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This summer I read a book titled Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It. The inside cover opens with this line:

“Today’s children and teens are under increasing pressure to excel in all areas of their young lives—academics, athletics, and extracurricular activities—often at a steep cost to their mental health.”

Everybody has a book that fundamentally shifts their thinking. This one was mine.

If you promise not to judge too loudly, I’ll tell you why.

My forward-facing professional persona is one that follows the research, and the research often tells us all to relax. Love your children. Read to them at night. Get outside. Eat healthy food. Get some sleep. Do those things consistently and, statistically speaking, most of us (about 96 percent) will turn out just fine.

One might imagine that means my own children spend their afternoons running barefoot through the grass, eating strawberries from the backyard, while I model calm, balanced adulthood from a porch swing.

That is… not my reality.

The truth is I am terrified that I’ll somehow be the reason my children can’t achieve their dreams. So, I overcompensate. Oh, you did well on a standardized test? Great, let’s sign up for enrichment classes through Johns Hopkins. You like playing pickup soccer at recess? Let’s get you on that club team. You think horses are pretty? Perfect, here come the horseback riding lessons.

As I type these words, I’m rolling my eyes at myself. What is wrong with me?

Then I got to Chapter 3: “The Power of Mattering.” And this paragraph stopped me cold:

“There is now a pressing need for children to score in the 99th percentile on a standardized test at age five, to make the A travel team in fifth grade, and to tend social media profiles like a thirteen-year-old brand manager. Our generation took the SATs and watched our GPAs, but our children are living under a tyranny of metrics. Its not only that there are more areas in which a child needs to be exceptional; it’s also that the bar for what is exceptional keeps rising.”

Oof. That one landed hard. I could see my own children in those sentences.

Author Jennifer Breheny Wallace offers “mattering” as the antidote. Mattering is the deep need to feel seen, cared for, and valued simply for who we are, not for what we accomplish. When kids know they matter for being themselves, not their excellence, they develop sturdy self-worth. But when their value feels tied to achievement, every mistake or missed opportunity chips away at their confidence.

And here’s the kicker. We can reinforce that message without even realizing it. “Just do your best on the test today,” we say. “I’m proud of how hard you studied.” All well-intentioned. But when the first question we ask after school is, “How do you think you did?” we risk teaching them that our love is performance-based.

Wallace offers some beautifully simple strategies for showing kids they matter:

• Use the Puppy Principle. At least once a day, greet your child like the family dog, with pure joy and no agenda.
• Say it out loud. Explicitly tell your children they matter to you.
• Show unconditional acceptance, especially after a failure.
• Do things together just for the sake of connection.
• Help them find communities where they feel seen, valued, and safe to shine.

Now, I’d love to tell you that we immediately withdrew from all extracurriculars and are now living the barefoot, strawberry-picking dream. But that’s not our reality either. My oldest loves his online college classes with international classmates. My middle is his best self on a soccer field, whether it’s recess or turf. And my youngest… well, horseback riding only lasted a summer, so we’re still in the discovery phase.

What has changed is my lens. The pressure to achieve has softened. We talk about effort, teamwork, and joy, not outcomes. We ask about friends, not scores. We celebrate small moments of kindness and courage. We cheer loudly, especially when things don’t go perfectly.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

Because in the end, our kids don’t need us to be their life coaches, brand managers, or talent scouts. They just need us to be their people, the ones who greet them like the family dog when they walk in the door.

Though, to be fair, I still draw the line at licking their faces.