06/03/2025
If there is anything I could tell the parents of teenagers right now, it would be this: It doesn’t matter.
I am a mom of four, a college counselor for high school students, and a journalist who has covered college admissions and parenting topics for almost a decade, and I am here to tell you that it just doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter if your child earns a B (or a C or even a D) in Algebra, if they don’t make the National Honor Society, if they start on the varsity baseball team, if they warm the bench, if they don’t pass the AP exam or if they get the highest score, or if they get that internship or not.
It doesn’t matter if they get a perfect score on the SAT or if they bomb it. It doesn’t matter if they are the valedictorian of their high school. It doesn’t matter where they go to college.
It just doesn’t matter — none of it matters — if your kid isn’t healthy.
I’m not talking about if your child is afflicted with appendicitis, lupus, or cancer, although, of course, those conditions would all take precedence, too. I am talking about mental health. And please, do not be fooled: Mental health is physical health.
Over the past several years, I have done a lot of reporting and analyzing why our kids are in such a dark place. I’m not a psychologist, a sociologist, or a trauma expert, but I have talked to many high school and college students from all over the country, and my not-expert opinion is this: The stakes are simply too high.
We have convinced our teens that there is no room for error.
Parents ask if they can pull their children out of classes if they are in danger of earning a B, certain that anything less than an A will keep them out of a “good college,” whatever that means. They won’t let them quit a sport or an activity they don’t like anymore because they believe colleges will not want their kids unless they show a four-year commitment.
Our kids compromise their sleep, nutrition, and social lives, chasing some notion of what their future demands.
Don’t get me wrong; I understand these worries and the fear kids need to do certain things to have “good” lives (again, whatever that means). I get it. And, of course, our kids need to do things that make them uncomfortable or challenge them. I wholeheartedly believe that.
But simultaneously, because we are their parents, we’re sometimes the only ones who can turn down the pressure valve for our kids. We have to confidently tell them it’s OK (really!) to get a B, a C, or even a D.
It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to quit a team, a band, or a job. It’s OK to say no. It’s OK to be who they are, and that may not be the class president, team captain, or valedictorian. They can just be themselves because being themselves is enough, and they are enough, and they can and will survive any of these perceived setbacks.
Here’s the hard truth: So many kids have sat in my office and told me while wiping away tears that they are afraid of disappointing their parents. It breaks my heart because I want my kids to be happy like any other parent. Yet, I know my kids would say the same thing.
It’s easy for us to get caught up in all of it, to believe that we need certain scores, grades, titles, or acceptances to validate ourselves and tell the world our value. Our job is to let our children know that their value is inherent.
Your children, my children, and all of our children believe their value in this world is in question. My mission, I have decided, is to make sure my kids know that all I want for them is to be good citizens, friends, partners, and humans.
What matters? Hope, effort, love, purpose, and people matter. Wanting to stay on this planet, get up tomorrow, and try matters again. Nothing else really does.
How do we convince our kids it’s all right to put down their burdens and rest and realize they have always been enough and worthy of love just as they are?
They need us to tell them.
They need us, the ones who have lived long enough to see the other side of a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year, to tell them things are not either “perfect” or “ruined” —that lives, like some of the best roads to travel, are winding and have rest stops, and that success (whatever that looks like for them) is not linear.
They need us to tell them the stakes are not nearly as high as they think.
Something has to happen. Something has to change. And that something starts with us believing that nothing matters as much as our kids’ health.
There’s no time to waste.
by Allison Slater Tate
