| Madeline Levine, Ph.D. | ||
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ISBN: 0060595841 Critical Praise for
The Price of Privilege |
By Marco R. della Cava The late-afternoon sun flicks finger-like shadows into the steel-and-glass study hall at Drake High School. A dozen students fiddle with pencils and hair clips. One teen breaks the silence. "I had no idea until I walked into this room today that everyone felt this was such a big issue for them," says Lindsay Rogers, 15. A few seats away, Dani Curtin, 16, nods. "On the surface, your friends make you feel they're doing well. But I guess you see very quickly it's affecting everyone." The elephant in this room is another big E, the economy, which for today's teens threatens to upend everything from social habits to college plans.
By Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje Santa Claus may be feeling a little stingy this year. With the economy in free-fall, just about everyone's feeling a tad Scrooge-like. So the spread beneath the Christmas tree probably won't resemble an upscale catalogue this year in homes across the nation. Parents squeezed between making mortgage payments, paying utilities and putting food on the table are now struggling to explain to their children that the usual holiday haul simply isn't going to materialize. But how to do that? How to explain to your children that Santa's bag is lighter when you're used to going all out to satisfy their seasonal yearnings, be they expensive, in-demand toys or the latest electronic gadgetry? It turns out the economic crunch could be a hidden blessing, according to some experts.
By Bill Stanczykiewicz Which children are at risk? The answer from child psychologist Madeline Levine might surprise you. Levine fully acknowledges that low-income children living in crime-ridden neighborhoods are at risk. Yet, in 25 years of medical practice, Levine also has observed a growing number of middle- and upper-income teenagers with severe depression, anxiety and other mental and emotional health problems. Teens who shine on the outside while living in darkness on the inside -- a darkness that leads to drugs, eating disorders and other self-injurious behaviors like cutting.
Star Tribune
By Sandra G. Boodman For Jessica Huey, the circumstances preceding the episodes she calls her “nervous breakdowns” were always the same: She was exhausted, it was 1 a.m. and she still faced a mountain of homework due when school started at 7:20 the next morning. “I would look around and think, ‘I can’t possibly get this all done,’ and then burst into tears,” said Huey, 17, who is scheduled to start her senior year at a Maryland high school next month. Even while she was weeping, Huey recalled, she felt she was wasting valuable time. Parents, quit the hovering By Debra Bruno It's the season of college graduation, and we helicopter parents are starting to reap the benefits of all that hovering. Think of it: the SAT prep classes we've paid for, the early-morning crew practices we've carpooled to, the excruciating cello recitals we've sat through. Finally, we think, we'll see the results of years of being on call 24/7, reading aloud the flash cards for French conjugation and showing up in the middle of a Thursday for parent-teacher conferences. High school's worst year? Farmington, CT - Jennifer Glickman, a 17-year-old high school junior, gets so stressed some days from overwork and lack of sleep that she feels sick to her stomach and gets painful headaches. A straight-A student, she recently announced at a college preparatory meeting with her mother and guidance counselor that she doesn't want to apply to Princeton and the other Ivy League schools that her counselor thinks she could get into.
By Winnie Hu Briarcliff Manor - High school students in this well-to-do Westchester suburb pile on four, five, even six Advanced Placement classes to keep up with their friends. They track their grade-point averages to multiple decimal places and have longer résumés than their parents. But nearly half the students at Briarcliff High School have packed their schedules so full that they do not stop for lunch, prompting administrators to rearrange the schedule next fall to require everyone to take a 20-minute midday break. They will extend each school day and cut the number of minutes each class meets over the year. Briarcliff currently does not require students to have a lunch period.
Affluent kids don't have it all - not at all By Betsy Hart Scripps Howard News Service January 28, 2008 Maybe the kids who "have it all" don't "have it all" - after all. That's what Madeline Levine, a practicing psychologist in northern California, chronicles in her new book, "The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids." The cover shot of the book may, well, say it all: a group of incredibly bored-looking teens not even looking at each other as they are furiously texting away on their cell phones. Levine looks at privileged kids, and finds some pretty disturbing things looking back. Self-Harm: 'I Cut Myself to Feel Better' Middle-class girls under pressure are increasingly among the one in 15 young people who engage in self-harm. Glenda Cooper reports on what experts fear is the 'new anorexia' Tor Stimpson slouches on the sofa, fiddling with a packet of cigarettes.
