How To Raise Resilient Kids Without Crushing Them With Achievement Pressure With Dr. Doug Bolton

Dr. Doug Bolton is the Director of School Consultation at Formative Psychological Services, a mental health clinic offering therapy, neuropsychological assessments, and consultation services to individuals, families, and schools. With over 30 years of experience, Dr. Bolton has worked extensively with children, adolescents, couples, and families, focusing on improving coping mechanisms through a family therapy model. Prior to his current role, he served as a Psychologist and Principal at North Shore Academy, a K-12 therapeutic school, for more than two decades. Dr. Bolton is also the author of Untethered: Creating Connected Families, Schools, and Communities to Raise a Resilient Generation, a book that addresses the mental health challenges facing adolescents today

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[3:36] How Dr. Doug Bolton discovered his passion for helping emotionally and behaviorally challenged kids
[5:23] Why students in high-achieving schools are at-risk for anxiety and depression
[7:10] The myth of one perfect path to success and how that belief impacts children’s mental health
[13:18] Why studying habits drive student success
[17:32] How pressure and competition damage kids’ relationships and emotional wellness
[18:41] The flaw in school systems expecting compliance over developmental readiness
[25:13] The danger of tying a child’s self-worth to achievement and perfectionism
[32:47] Why protecting kids from discomfort hinders their resilience development
[41:55] How punishment misses the mark when kids face developmental challenges

In this episode…

Many parents believe the best way to secure their child’s future is to push them toward academic excellence, elite colleges, and high achievement from an early age. However, this well-intentioned pressure may be doing more harm than good. How does this narrow path to success undermine kids’ mental health and well-being?

According to Dr. Doug Bolton, a clinical psychologist and national consultant on student mental health, the pressure to succeed can erode resilience and increase anxiety. Students in affluent communities are classified as an at-risk group due to overwhelming stress tied to performance, status, and scarcity mindsets. When children equate their self-worth with achievements — grades, sports, or selective colleges — they lose the opportunity to develop emotional regulation and coping skills. This constant striving can damage relationships, distort priorities, and stunt healthy development. Instead, growth happens when kids are allowed to fail, face discomfort, and feel supported, not rescued, through it.

In this episode of The Coping Podcast, Dr. Leigh Weisz sits down with Dr. Doug Bolton, Director of School Consultation at Formative Psychological Services, to talk about how to raise resilient kids without crushing them with achievement pressure. They explore the myth of elite colleges as success guarantees, how perfectionism can limit growth, and why distress tolerance is essential to mental health. Dr. Bolton also shares how parents can shift from outcome-based to process-focused support.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

“There’s no place quite as powerful as schools to make an impact on kids, especially those who struggle.”
“We’ve cultivated this idea that there’s one path to get through, one really good path.”
“It’s our relational health, not the college we went to, that leads to wellness.”
“The only way to learn how to deal with stress is to experience it.”
“Punishments and incentives work when kids are unmotivated, but it’s almost never an issue of motivation.”

Action Steps

Focus on process over outcomes with your child: Praising effort rather than results fosters intrinsic motivation and builds long-term resilience.
Allow your child to face discomfort: Experiencing manageable stress helps kids develop the coping skills they’ll need as independent adults.
Resist over-scheduling and over-structuring: Leaving room for unstructured time supports creativity, self-regulation, and mental well-being.
Watch for achievement-based self-worth: Helping kids separate their value from performance protects against perfectionism and anxiety.
Match expectations to developmental readiness: Understanding your child’s brain development prevents unnecessary shame and builds confidence at their own pace.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners.

Coping Partners is a mental health practice dedicated to helping children, adolescents, and adults manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems and much more in the Chicago suburbs.

Our practitioners are devoted to building on our clients’ strengths and bolstering weaknesses.

