influenced primarily by that of their parents, she said. 

“We are sold a bill of goods by a multibillion dollar wellness industry,” Wallace said. “Those are great stress reducers, but they cannot give us the resilience that we need to show up for our kids, to be the first responders to their struggles day in and day out. The only thing that does that is our relationships.”