Harvard-trained toxic-parenting researcher: Here’s the No. 1 thing I never do with my kids

Teens in the U.S. are more stressed out than ever, and it’s causing their mental health to suffer. 

Parents need to avoid adding to that pressure, says award-winning journalist and parenting researcher Jennifer Breheny Wallace. As much as you might worry about how your child fared on a big test, or if they earned a spot on a varsity sports team, you risk compounding your teen’s anxiety by asking probing questions as soon as they walk in the door, Wallace tells CNBC Make It.

Wallace is the author of the book “Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It,” for which she interviewed numerous psychologists and worked with a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to survey 6,500 parents across the U.S. (Wallace herself holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard.)

Her research for the book inspired her to make a big change to her parenting style when it comes to her own three children, she says.

“When my kids come in the door, instead of asking them, ‘How’d you do on the Spanish quiz?’ — which I used to do before I wrote the book — I now ask them, ‘What did you have for lunch?'” says Wallace. “I lead with lunch. I talk about things that have nothing to do with their achievements.”

Wallace talked with psychologists who were adamant that parents can spread their own anxiety to their children, through a process called emotional contagion, she says.

She learned that being overly-focused on your child’s achievements can also send a potentially harmful message: Their value is contingent on their performance.

Focusing too much on how your child is performing, like congratulating them on a high grade instead of praising their effort, is an example of “achievement culture becoming toxic,” Wallace says. “What I mean by that is: When our sense of self is tangled up in our achievements, we can’t separate ourselves — our inherent worth — from our external achievements or external failures.”

Wallace interviewed students across the U.S. for her book, and says the ones who outwardly struggled the most with anxiety were “the kids who felt like their value as a person was contingent on their performance” in school or other activities.

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That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t push your children, or want to know how they performed on a difficult test. Just avoid framing the bulk of your conversations around grades or other achievement-specific results, psychotherapist Tina Payne Bryson told Wallace.

As for that big test: Sometimes you need to let your kids initiate the conversation, says Wallace.

“Guess what? My kids are going to tell me. It’s on their minds,” she says. “They don’t have to think that I’ve been worrying all day about one Spanish quiz. Instead, they should be getting the messaging from me that I care about them as a whole person.”

One of Wallace’s children is currently applying to colleges. As a mom, Wallace says she tries to be “very mindful of how many times we talk about college in a week.”

Specifically, she follows the advice of psychologists she interviewed, who suggested limiting potentially stressful conversations with your kids to “one hour over the weekend.”

“If [my son] wants to bring it up, that’s fine,” says Wallace. “But from my perspective, as a parent, I wait and I hold my thoughts until the weekend …. I want to enjoy my child’s last year living at home and I don’t want it clogged up with stressful conversations about college.”

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