How to Support a High-Achieving Teenager Without Adding to the Pressure

Parenting a teenager is always difficult. Parenting a high achieving teenager may be even more difficult. And a lot of the typical parenting advice just doesn’t really fit. The articles about getting your kid to care about school aren't for you. Neither are the ones about motivation. Your kid cares plenty. If anything, that's the problem.

The straight-A student, the varsity starter, the one who made all-state. From the outside, these are the kids who need less from their parents. In my experience, they often need something different, and it's easy to miss because they're so good at looking fine.

I wrote the first version of this post years ago. I've updated it because I've learned a lot since then, and because I recently sat down with Ashley Elder, LCSW, one of our teen therapists in Lee's Summit, to talk about the high-achieving teens she sees. Ashley works with a lot of them, and she put words to something I'd been circling for a while. More on that below.

Figure out where the standard is actually coming from

The old version of this post told parents not to expect perfection. That's still true. But it assumed the pressure was coming from you, and in a lot of families it isn't.

This is the thing Ashley put words to. The high achievers she works with are often in advanced classes, playing a sport or two, and gifted at whatever they do. And a lot of them have built a standard for themselves that nobody handed them.

"If it's not perfect, if it doesn't meet their standard, it's not good, then they're not good enough," she told me. "They start telling themselves a narrative. It's a belief that they really believe."

Notice who isn't in that sentence. Not the parent. Not the coach. The teen has become their own hardest critic, and the standard moves every time they get near it.

This matters because it changes what helps. If the pressure were coming from you, backing off would fix it. When the pressure is internal, backing off doesn't touch it. Your kid will keep grinding whether you ask them to or not. So before you do anything else, get honest about where the bar is coming from. Ask them. "When you say you have to get an A, who's that for?" You may not love the answer, but it tells you what you're working with.

Know what struggling looks like in a kid who's still performing

The old advice here was to watch for headaches, trouble sleeping, and changes in behavior. Keep watching for those. They're real, and high achievers often find it easier to say "my head hurts" than "I feel awful."

But the harder thing to catch is the teen who changes nothing. Same grades. Same practice attendance. Same smile at dinner. The only difference is that none of it feels good to them anymore.

Ashley described it this way: "On the outside, it looks like they have nothing to be anxious about, they have nothing to be sad about. And on the inside, for that teenager, they're beating themselves up at night, even though they have a happy face on throughout the day."

So in addition to asking how the test went, pay attention to how they feel about it afterward. A few things I'd watch for:

• They win and can't enjoy it. The A is a relief, not a pleasure, and the next worry starts before the car ride home is over.

• They talk about the one mistake, not the game.

• Every accomplishment seems to raise the bar instead of settling it.

• They've stopped doing the part of the activity that was just for fun.

• Rest feels like something they have to earn, and they never quite earn it.

None of those are crises. All of them are worth a real conversation. And sometimes the clearest sign a high-achieving teen needs support isn't that they're doing badly. It's that they're doing great and still feel terrible about themselves.

Stop reassuring and get curious

Have you watched your teen fall apart over a grade you'd have been thrilled with? Or play a great game and spend the whole drive home on the one mistake?

The natural response is to argue with them. "But you got an A!" "Your coach said you were amazing!" "You should be proud!"

I get it. It's the most natural thing in the world. And for a kid who's built their own impossible standard, it doesn't work. Ashley hears this from parents constantly.

"Despite mom, dad, teacher, coach saying 'you're doing a great job,' they don't always feel that way," she said, "because their expectations for themselves are very different from the person next to them."

You and your teen are grading the same thing on two different scales. Yours measures the result against the world. Theirs measures it against a bar only they can see. When you say "you did great," they don't hear encouragement. They hear that you don't understand.

So try curiosity instead of reassurance. A few questions that work better than "but you did great":

• "What would it mean about you if you'd gotten a B?"

• "When you say you failed, what does failing mean?"

• "What's the rule you're holding yourself to right now?"

You'll often find a bigger belief under the disappointment. Something like "I'm only smart if it's perfect" or "if I'm not the best, I'm nothing." Those are exactly the beliefs we work on in therapy. Not by convincing a teen they're talented. They know they're talented. By helping them notice the rule, question whether it's true, and practice living without it. I wrote more about this in why perfectionism is a protection, not a personality trait, if you want the longer version.

Let them be imperfect on purpose

This is the part I'd add to everything I wrote years ago, and it's the part parents find hardest.

A teen whose anxiety is tied to performance doesn't get better by understanding it. They get better by practicing the thing they're afraid of, in small doses, and finding out they survive. That means letting them be a little imperfect, on purpose, with your support.

In plain terms:

• When they want to redo the already-good assignment at 11pm, encourage them to turn it in as is and go to bed.

• When they want to skip the party to study for a test they're already ready for, nudge them toward the party.

• When they're sick and want to go to practice anyway, keep them home.

• When they get the B, let the B stand. No email to the teacher. No extra credit hunt.

Each of those feels like you're letting them fail. You're not. You're letting their brain learn that a B, a missed practice, or a good-enough paper doesn't end anything. That lesson can't be taught with words. It has to be lived, usually more than once.

