Don’t pressurise your kid for A+ grades, it causes more harm

• ANI, Washington D.C
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• Updated: Nov 21, 2015 15:17 IST

Parental aspiration can help improve children’s academic performance, excessive parental aspiration can be poisonous. (Shutterstock)

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There was a time when school days were the best days of your life. Now, however, parents pressurising their kids to get good grades can harm their child’s academic performance rather than improving it, says a new study.

When parents have high hopes for their children’s academic achievement, children tend to do better in school, unless those hopes are unrealistic, in which case the children may not perform well in school, according to the study.

The research revealed both positive and negative aspects of parents’ aspiration for their children’s academic performance. Although parental aspiration can help improve children’s academic performance, excessive parental aspiration can be poisonous, said lead author Kou Murayama of the University of Reading.

High aspiration may hinder academic performance. (Shutterstock)

They found that high parental aspiration led to increased academic achievement, but only when it did not overly exceed realistic expectation. When aspiration exceeded expectation, the children’s achievement decreased proportionately.

Murayama noted that unrealistically high aspiration may hinder academic performance. Simply raising aspiration cannot be an effective solution to improve success in education.

The research is published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.