Stress Reduction Committee?

The New York Times featured an article today entitled, "A Principal Who Cracks Down on Stress".

From the article:

NEEDHAM, Mass. — It was 6:30 p.m. The lights were still on at Needham High School, here in the affluent Boston suburbs. Paul Richards, the principal, was meeting with the Stress Reduction Committee.
On the agenda: finding the right time to bring in experts to train students in relaxation techniques.

Don’t try to have them teach relaxation in study hall, said Olivia Boyd, a senior. Students, she explained, won’t want to interrupt their work. They were already too busy before or after school for the training.

Apparently, the school wants to incorporate yoga, relaxation consultants, and student surveys to see how they can help the kids learn how to handle stress.

Hmmm.

A little deeper look, and you'll find that four of Needham's young people — one in college, two in high school and one in middle school — committed suicide. School officials emphasized that the suicides were not related to stress, but the deaths heightened concerns about how Needham’s students were responding to school pressure.

We've heard for years that we're pushing our kids too hard. We talk to each other and ask, "What ever happened to childhood?" as we drive our kids to their many lessons, sports, and other activities we think will give them an edge in life. After all, we want them to do better than we have done in life, don't we? The problem is that our kids are stressing out, understandably.

Universal preschool, all day kindergarten, Head Start are just some ways in which we feel we can help our kids "get ahead" in life. In homeschooling circles the parent peer pressure is just as vicious. Latin roots at age three. Parsing verbs no later than 2nd grade. "Use this curriculum for critical thinking skills or your child will be a failure!"

I blogged a little bit about this a while back, for what it's worth. Parenting With The Education Fear Factor

Honestly, I don't see a solution to this problem that we've put upon our own children. It takes a LOT of self control to relax and realize we cannot control what will happen to our children with regard to how their lives will go. Sure, we can send them to the best schools, have them learn all they need to learn to succeed in business, but ultimately what we seem to end up doing is pushing our kids too hard and too soon to pursue OUR dreams for them. No wonder they're stressed.

Why are your kids doing what they're doing, and what can you do to help them gain proper perspective?