You are right about the impossible standards for students these days set by their teachers who either want to consciously inflict pain or are utterly hopeless as they don’t understand how much angst they’re contributing toward.

In my opinion, you are wrong to write your son’s essay for him while he “decompresses at a friends house.” I get performance anxiety. I understand depression and the mental instability that is felt when one can simply not endure the pressure of academics for another moment.

But you’re teaching your son that it’s okay to bail out. If things get really hard, step out and tap someone else in. I wish the world worked like this but it does not. He’s going to be in for a serious wake-up call when he realizes that absolutely no one cares if he’s going through hell trying to finish a project or a client report.

In this world, we really should be teaching our kids to fight for themselves because if Jeremy would have stood up to his teacher and told her that her assignment is causing him the amount of stress that it was, they could have a conversation about this and maybe change the trajectory of her career and the mental stability of the other students in the class- many of whom, I am sure, do not have parents willing to step in and complete their assignments for them.

This is my opinion. Nothing stated here is fact, it’s just my experience.