The following is a contributed post from Susan Caso, MA, LPC, author of The Parent-Teen Connection: How to Build Lifelong Family Relationships.
More teenagers are walking into my office already exhausted by a future they haven’t reached yet.
If your child is entering middle or high school, you might assume the pressure they’re under is simply “how it’s always been.” I’m here to tell you: it hasn’t.
As both a therapist who has worked with teens for two decades and a parent of children ranging from twelve to twenty-seven, I’ve had a front-row seat to how dramatically childhood has shifted. What my oldest experienced just ten years ago is almost unrecognizable compared to what my youngest faces today.
What worries me most is how few parents realize how recent—and how extreme—this shift has been.
The Pressure Your Teen Is Really Under
Here’s what I hear regularly in my office:
“It’s too late for me.”
That sentence came from a thirteen-year-old eighth grader—about soccer. She believed she’d missed her window because she hadn’t started competitive play at age five.
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Another teen described stress as “sandbags being placed on me, one after another.” Another asked me, exhausted, “What is ‘enough’? I don’t even know where the bar is anymore.”
Today’s teens are growing up under a constantly moving standard. High school freshmen are expected to perform academically and extracurricularly at what used to be college-level expectations. A 4.0 GPA—once considered exceptional—is now sometimes framed as insufficient at competitive schools. Teens are told they need to do more, start earlier, and stand out constantly.
The problem isn’t high expectations alone. It’s that the goalposts keep moving.
Every time teens think they’ve figured out what’s required, the bar rises again. This happens during a developmental stage when a sense of accomplishment is essential for building self-worth. Instead of feeling pride, many teens experience chronic inadequacy. There’s no finish line—just an endless chase toward a standard that never settles.
And they watch this unfold daily, amplified by social media and constant comparison.
Why This Isn’t “Normal” Teen Stress
Parents often respond with, “I was stressed as a teenager too.”
That’s true. But the nature and intensity of stress today are fundamentally different.
Consider athletics, an area where many families invest enormous time, money, and hope.
Sports can be tremendously valuable. They teach teamwork, resilience, goal-setting, physical discipline, and how to handle both success and failure. At their best, they offer belonging and confidence.
But here’s the reality: nearly eight million students play high school sports in the United States. About 480,000 compete in NCAA athletics. Only a very small fraction go on to play professionally or at elite levels.
The odds are extremely low.
The question for parents isn’t whether sports are worthwhile—they are—but whether the level of pressure, specialization, and fear of failure we place on kids is proportional to the actual likelihood of advancement.
Many teens now believe one bad season, one injury, or one average performance will permanently derail their future. There’s little room for experimentation or joy. Perfection becomes the expectation, even though development requires trial, error, and time.
When the intrinsic benefits of sports—joy, growth, connection—are replaced by fear and résumé-building, something important is lost.
Your Teen’s Baseline Stress Is Already High
Every person carries a baseline level of stress. Your teen’s baseline is significantly higher than yours before academics or extracurriculars are even added.
That baseline includes:
- Rapid physical changes and identity formation
- Navigating complex social hierarchies and peer dynamics
- Emotional volatility and heightened sensitivity
- Constant exposure to media, information, and comparison
- Near-constant connectivity and visibility online
Many teens are also spending more waking hours with teachers, coaches, and peers than with their parents, absorbing expectations from multiple adults every day.
Now add academic pressure, early college focus, performance demands, social media metrics, and the pervasive fear that one wrong move could “ruin everything.” If home life includes conflict, financial stress, or even the normal friction of parent-teen relationships, that baseline can quickly become unmanageable.
What Neuroscience Helps Us Understand
Adolescence is a period of profound brain development. The amygdala—the part of the brain responsible for fear and emotional reactivity—is highly active during the teen years. Meanwhile, the frontal lobes, which handle reasoning, planning, impulse control, and stress regulation, won’t fully mature until the mid-twenties.
This means teens experience stress more intensely than adults do. A bad grade, social rejection, or disappointing performance can register in their nervous system as catastrophic—not because they’re dramatic, but because their brains are still under construction.
Executive functioning is genuinely hard at this stage. When we ask teens to juggle heavy academic loads, packed schedules, social pressures, and long-term planning, we’re asking them to operate with neurological equipment that isn’t finished yet.
Imagine being asked to drive expertly while the steering system is still being installed. What feels manageable to an adult can feel overwhelming to a teenager.
This isn’t defiance. It’s developmental reality.
You might also like to read: The Best Way to Understand Your Teen’s Behavior Is to Start with Their Brain
The Questions Parents Need to Ask
Many forces shape a teen’s experience: schools, peers, coaches, social media, cultural expectations—and parents. All of these influences matter.
One question matters more than almost any other:
What is my particular teen’s stress capacity right now?
Not compared to siblings. Not compared to classmates. Your teen.
Every adolescent has a unique stress threshold based on temperament, circumstances, developmental stage, and available support. The same schedule that energizes one teen can quietly break another.
Then ask honestly: Is the current level of stress promoting growth, or compromising mental health?
Some stress is healthy and necessary. Too much stress—especially chronic stress—causes real psychological harm. The line is different for every child.
5 Helpful Steps Parents Can (and Should) Take
1. Stop adding, Start subtracting
When teens struggle, our instinct is often to add more: tutors, coaching, more structure. Sometimes the most powerful intervention is reducing the load—allowing for more rest, more unstructured time, more family time, and more space to simply be a teenager.
2. Redefine “enough”
If the external bar keeps moving, you can create clarity at home. What does success look like in your family? What truly matters? Define it clearly and hold that line, even when outside pressure intensifies.
3. Prioritize intrinsic motivation
Ask why your teen is doing what they’re doing. Is it driven by interest and enjoyment—or by fear and résumé-building? When possible, protect activities that nourish curiosity and meaning rather than just performance.
4. Get help early
If you notice withdrawal, persistent anxiety or sadness, sleep changes, loss of interest, or a significant drop in functioning, don’t wait. Early intervention matters.
5. Trust your instincts
You know your child better than any coach, teacher, or admissions office. If something feels off—if your teen seems chronically exhausted, hopeless, or disconnected—trust that signal.
6. Protect the parent-child relationship
Despite what it may look like, parents remain the most important relationship in a teen’s life. Open communication and emotional closeness—what researchers call connectedness—are the strongest protective factors for adolescent mental health.
You might also like to read: Are AP Classes Worth the Stress for Your High School Student?
The Bottom Line
When a thirteen-year-old believes it’s already “too late” for her, her resilience isn’t the problem.
The problem is a cultural shift that has pushed expectations far beyond what adolescent development can realistically support. We’ve created an environment where many teens believe they’ve failed before they’ve truly begun.
Parents have more influence than they realize. We can make our homes places of refuge rather than pressure. We can redefine success in ways that support long-term wellbeing instead of constant performance.
Our job isn’t to manufacture perfect teenagers who check every box. Our role as parents is to raise children into healthy, capable, fulfilled adults—and that path needs space for growth, mistakes, curiosity, rest, and the freedom to be human without having to be exceptional all the time.
Parenting teens and tweens is a tough job, but you’re not alone. These posts might help:
Parents, Here’s How to Actually Stop Arguing with Your Oppositional Teen
The Best Ted Talks for Teens and Tweens To Help Them Learn To Adult
Six Boundaries for Teens They’ll Thank You For Later
8 Valentine’s Day Ideas for Teens That Will Make Them Feel Loved
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