Children are feeling more pressure today to achieve academic success, a recent University College London study found. Researchers discovered, when looking at children who had been of school-age between 1991 and 2022, a strong association between academic pressure or proximity to exams and mental health issues.
Jasmine*, 28, from London, certainly experienced this, as she was “hothoused” by her parents, a term researchers use to refer to the acceleration of young children’s academic skills through strict instruction. She explains why she will be approaching the idea of success very differently with her own children.
My parents tried for nine years to have me, and when I came along they decided that I, as the only child they were going to have, would get access to everything and reach my full potential at everything.
They used to tell me how special I was, and while I certainly felt loved, I also felt immense pressure from as early as I can remember to reach their sky-high expectations of me. I don’t think my parents would have known the term “hothousing”, but now as an adult I’ve become interested in this approach and can see that that’s what they did.
I’ve looked back on my childhood more analytically, partly to understand myself better but also because I am hellbent on avoiding doing it to any child I may one day have. I was hothoused, and I was miserable a lot of the time. Before I started school, my mum would spend most evenings drilling me on numbers, trying to teach me my times tables, and then giving me flashcards with new vocabulary to learn.
I started school as the youngest in my year having just turned four. That was daunting and overwhelming enough, but my mum would spend most evenings giving me worksheets she’d downloaded or giving me “fun” tests, which weren’t fun at all. As I settled into school, I found it quite enjoyable, and there was a levity to playtime, to running around with my new friends; things like story time and art felt like fun. I didn’t get much of that at home – it was all about improvement and pushing myself.
I don’t remember much time to just be silly, and I was barely ever allowed even 10 minutes of television so I often felt out of step with my peers.
It wasn’t only academic pressure – from the age of three I was sent to ballet lessons, but whereas the other children jumped and ran around (because they were three!) I was made to keep practising once I got home, and even when I wanted to give up a few years later, I was told I couldn’t. Nothing was ever just about the activity itself, it was always about how I could be the best I could be, how I could excel.
I was sent to Mandarin classes at four (we have no Chinese connection), which I did one evening a week after primary school, then a morning at a French Saturday school (we have no French connection). After that, once I’d had some lunch, I had tennis with a coach for an hour. I started to resent going to any of it, I tuned out of Mandarin and French, and I only tried at tennis because my mum or dad would be there, watching me eagerly. When we started French at school, I already knew a lot of it, so I was bored – and also I didn’t like it because to me it was just another thing on the list.
As I got older and started being given projects and homework, my mum would watch me do them and help to make sure they were top-tier – even the art homework, where it was supposed to just be about creativity.
I did well academically, I got top – or near to top – grades in everything, and I got into the top grammar school in the area that they were desperate for me to go to (with a lot of extra tutoring, just to make sure). But I became highly anxious, and perfectionist about it all. I saw every test and project as an indication of my entire worth as a human.
At 16, the combination of immense academic and extra-curricular pressure both in the classroom and at home, got to me and something snapped. I stopped eating and developed anorexia, and became depressed.
At the time, I didn’t know I was depressed. I thought it was normal that I cried constantly or felt total numbness, and was having trouble breathing sometimes at night or before I was doing a test. I withdrew from any friends I had – which wasn’t many, as I was so highly strung and rarely went to parties or did anything fun with them because I had to study – and became isolated.
I remember feeling suffocated, as if this pressure would never end, because I had GCSES now, then A-levels, then I had to get into Oxford or Cambridge, and then on it would go for ever. I couldn’t envisage a time when I wouldn’t be potentially disappointing someone, and I was absolutely exhausted but also knew I couldn’t slow down. If I did, the world would definitely end.
After I developed my eating disorder, and things got serious because of how underweight I became, the pressure eased for a time, which made having an eating disorder kind of darkly appealing. Teachers talked to my parents, and it was decided that I needed to take a break from all the language classes and tutoring and just focus on my day-to-day classes and get some professional help. I was able to get the eating disorder more under control – although I still struggle to this day – but by now my perfectionism had morphed into an OCD which took the form of near-constant intrusive thoughts.
My parents were very concerned about me – their love for me was never in doubt and I know they wanted only the best for me – but even when they said I should rest, and that all that mattered was that I was well, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my entire life, and their love for me, depended on my getting the best A-levels and getting that acceptance letter from the exact Oxford college I wanted to go.
Although, actually I had no idea what I genuinely wanted any more, and often fantasised about leaving school, not going to university, and becoming an au pair in Paris, or Berlin, or working in the local bookshop. In the end I didn’t get into Oxbridge and I’m sure the admissions team made the right choice – I may have had top grades but I had no real passion for my subject at all, and to be honest, very little creative or independent thought. I knew what to say, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I went to a good university all the same, and while I enjoyed parts of it, I couldn’t fully shake the horror of ever getting less than a First in any essay, or feeling that my parents were nearby, watching me, looking disappointed. I struggled to get into the fun side of student life, and to this day I am terrible at failing anything, and I put huge pressure on myself.
I am getting better though, partly through learning more about how I came to be like this. Therapy has helped me a lot, and my therapist is quite practical in terms of setting me small challenges and thought experiments. Like, what would be the worst that happens if I didn’t get that promotion?
I recently made a huge change – which took me months to get the courage up to do – and moved from a high-pressured, impressive-on-paper job I got at a top accountancy firm, to a high-street firm, where the hours are reasonable, and I get paid enough to pay my mortgage. I put off telling my parents for ages and yes, they sounded disappointed, but I realised I can live with that feeling.
We see each other every few weeks, and I try not to be resentful, as I know they only did what they felt was right for me. I do have flashes of anger, though, because on paper it looks like I had such a privileged childhood with all that access to all those things, but I was unhappy so much of the time. I would urge any parent who wants their child to excel in life not to push them like I was pushed, and to just let them be children. Pressuring them to go faster really isn’t worth it.
As told to Kasia Delgado. *Name changed on request