How to Help Your Child Reframe Success This School Year

After spending the past decade visiting different schools and communities, I can confidently say two things: one, nearly every community has its own set of false finish lines when it comes to our ideas of success, and two, none of this happens overnight. Nearly all parents and caregivers find themselves in the midst of hundreds of false little finish lines that start far earlier and become far more ingrained than we realize. Remember those pregnancy apps that say the baby should be the size of say, a mango in utero, during this particular week? Or comparing a child to the height and weight percentiles for infants and toddlers at the pediatrician’s office? These milestones can certainly be valuable indicators of whether extra support and intervention might be necessary at a given time. However, they might also cause unnecessary panic — for you and your child.

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Somewhere down the line, the agony that can come from those false finish lines starts to make kids nervous, too. There starts to be this nagging belief that if they don’t make the traveling soccer team or qualify for advanced fifth-grade math or AP classes as a high school junior or land first chair in the orchestra or win the 4-H rodeo, that something, anything, everything might fall apart. All our goals, plans, and dreams hinge quietly on these narrow and never-ending false finish lines. In time, some of the milestones that initially kept parents awake become sources of children’s angst, as well.

So, how do we change this anxiety-ridden mindset — especially as we enter a new school year, and especially as our kids move into the tween years and middle school, where academic success starts to take on an increased sense of importance (and pressure)? Having spent much of my adult life devoted to supporting the success of tweens and teens, I’ve seen how important it is to decode their complicated and nuanced world in a way that is empathetic, relevant, pragmatic, and solutions-focused. Much of my work focuses on supporting student success through core executive functioning skills, which I see as foundational to learning, curiosity, and engagement. Unfortunately, most schools are unprepared to help students develop these necessary skills in any comprehensive, consistent way. A new school year is a wonderful opportunity to move away from overarching and overwhelming expectations to a framework that provides the time, structure, and support that all students need to thrive.

Here are a few overlooked strategies to support your student’s success :

Focus on daily habits and weekly routines rather than grades. Parents and caregivers often wonder how to encourage students to feel excited about being more organized and managing their time and distractions better, and the key is to make it all about them. Instead of hyperventilating over the online grading portal, parents and caregivers can help children reflect on the daily habits and weekly routines that will support their longer-term goals. That could include using a written planner to track assignments, completing homework on the night it’s assigned, studying for tests several days in advance, and using Sunday afternoon to organize and plan out the week ahead.

Encourage students to self-evaluate their ability to organize, plan, prioritize, start and complete tasks, and be adaptable when things don’t go as planned. I encourage students to identify their ability to do each of the following on a 1 (struggle) to 5 (excellent) scale: organize, plan, prioritize, start and complete tasks, and be adaptable. It gives them a framework to think about how to improve their daily habits and routines. It also gives students the chance to identify what they feel like they are good at, and where they can improve. For example, some students who identify as perfectionists will tell me they are great at organizing and planning but struggle with starting tasks and being adaptable when something doesn’t go as planned. Others might be great at starting tasks but have difficulty with finishing assignments and prioritizing.

Erasing the Finish Line: The New Blueprint for Success Beyond Grades and College Admission

Provide time, structure, and support to help students build these skills . We often don’t take time to step back and intentionally create new routines and structure — instead, our routines are formed by default. The beginning of a new school year, new sports season, or new activity can all be natural times to reflect on what has worked in the past and what might need to be tweaked. When students begin to focus on building predictable routines that free up their time and energy, they find themselves expending less energy on getting started and more energy focused on completing actual work. That means they can spend time exploring activities of interest. Sometimes, it comes down to having someone act as an accountability buddy that helps them get started, or setting aside blocks of time in advance to work on specific tasks. For some, getting smaller assignments out of the way first can help to snowball confidence for more difficult work.

Identify shared experiences that help develop friendships, expand perspective, and cultivate community. Gaining a broader perspective allows us to be more adaptable, flexible, and capable of bouncing back from setbacks and disappointment. At a time when the surgeon general declared loneliness to be an epidemic , we tend to underestimate how making and maintaining friendships require executive functioning skills, and how much shared experiences and interests can help us find similarities across differences. Shared experiences could come from working towards a common goal or joining a sports team. It could come from working on a literary magazine or participating in robotics or theatre. Finding one or, ideally multiple, places where there are relatable people can help create a sense of community.

This piece is an adapted excerpt from Erasing the Finish Line: The New Blueprint for Success Beyond Grades and College Admission .