Her jeans are fashionably ripped at the knee, she is snuggled into
an oversized hooded top and her hair is pulled back in a scruffy
ponytail revealing ears that have been pierced several times. She looks directly at me, then slowly rolls up a sleeve to reveal a forearm crisscrossed with scars that cover almost every inch of skin. Most are bleached white against her tan but there are more recent ones that are still red and angry. "Cutting made me feel better," Tor says. "Imagine holding your breath and feeling like you are going to blow up. Then you release the air and immediately feel better. That's what self-harming feels like." In touch too much? Technology and parenting can be a wonderful marriage, but too many cellular phone calls, text messages and Internet checks can sour that relationship, eroding trust between a parent and child and stifling independence. Every month, parents get a new high-tech gadget to help manage their family: school Web sites with daily updates on grades and attendance; GPS-enabled cell phones; tools to stealthily check their children’s instant messaging. Such techno-parenting can be a slippery slope into micromanagement, some psychologists say, creating a bond so incessant that teenagers struggle to think for themselves and miss chances to grow. The problem is that technology is evolving faster than the ability of some parents to balance its benefits and drawbacks. “I don’t think people realize what the effects are. It’s like the road before there were stop signs and stoplights. You need them,“ said Hara Estroff Marano, an editor-atlarge at Psychology Today and author of the soon-to-be-released book, “A Nation of Wimps.” “They are just dazzled by the technology.” Helicopter Parenting Turns Deadly By Judith Warner Megan Meier, a 13-year-old from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, killed herself last year after an online relationship she believed she was having with a cute 16-year-old boy named Josh went very sour. What she didn’t know – what her parents would learn six weeks after her death – was that “Josh” was the fictitious creation of Lori Drew, a then-47-year-old neighbor and the mother of one of Megan’s friends. Or former friends. Megan had, essentially, dropped the other girl when she’d changed schools and tried to put an unhappy chapter of her junior high school life – fraught with weight problems and depression – behind her. Drew’s daughter, one assumes, would have eventually gotten over it. But Drew didn’t. Instead, she got revenge. Working Dad: Trapped by Technology Parents need to leave some slack in the high-tech lifeline to their children Technology and parenting can be a wonderful marriage, but too many cellular phone calls, text messages and Internet checks can sour that relationship, eroding trust between a parent and child and stifling independence. Every month, parents get a new high-tech gadget to help manage their family: school Web sites with daily updates on grades and attendance; GPS-enabled cell phones; tools to stealthily check their children's instant messaging. Such techno-parenting can be a slick slope into micromanagement, some psychologists say, creating a bond so incessant that teenagers struggle to think for themselves and miss chances to grow. The problem is technology is evolving faster than the ability of some parents to balance its benefits and drawbacks. Society Out of Sync to Pampered Kids Pressured privilege increases burnout, dropout by youths unable to cope with 'good life' When "Leave It To Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" were among TV's hottest shows, there were adolescents, like Eddie Haskell, who seemed destined for no good and others who were clearly headed for trouble: "When Johnny was caught hot-wiring a car at age 16, everybody would say, 'Oh I knew it was going to happen.' It was no surprise," says psychologist and author Dr. Madeline Levine. Now, the adolescent headed for trouble is not always the most obvious and may be the one that would most shock the neighborhood. "Now it's the kid who just got into Princeton or the captain of the team. Not being able to predict at all is very scary," says Levine. Whither the Innocence of Childhood? With just few days before yet another 'International Children's Day' on 20 November, it is high time to ponder over the issues in the lead up to the event. This day is marked to commemorate globally the 'Convention on the Rights of the Child' which was signed by the United Nations on this day in 1989 and celebrated as Children's Day. In India this Day is celebrated on 14th November, the birth anniversary of Jawahar Lal Nehru, the first prime minister of free India and a great lover of children and roses alike. A child's mind was once thought to be a mind of pristine innocence, free of rigid ideas. Alas it is no longer now. The city kids (all over the world), as young as 3 years old, have very definite views about what they want or not want, be it food, clothes, toys or even household gadgets. By the time they are of 6 or 7 years, they make their parents proud (??) with their deft