Recently, my kids have started watching game shows. They love to watch Wheel of Fortune contestants guess words and phrases and Jeopardy players fire off question/answers. They’re quite impressed when I occasionally beat the players on TV.

As an adult, I’m amazed by the often mundane jobs of top Jeopardy contestants. I imagined that anyone with such vast knowledge would be successful in life. My husband argues that they’ve accumulated a lot of trivia, not knowledge. Still, being able to recall such details on demand is impressive, and it seems like you should be able to manipulate that skill into an equally impressive career. Imagine a doctor who could maintain an accurate
catalog of symptoms, a lawyer who could cite case law, or an engineer who could recall the details of complex physical processes, all without consulting colleagues or research materials. Heck, even a history professor who
never forgot a date or historical figure.

Society tells us we should prepare our children for success by exposing them to art, music, and science. The more, the earlier, the better. But what’s the end game? What future career will make all those Baby Einstein videos and flash cards worth it? And heaven forbid, they turn out “regular”. . . what was missing?

Humans have an innate ability to get ourselves worked up and stressed out. We’re all so excited to get pregnant, you’d think raising kids would involve more joy and less anxiety. Once your friend/neighbor/in-law starts in on the “right” way to raise your child, it’s hard to reject the social pressure. We all deeply want our children to be successful, and by that we mean financially comfortable and powerful (part stability, part bragging rights). We say we want our kids to be happy, but happy, rich, and powerful wouldn’t be awful, right? This brings us right back to Baby Einstein and the flash cards.

The preschool my twins attended performed an evaluation on all older 4 and 5 year olds to determine if they were ready to start kindergarten in the fall. (I won’t get into the inherent shortcomings of this “test”.) I remember one mom beside herself in the director’s office because her son hadn’t passed. She was distraught because he was “already failing her academically.” No pressure there. I sincerely doubt you can directly chart a career path with whether a 5 year old elaborately clothes their stick figure drawing, but nevertheless, the distraught mom was overwhelmed by dashed expectations.

I don’t want to downplay a parent’s involvement in education. Reading, tutoring, establishing a homework routine all directly relate to a child’s success in school; and academic success in turn translates into better career prospects. But none of that means my kids will be happy. They may become NASA scientists or Jeopardy contestant bookstore managers, both of which could still end up on a psychiatrist’s couch working through numerous personal issues and the effect of poor parenting choices. 

It’s valuable to remind ourselves that cultural success rarely leads to happiness or financial stability. Celebrities are notoriously unhappy—with high rates of divorce, drug abuse, and suicide. Even the super-wealthy wind up overleveraged, broke, and lonely.

This is what I need to remember when my kids don’t want to play piano, aren’t the fastest on the track field, or struggle with math. The challenge is to help them develop their strengths and gently overcome their weaknesses. Still, it’s best if I invest in my own retirement plan and work on being content with them being content. No pressure, right?

Cheryl Baltes