They screened the movie for parents at my D's private high school. Unfortunately, the movie is long, so we didn't have any parent discussion afterwards. Having had two kids go through the school, I can say that my perspective has changed over time. The highest stress periods for us came from:
- Pressure on our less gifted kid to stay on the "most challenging" academic track. She is the one who wanted to do this (because her friends were), but it added a lot of stress. Her homework load was huge. Second D (much higher IQ) is having a fairly easy time with exactly the same course load. In fact, coasting a little too much for my taste
- Extra curricular activities - Too many of them, and too big a time commitment from some of them. Some chosen by the kids, some I blame the school (why does every middle school kid there HAVE to start an instrument? My kids already had piano, and were in choir. For 2nd D, we opted out of band/orchestra in spite of pressure to do otherwise. She is happy now in choir as a hs sophomore, and no worse for missing out on the instrumental experience).
And the pressure from athletic coaches to practice every day/play tournaments on weekends/join offseason teams, just to maintain a spot on the team, is crazy. Would LOVE to see more high school athletic options that were more like college intramurals -- a couple of days a week, scrimmage type games, no cuts, etc.
We were MUCH more savvy with our second child in avoiding the pitfalls that lead to too much pressure.