handling of mobile phones, internet games and TV sets. More than 50% of 3 year olds in UK have a personal TV set in their bedrooms and those in the age group 11-15 years spend almost 53 hours a week in front of the computer/ TV screen. Are School Trips Worth the Cost? Milken Community High School 11th-grader Rebecca Suchov considers her elementary and middle school trips to Colorado, Arizona and Washington, D.C., -- and any number of local weekend retreats -- as some of her most formative experiences, so she expected a lot from her four months in Israel with Milken last spring. But she never anticipated just how lasting the impact would be. "Before I left, my mom told me I'd come back changed, more mature, and I thought 'OK, whatever.' But I never felt so much more grown up, or so much more alive, like I know what is going on with the world. I feel like a completely different person," said Suchov, who was one of 40 10th-graders to participate in Milken's Tiferet Israel Fellowship in the program's inaugural year last spring. That response is just what educators are looking for when they offer students out-of-classroom experiences to augment what they learn from lectures, projects and textbooks. Those trips -- ranging from a few nights of local camping to pilgrimages to Washington, D.C., to overseas travel -- have become part of the curriculum at most Jewish schools and at other independent schools. At-Risk Affluent Kids Are No Joke We worry about poor kids, homeless kids and kids of divorce. Now, people are worried about relatively wealthy kids. Author Dr. Madeline Levine says "America's biggest "at-risk" group is pre-teens and teens from well-educated families with incomes of $120,000 to $150,000," in publicity for her book "The Price of Privilege." Before you start thinking 'poor little rich kids,' Levine appears to have valid concerns. The Bay-area clinical psychologist knows these affluent kids are not at the greatest risk for everything. But, they are "at the greatest risk for a bunch of stuff we didn't think they would be at risk for," Levine told me. Money can turn into 'affluenza' among children Usually, when people talk about at-risk kids, the focus is on children living in poverty. But it turns out living among wealth can carry its own risks. Experts point to an array of factors that might spell trouble, including a focus on perfection and achievement. "You not only have to be good, you have to be terrific; and not only terrific in some things but terrific in everything," says Madeline Levine, author of "The Price of Privilege" (HarperCollins, $24.95). "You have to be a straight-A student and on varsity, not junior varsity. God forgive you should you ever get a B. What a bizarre concept. Except for a few geniuses, most people play to their strengths, but we're forcing kids to be good at everything." Everybody Does It: Academic cheating is at an all-time high.
Can anything be done to stop it? If there were a test on the current state of cheating in school, I would have gotten an F. My knowledge was as outdated as the stolen answers to last week's quiz. Ask a high school or college student about cheating, and before you can finish the sentence, the person will blurt out two things: "Everybody does it," and "It's no big deal." Survey statistics back up the first statement, and the lack of serious consequences and lax enforcement of academic integrity policies in schools support the second. Not only is cheating on the rise nationally - a 2005 Duke University study found that 75 percent of high school students admit to cheating, and if you include copying another person's homework, that number climbs to 90 percent - but there has also been a cultural shift in who cheats and why. It's Tough, but You Can Do It Do your kids suffer from discipline deficit disorder? (Hint: Symptoms include "the gimmes" and a "me first" attitude.) If you can't say "No" and stick to your guns, chances are they do, says psychologist David Walsh, whose recent book about the complaint has—to his shock—launched a burgeoning grass-roots movement to stamp it out. In Minnesota, Walsh's home state, a "Say Yes to No" coalition of educators and PTA parents sent "tool kits" touting the book (No: Why Kids—of All Ages—Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It) to 2,500 principals before school began last week. Their next goal is to get it on the reading list of every child-tending grown-up in the state, sparking a sharing of war stories about how to tame "I want" behavior. Why Affluent, High-Achieving Teens Are Often Depressed Madeline Levine is a clinical psychologist and expert on adolescents and teens from affluent families. Throughout more than 25 years of practice, she came to observe a counterintuitive phenomenon: that along with their list of achievements and accomplishments, these kids often have developed significant depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and psychosomatic disorders. An effect of being "indulged, coddled, pressured, and micromanaged," Levine writes, is that they haven't been able to develop a sense of self. In