Why do parents long to have above average children? And why are children willing to go along with their Herculean efforts to achieve such status? According to Time, and a similar story from aeon.com, “You Can Do it Baby!”, it has everything to do with our drive for success.

I’ll never forget the way it hit me — news about our children, delivered from the pulpit of a crowded chapel service. The preacher, Randy Stinson, said, “Can I say something to you about your children? I don’t even know half of them, but they’re average. They’re average.” I suspect I wasn’t the only one in his hearing who took slight offense, making a mental list of all the reasons he must be wrong.

Many American parents believe their children are gifted. The surge in after-school activities, private tutors and a willingness to tolerate impossible amounts of homework points to parents who are convinced that their kids can be “… tutored and coached, pushed and tested, hothoused and advance-placed until success is assured.” That’s according to Time magazine’s recent article, “In Praise of the Ordinary Child.”

It’s not just the parents. Kids, too, think they’re pretty special. Time cited one survey that found 70 percent of the students asked — well over half — consider themselves above average — the halfway point — in, get this, academic ability. That’s statistically impossible. Clearly they’re below average in at least one school subject.

Why do parents long to have above average children? And why are children willing to go along with their Herculean efforts to achieve such status? According to Time, and a similar story from aeon.com, “You Can Do it Baby!”, it has everything to do with our drive for success. We want kids who can beat the odds to attend the best schools, which will lead to the most rewarding jobs. We don’t want them just to be financially set (though that’s part of parents’ motivation), we want them to be fulfilled. And by extension, the kids are good with the prospect of being rich and happy.

Leslie Garrett describes the trend in “You Can Do it Baby!”:

When your child is four or five, barring intellectual disabilities or severe behavioural diagnoses, anything does seem possible. A child shows an interest in art and we imagine his work eventually hanging in galleries. A talented runner, we think, might make the Olympics. Kids who love science are given microscopes and we begin to wonder if we should start saving up for college fees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Backing our hopes and theirs are the culture’s cheerleaders, led by viral convocation speeches and a steady stream of ‘overnight’ successes unveiled on reality shows and YouTube, all urging us to dream big and never give up.

Both she and Time’s Jeffrey Kluger argue that kids who hear nothing but praise are in trouble. Garrett’s concerns lie primarily in dashed career expectations among young adults who grow up hearing they can be anything they want to be, only to discover it isn’t true. Kluger shows that kids can’t help but disappoint parents and themselves in the face of sky-high expectations.

According to Garret, “A 2012 LinkedIn survey showed that roughly one in three adults are working at their ‘dream job,’ which means that two in three are not.” She cites Jean Twenge, author of Generation Me, who says, “When you tell somebody: You can be anything, that ‘anything’ they’re thinking of is rarely a plumber or an accountant.”

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