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Campus Calm had
the opportunity to speak with Madeline Levine about materialism, mental
health and the price students pay for overinvolved parenting. Madeline
Levine, Ph.D. has been a practicing clinical psychologist in Marin County
for the past twenty-five years. She is  the
author of several books including The
Price of Privilege; Viewing Violence; and See No Evil. A frequent
lecturer on child and adolescent issues, she lives in California with
her husband and three sons.
Campus Calm: We have a parent survey on the Campus Calm website and one of the biggest challenges that our parents tell us that they're struggling with is balancing guiding with interfering. How can parents help their children reach their potential, both in school and in life, without pressuring their kids and coming across as a nag?
Levine: That's a really interesting question and I'm going to reframe it just a bit. Embedded in that question is, "What's the difference between helpful and non-helpful involvement?" I can talk about what the difference is between involvement and over-involvement. Parents are supposed to be involved with their kids' lives. Everything that we know tells us that an involved parent turns out a healthier kid. Involvement is a good thing but as kids grow, especially by the time they're in college, involvement looks very different for an 18-year-old than it did for an 8-year-old.
Over-involvement always enters the psychological space of the kid. For example,
the parent who says to the 8-year-old: "If you don't study, you're never
going to do anything except flip burgers at McDonalds." That's entering
psychological space because it's about shame and guilt. That would be
the same thing for the parent who says to the 18-year-old: "If you don't
get into a brand name school you're going to be a bag lady." Shame and
guilt is damaging; it doesn't work and it just makes kids depressed and
unhappy.
Every child is different and every parent-child relationship is different. What
we do know is that a warm relationship between a parent and child is
the silver bullet for having kids care about what you think. While parents
have to both discipline and be warm with their children, you can't discipline
them unless there's some warmth there. No 18-year-old is going to listen
to you if you don't have a long history of a good relationship.
Campus Calm: You
wrote in your book, "Support is about the needs of the child. Intrusion
is about the needs of the parent." I thought that was a really powerful
statement. How can parents learn to pinpoint exactly where an expectation
is coming from?
 Levine: At the end of the day, most parents really know when they're talking
about their own needs. It's a gut feeling - we know we're on the wrong
track. I have an example in my book about me yelling at my 14-year-old
for a slipped grade in English. You have a sense that you're on the wrong
track as a parent but the hard part is going back and being reflective.
Pull yourself out the conflict, be reflective and be honest.
Campus Calm: If
a kid gets a B or a C on a test and the parent believes that the child
procrastinated and didn't try her best, what is the healthiest way that
the parent could broach this subject?
Levine: This country has become psychotic
about the meaning of individual tests, homework assignments and grades.
If your kid gets a B or a C on a test and they procrastinated, I think you say, "How
do you feel about that?" It's not a parent's business test score by test score.
If you see a pattern of procrastination in your kid, then you might want to talk
to your kid about why they're disengaged in school or what's going on in their
life. The notion that a parent is called upon to do something test by test is
incredibly unhelpful for kids. Ultimately, we're seeing these kids with very
high rates of depression, anxiety disorders and substance abuse.
Can you imagine yourself if at the end of every question that you posed to me
today, I said, "That was an A question. That was a B question." Life just isn't
like that.
Campus Calm: Could
you talk about how materialism predicts a lack of happiness and satisfaction
amongst students and discuss how having money is different from being materialistic?
Levine: Anybody can be materialistic. Materialism
is about overvaluing stuff as opposed to people. It's choosing to deal with problems
by accumulating stuff as opposed to focusing on the problem. There have been
some interesting studies about money. Basically they show that no matter how
much you have you accommodate to that incredibly quickly and then move on to
feeling slighted with what you have and envious about what those just
above you have. People don't look at money and stuff just by themselves; you
always look at it in terms of what the people around you have.
That leads to depression - that sense that no matter what
you have it's not fulfilling your needs because material goods don't fill people's
needs.
Campus Calm: This concept of retail therapy for stressed-out students is both ineffective
and self-defeating. When you look at the financial debt that college students
are carrying, retail therapy is a dangerous concept that a lot of students and
parents buy into.
Levine: Retail therapy is no therapy at all. It's
an interesting, very American phrase. We had a president who told us to go shopping
after 9/11. There is something very imbued in our current culture that has us
focused on all the wrong things. To be told to go shop after a tragedy as opposed
to get together with your neighbors and do something as a community, which is
in fact what actually heals people. It's become an intensely American notion
that things have healing powers and they don't. The data is that materialistic
people are more depressed than the general population of people, and have fewer
friends and romantic relationships.
Campus Calm: How
can students develop a strong sense of self if they were raised in a culture
and community of materialism?