her book The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, Levine dissects her experience working with these affluent kids, and explores why they report feeling less close to their parents than any other group of teens and have three times the national rate of emotional problems. U.S.News & World Report caught up with her to talk about it. Are you a helicopter parent? Emma is busy every afternoon of the week. On Monday she has ballet and art, Tuesday she has swimming, on Wednesday she has a session with the occupational therapist as her fine motor skills apparently need fine-tuning, Thursday is Playball followed by drama, and on Friday afternoon after clay classes she's looking forward to the weekend as much as her parents. And she's only six. Add in the long rides in the traffic, homework, the OT exercises and an hour of TV to unwind each day, and there's not much time for just hanging out on a swing making up songs, watching caterpillars or playing skop-die-blik with the neighbours. Most of the afternoon is supervised by the au pair, because Emma's parents both work full time. Once home they are understandably keen to engage and stimulate their daughter through all the precious moments until bedtime. Privileged teens suffering from depression Younger generation sweats future by Gabrielle Glaser The Oregonian March 22, 2007 Leslie Carlson remembers the 1970s signs for fallout shelters and the school drills that sent kids diving under their desks. In college, worries about nuclear catastrophe kept her up at night. But today Carlson, 42, has global warming anxiety. “I worry about the quality of my children's lives and the connection to nature I love so much,” says Carlson, a mother of three and a Portland public relations manager. Just last weekend she was skiing with her children, she says, and surveyed the mountain landscape. “I wondered, 'Are they even going to be able to do this when they grow up?' ” Read the entire article here.Talking about the ‘Price of Privilege’ by Debbie Alter-Starr Two weeks ago, Napa County Superintendent of Schools Barbara Nemko presided over the largest class in the history of the Napa County Office of Education’s parent education program, a standing-room only crowd of 500 people at the Napa Valley Opera House gathered to hear Madeline Levine, Ph.D., author of “The Price of Privilege.” Dr. Levine shared that rates of anxiety, depression, other diagnosable mental health problems and self-destructive behaviors are increasing in youth and that a common theme expressed by youth who are suffering is “too much pressure.” She reports — corroborating comments by a Napa student in a letter to the Register Feb. 4 (“Homework is pointless”) — that too many students are working 12-16 hour days and that this is unacceptable. Getting a good night’s sleep (nine hours for teens), eating meals with family and having time to develop a sense of self and self-management skills are ultimately more important for healthy psychological development in teens than AP classes and participating in time-consuming extra-curricular activities, says Dr. Levine. Lap of luxury breeds higher rates of teen substance abuse by Eric Louie With high-performing schools and a lack of street violence, affluent areas may seem free of dangers many parents fear could befall their children. But richer areas, more than poorer ones, often see teen alcohol and drug use at higher levels. It's not just a matter of kids having more money to spend, though that is a factor. Disconnected families and pressures to succeed push youths to destructive behavior, say researchers, sociologists and the people trying to help these kids. Adults in many wealthy areas often are loathe to acknowledge that such problems exist in their world. "The amount of denial on this issue is phenomenal," said Madeline Levine, a Marin County psychologist and author of "The Price of Privilege." "Perfection is very, very valued in affluent communities," Levine said. Families who have it all - child trouble included by Jeff Gammage and Lini S. Kadaba As Britt Reid walked to court in handcuffs last week, accused of pointing a gun at a motorist, and his older brother, Garrett, waited to see whether he would be charged for causing a car wreck while allegedly high on heroin, many people in the Philadelphia area wondered the same thing: How could two young men whose parents were able to offer them every advantage - a big house, money, celebrity - land in such serious trouble? Counselors who work with affluent children and families offer a one-word answer: Easy. "Having resources doesn't make parenting easier or harder. It just makes it different," said Crista Martinez, director of Families First Parenting Programs near Boston. The offenses attributed to Britt, 21, and Garrett, 23, sons of Eagles head coach Andy Reid, challenge the assumption that rich parents have it made, that the more you earn, the simpler it is to raise healthy, productive kids. The team announced Monday that the coach would take an immediate one-month leave to deal with family matters arising from the separate Jan. 30 incidents. No single answer as to why this Glen Rock teen took his own