And here's the other half, because there is one. You don't do this by force, and you don't do it while dismissing how scary it feels. Both things are true at once: "I know this feels like a disaster, and I'm not going to help you avoid it." That's not cold. It's the most useful thing you can offer a kid who's organized their life around not messing up. If the anxiety is bigger than a nudge can handle, that's what we're for, and the work looks a lot like this, just more structured.

Praise the person, not the trophy

This one was in the original post, and I'd keep it, with one change in emphasis.

Your kid already knows you're proud of the result. Everyone is proud of the result. What they may not know is that you'd still be proud of them without it. So say the other things out loud. That they're kind to their little brother. That they stuck with the hard thing. That they're funny. That you like who they are, not just what they do.

Here's why it matters more than it sounds. At some point, most high achievers stop being the best at the thing. The injury happens. The scholarship goes to someone else. College is full of kids who were valedictorian. When that day comes, a teen whose whole identity was "the one who's good at this" is in real trouble. A teen who knows they're also the kind one, the funny one, the one who doesn't quit, has somewhere to stand.

You can't give them that in the week it falls apart. You give it to them now, a little at a time, when nothing is wrong.

Don't compare, and build a life that's bigger than the thing they're best at

Two older strategies, still true, so I'll keep them short.

Comparison backfires in both directions. Compare your football player to someone better and they feel like they're falling short. Compare them to someone worse and now there's a standard to keep up. Neither one helps, and your teen is already doing plenty of comparing on their own. You don't need to add to it.

The second one matters more than it used to. A high achiever's identity can get narrow fast. If your teen is "the swimmer" or "the straight-A kid" and nothing else, every bad meet or bad test is a threat to who they are. So protect the parts of their life that have nothing to do with performance. Friends they don't compete with. A hobby they're mediocre at and enjoy anyway. Family time where nobody asks about the score. Sleep, which I'd put ahead of almost anything else on this list.

The goal isn't to make them care less about the thing they love. It's to make sure the thing they love isn't the only leg the table is standing on.

Keep talking, but on a schedule that works for a 16-year-old

The original post said to keep communication open and frequent. I still believe that. I'd just add that "frequent" has to fit a kid who may be gone from 6am to 8pm.

Ashley's first question when a parent says their teen won't talk is always about the schedule. If your high achiever is doing a sport before school, classes, practice, a job, and homework, the conversation you're hoping for at 9pm isn't going to happen. Not because they don't want to talk to you. Because there's nothing left.

So find the window that actually exists. The drive to the early practice. The late-night snack. Saturday morning. And keep the check-ins low stakes most of the time, so that when something big comes up, talking to you isn't a big deal. We wrote a whole post on what a teen therapist asks first when a teen stops talking, if this is the piece you're stuck on.

When to get help, and what it looks like at Aspire

Some of this you can do at home, and it will help. But if your teen's standard has hardened into "I'm worthless unless I'm perfect," or the anxiety is costing them sleep, friends, or any joy in the thing they're good at, a few parenting tweaks won't be enough. That's not a failure on your part. It's a sign the belief has gotten bigger than a conversation can reach.

With high-achieving teens, our work is usually a few months, not years. We start with a meet-and-greet so your teen can decide if the therapist is a fit. Then we spend a session or two getting the full picture before building a plan. The plan itself usually involves finding the rule the teen is living by, questioning it, and practicing small, real-life steps toward living without it. Parents are part of the team. We'll tell you what to do at home so you're not guessing.

We measure how it's going, too. Kids and teens under 18 who come to us for anxiety fill out a short questionnaire at intake and as they go, and we can show you what the averages look like. The short version is that real change tends to show up after a few months, not a few weeks, which is why we ask families to plan on that.

Begin Teen Counseling in Lee's Summit or Columbia, Missouri

Ashley Elder works with high-achieving teens at our Lee's Summit office and has openings now, including some after school times and a couple of early-morning slots that keep missed school to a minimum. In Columbia, Kristi, Kelly and I also work with teens, with after school times at both offices.

Call our Lee's Summit office at 816-287-1116 or our Columbia office at 573-328-2288, reach out online, or request a time for our client care team to call you.

Whenever you're ready for effective care and lasting change, we're here.

About the Author

Jessica Oliver, MSW, LCSW (formerly Jessica Tappana) is the founder and clinical director of Aspire Counseling. She has treated anxiety for more than 15 years and is trained in exposure-based treatment, ERP for OCD, and ACT, the approaches that shape how Aspire works with perfectionism. Before opening Aspire in 2017, she spent two years at a school for kids with severe emotion dysregulation, and the practice's early years were mostly kids and teens. Her caseload today leans toward stressed moms, high-performing professionals, and college students who come for trauma intensives, which means she spends a lot of time with the adults that high-achieving teenagers grow into. She still keeps a few anxious teens on her schedule because she loves that work.

This post was originally published in 2021 and was updated on October 14, 2026, drawing on Jessica's interview with Ashley Elder, LCSW, on October 13, 2026. Ashley is a teen therapist at Aspire's Lee's Summit office who works with anxiety, depression, and trauma in teenagers, including many high achievers. She is trained in TF-CBT and DBT, spent years delivering DBT on an inpatient unit before joining Aspire, and is licensed in both Missouri and Kansas. Ashley's quotes are her own words from that conversation, lightly edited for readability.