Levine: It's important to say that most kids are
fine. When I speak around the country and see kids who already have problems,
it looks like the whole world is falling apart. To say that 30 to 40 percent
of upper-middle class kids are suffering from an emotional illness is unacceptable,
but it still means that the vast majority of kids aren't.
For the kids who are suffering, I would like to see more money put into counseling
services. Many colleges can't even begin to deal with the number of kids who
are dealing with emotional problems. Instead of pouring money into buildings
and computers - and it's that idea that if you give your kids the right stuff
they'll be happier - but it's really about connection with adults who can be
helpful to them.
Campus Calm: What
advice do you have for parents who call themselves good or bad parents based
on their kids' achievements or lack thereof?
Levine: If you've already started defining yourselves
by your kids' achievements you have issues of your own. While it's easy to talk
about the kids as having problems sometimes the real issues are with the parents.
I've been a psychologist for 25 years and I know that most parents really want
the best for their kids. I've never had a parent come into my office and say, "What
I'd really like to do is screw up my kid."
I'm a parent of three boys - two of which are grown - and I know that we all
want to do the best that we can. We have a history and we all have losses. Our
kids can't correct that for us. If you're a parent and you find yourself elated
by your child's A and down a black hole when your child gets a C that's really
not about your kid. That's about you. I've had sobbing parents in my office when
their kids don't get into a school of their choice.
Campus Calm: Isn't
it more productive, as you put in your book, to praise the effort than to praise
the grade itself?
Levine: Right, we no longer know the difference
between learning and performance. Sometimes they're the same and other times
they're not at all. Learning is about effort and improvement. When I talk to
my oldest kid who is a lawyer now, he regrets the fact that he never took a course
in Contemporary Art or Comparative Religion. He took the courses that he knew
he would do well in to get him into law school. While part of that is understandable,
part of being a student is learning. If you're always taking what you're good
at you're not learning.
Campus Calm: Do you
ever struggle with parenting your own kids?
Levine: Of course! My first son is a lawyer
who was a straight analytic, straight A kind of kid. My middle kid went to college
and now he's leaving for New York to be an actor. He's the theater creative.
My last kid is non-verbal and totally hands on. He has trouble putting a paragraph
together. He's lucky he's my third kid because I would have ruined him if he
were my first.
My other two kids were great students and he's a pretty average student. He's
also the nicest person in the world. He's going to do something different and
he's going to be just fine. Because I'm older and wiser, I get enormous pleasure
out of who he is. He can build a shed in the back and do different things. So
many parents don't value that because they're terrified that their kid is somehow
going to tumble down the socio-economic scale and be flipping burgers. It's unlikely
that will happen and it's also unlikely that all our kids will live as well as
we do. But so what? Rich people commit suicide at the same rate as the working
class people. We want our kids to be happy.
Campus Calm: What
does a happy, healthy kid actually look like?
Levine: A healthy kid has
the ability to get a poor grade and not flip out about it. They have a sense
of self that is strong enough to withstand these minor ups and downs of life.
A healthy kid has good relationships with other people - they're not always sitting
in their rooms studying and IMing. They're actually out playing and socializing
with other kids. Healthy kids are competent about things but not just about their
grades. It's equally valuable to spend an hour noodleing around on the guitar
or going down to the creek and not grade grubbing constantly.
Campus Calm: Why
is it so important that parents create a household that has open communication?
I think one of the most important things they can do is normalize talking about
things like depression and anxiety and how important it is not to self-medicate
with things like drugs, alcohol and unhealthy foods.
Levine: And shopping.
Campus Calm: Right,
and if parents don't have open communication in their house, how could they go
about changing that?
Levine: It seems to me that the only reason I have
any say so over my 16-year-old, or my older kids, is because I've had a long
history of a warm relationship with them. The only reason why kids continue to
listen to their parents and show up when they're supposed to is because they
care. Warmth doesn't just mean being sweet and loving all the time. It means
being willing to do both sides of parenting, warmth and discipline, but always
in a way that doesn't cut off communication.
If you have a bad relationship with
your kids, it will take a lot of work to repair it. You may need help from a
therapist or a priest, rabbi or maybe your best friend. Learn how to talk to
your kids. Reinforce that you're available to them, that you care and that
you will do your best to help your kids on their path, not your path.
Links:
ThePriceofPrivilege.com
College Parents of America
(c) 2007 Maria L. Pascucci / Campus Calm.
About the author:
Maria Pascucci is the President of Campus Calm - the award-winning online-forum for today's stressed-out students, and their parents and educators. Download your Student Life Stress-Out Less Kit with 4 FREE gifts at www.campuscalm.com.
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