life by Carolyn Salazar and Leslie Brody
By all accounts, Zachary Toskovich had everything going for him. The 17-year-old Glen Rock High School student was brilliant and popular. Why then, people were still wondering Friday, would a teenager with such a promising future commit suicide? The answer may not be clear-cut, experts say. "What is never the case is that suicide was some random act," said Dr. David Shaffer, chief of the child and adolescent psychiatry division at Columbia University. "Even if a child has problems at school, with their parents, or their girlfriend or boyfriends -- that doesn't drive normal kids to kill themselves. ... Nearly everyone who commits suicide had been suffering from some form of mental illness before their death." Parents reflect, schools mobilize to curb suicide by Ilene Lelchuk and Erin Allday It was a rare Monday afternoon when Clive Barry, 16, had the day off from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, and his mother was home from work to eat and take a nap. Clive talked about how much he respected his father. They made plans to hang out later in the afternoon. But when Camilla Barry woke up, her son was gone. The note he'd left said he was going to kill himself. An hour later, authorities found his bike at the Golden Gate Bridge. Clive's body still hasn't been found, but authorities presume he jumped to his death Jan. 8. Psychologist gives teens tips on living happier lives by Tad Whitaker San Domenico Upper School students received some eye-opening instructions Wednesday: sleep more, stop hiding how you feel and speak up when stressed. The advice came from Kentfield psychologist Madeline Levine, whose hot book "The Price of Privilege" examines affluent teenagers and their unusually high rates of depression, substance abuse and anxiety. "If you want to go home and tell them Dr. Levine said that, feel free," she said. Levine was one of several dozen women who spoke during a career day focused on women in fields such as biology and medicine. Others included Dr. Cynthia Clark, an emergency room doctor at Marin General Hospital, and Karen Sheldon, forensics chief for the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department. Affluent Teens: Do polished exteriors hide impoverished interiors? by Anita K. Kantrowitz Adolescence. The mere thought of it strikes fear in the heart of many a parent. A tumultuous time of intellectual, physical and moral growth, adolescence can be wondrous, exciting ... and terrifying. Teens and their parents find themselves negotiating every rule -- "Sara's mother lets her stay out until midnight on school nights!" -- each desperately trying to decipher the other's actions, a futile endeavor that often ends when the teen shouts: "You just don't understand me!" Yet these interactions, parents are told, are part of the normal struggle for autonomy and independence inherent in the teen years. While some of this angst can become fodder for entertainment -- dramatic and/or comic -- this "developmentally appropriate" stage can also trigger a host of psychological problems, particularly depression, substance abuse, aggression and anxiety. The lost generation by Patricia Pearson Kids today. Of course, that's the refrain of every parental generation, but nevertheless, may I just say ... kids today. There is a certain je ne sais quoi about the teens of the 21st century. An odd blend of entitlement and malaise, of assertiveness and drift that is characteristic of what the California psychologist Jean Twenge calls Generation Me. I've seen this mix of confidence and helplessness in the emails I get from high school students, who've been assigned to do a project involving one of my books. They think nothing of contacting me to demand that I fill in the blanks in their project. They say they need to know the following: "Your date of birth." "The genre you see yourself in." "Your hardest challenge as a writer." Like I'm just hanging around, disembodied in cyberspace, waiting to do someone else's homework. Global Warming-era parenthood: How do you tell your kids about climate change when they've heard so much about it elsewhere? by Katherine Ellison Global warming a bit like sex: Long before you think it's time to explain it to your children, they've already heard the mixed-up details on the playground. I asked my 11-year-old son what he knew. "The water is going to rise about 20 feet, and we're all doomed," he said matter of factly, before dashing off to slug his brother. Two recent national polls, taken in the wake of "An Inconvenient Truth" and mounting news coverage of heat waves and hurricanes, show the majority of Americans now see global warming as a personal threat. And apparently, word has spread to the prepubescent set that they'd better see the San Diego Zoo while it's still dry. Apocalyptic fears have shadowed U.S. childhood before this. Who among us boomers doesn't remember all that Cold War ducking and covering? But global warming is profoundly scarier. For starters, to trigger a nuclear holocaust, somebody has to be the first to bomb. To trigger eco-Armageddon, all we need do is continue to ignore leading scientists' warnings. Kids wouldn’t be so stressed if we just allowed them to fail by Margery Eagan It’s been ridiculed since Monday. Even Jay Leno weighed in with a joke about his PC home state, Massachusetts, where Needham High, in case you missed it, will stop printing the honor roll in the paper lest, as Leno put it, “it might make the kids flunking out feel bad.” “We protect our children too much. This sends the wrong message,” said one Needham mother, whose son graduated in June. Yet she understands the principal’s good intentions. Her boy is among those still reeling from four student suicides in three years. One was her son’s friend. She understands too the paradoxes: How the pressure on high schoolers to achieve - from parents, peers, school - is greater than ever. But teenagers have less ability to cope. Amid privilege, crushing pressure to excel Facing parent and peer expectations, high-achieving students may cheat. Four grueling hours cramming for a calculus test left Ashley Tedesco on the verge of tears Tuesday night. The Central Bucks East senior, who was sick when her class took the exam, just wasn't getting it. The next day, her teacher placed the makeup test in front of Tedesco, then stepped from the room. The opportunity was obvious. "I wish I could send a text message to my friend at Penn and ask, 'How do I do this problem?' " Tedesco thought as she sat alone. "I wish I were a bad kid, and not a good student, so people wouldn't expect so much from me." The price of perfection: Teenage overachievers failing at happiness by Jackie Burrell Beneath the veneer of affluent suburban perfection lies a sad truth. The world may be their oyster, but 22 percent of those Juicy Couture-clad adolescent girls are clinically depressed -- three times the national level -- and the boys don't fare any better. Pushed too far by Carol Midgley An American psychologist argues in a new book that affluent parents
are pushing their children to be competitive — at the cost
of their future mental health Generation empty by Jill Kramer Marin psychologist Madeline Levine says that driving our kids to succeed is a journey over an emotional cliff. Tomorrow’s movers and shakers are emotionally wounded, says psychologist Madeline Levine. An increasing number of well-heeled, driven, high-achieving adolescents are growing up without conscience or community. These are the kids who will be filling classrooms at Harvard and Princeton and who will later be our politicians, policy makers, doctors and lawyers—and that’s a problem for all of us. Read the entire article here. (PDF file) They've got it all. So why are well-off children so unhappy? by Denis Campbell Parental pressure to succeed has created a lost generation, warns a controversial new book that is taking the US by storm Well-off, smartly dressed and displaying an impressive array of talents in and out of school, they seem to have perfect lives and be destined for exciting futures doing important things. Yet a growing number of children from wealthy backgrounds are suffering stress, not because of their friends or worrying about whether they will get a boyfriend or girlfriend, but because of their over-ambitious parents. A controversial new book - which has sparked a massive debate in America about the relationship between money and parenting - has blamed high-earning, high-achieving mothers and fathers for inadvertently causing their children's problems by pushing them so hard to succeed that they feel like failures. Parents interfere in their children's lives so much that they can't look after themselves. They give them every gadget and luxury imaginable but far too little time, love and affection. Sick of expectations by Sandra G. Boodman Pressure to Compete, Not Connect, Leaves Many Affluent Teens Miserable, Says a Psychologist and Author Adolescent alienation isn't a new phenomenon. But the unhappy teenagers clinical psychologist Madeline Levine sees in her practice aren't merely going through a developmental phase, she writes. In her new book, "The Price of Privilege" (Harper Collins, $24.95), Levine says that over-involved parents who pressure their children to be stars -- in school, on athletic fields, among their peers -- have created a generation that is "extremely unhappy, disconnected and passive." Unabashedly materialistic and disinterested in the wider world, they are both bored and "often boring," she writes. A large number suffer from depression, anxiety and substance abuse. The price of privilege: A generation of stressed-out kids by Rick Polito In the Village at Corte Madera's central court, the morning sun is shining. The power moms glide through with the latest must-have strollers, as fresh and as trimmed as the immaculate landscaping. The teenagers aren't there yet, but they will be, parking behind their parents' Land Rovers for another vital dose of "retail therapy."
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Last update: May 17, 2007