To gain insight and tools for getting unstuck check out our website at CopingPartners.com, email us at support@copingpartners.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:01

Welcome to The Coping Podcast, where we share strategies for coping with the stressors of life, especially the difficulties of parenting. And here is your host, Dr. Leigh Weisz.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 00:15

This is Dr. Leigh Weisz. I am the host of The Coping Podcast where I feature top experts on topics like raising healthy children, parenting, and so much more. Past guests include Dr. Eli Lebowitz, neuropsychologist Dr. Lisa Novak, nutritionist Lara Field, and many more. Just a quick disclaimer. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only.

This is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a client therapist relationship. The information provided is not a replacement for being assessed and evaluated by a licensed professional, and is not intended to replace mental health or medical advice. This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners. Coping Partners is a mental health practice in the Chicago suburbs dedicated to helping children, adolescents and adults. We help manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems, and much more.

Check out episodes of our podcast and our website at copingpartners.com and you can contact us with any questions you have. So before we dive into today’s topic, I first wanted to thank the whole Kach organization for introducing me to Dr. Bolton, who’s our guest for today. I was lucky enough to watch him present just a few weeks ago in Northbrook, and thought it was such an important topic to bring to our audience today. Dr. Bolton is a clinical psychologist, author of the book Untethered, and a passionate advocate for students facing emotional and behavioral challenges. since 1987.

Dr. Bolton has dedicated his career to supporting vulnerable youth. First as a school psychologist in therapeutic schools and later as the principal of North Shore Academy, a k through 12 public therapeutic school near Chicago. He now consults with school leaders across the country, helping them build resilient, mentally healthy communities through keynote talks, workshops and one on one coaching. His book, Untethered, weaves together decades of professional insight with his own personal journey through identity, burnout and purpose. It’s a powerful call to rethink how we support others and ourselves, and I’m thrilled to welcome him to the show.

I had the pleasure of watching him speak in person just a few weeks ago through again this wonderful organization through CATCH, which I hope you will also check out. And he spoke on a topic which I felt was really important, and I wanted him to continue to share his information with my audience as well. So today we will be addressing the pressures our kiddos feel and working toward getting into elite colleges. And we will debunk some commonly held myths. Okay, so thank you.

That was a long introduction. But thank you, Dr. Bolton, for being here.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 03:11

Lee, thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here. And it was so nice to to to be a part of the CATCH event as well a few weeks ago.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 03:19

It was really nice. So listening to you speak most recently, it was apparent immediately that you were meant to help kids and that you’ve done that both one on one and also in your work as a principal, can you share a little bit about how you got into this work?

Dr. Doug Bolton: 03:36

Yeah. You know, it’s it’s an interesting thing how our, our lives, when we look back at them, it looks like there’s a path. But I really didn’t see a path when I was graduating from college. And I can remember just happening to find a job, working at a summer program for kids with emotional behavioral problems. And within ten days of being there, I realized this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

And and so I worked there. I worked in as a teaching assistant at therapeutic schools and realized that I really wanted to get my PhD. And so I got my PhD and and did my internship at Children’s Memorial Hospital. Now Lurie’s hospital. And and what I realized is the kids I really wanted to help the most.

There’s only so much you can do in a 50 minute therapy session. And I realized that that there’s no place quite as powerful as schools to make an impact on on kids, especially who struggle socially and emotionally. But for all kids, we all respond to the communities we’re a part of. And so. So then I started working in therapeutic schools, and I was lucky enough to be the principal at North Shore Academy and loved that work.

And since then, I’ve been trying to help schools and parents and other organizations figure out how do we best support the kids, especially now in the as we continue to find ourselves in this childhood children’s mental health crisis?

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 05:11

Well, and that’s that’s exactly what I was going to ask about is, is kind of what have you observed lately in terms of this mental health crisis that you and of course, others are observing?

Dr. Doug Bolton: 05:23

Yeah. You know, being on the North Shore of Chicago, I think that I was really struck and it made intuitive sense. But I was struck when I learned that that kids in high achieving schools were named an at risk group for depression, anxiety, substance use. And I think that we had always thought that being in these high performing school districts with all of these resources was protective, but all of a sudden it was named a risk factor, along with things like poverty and discrimination and trauma. And and so as we began to look at that, one of the things that I began to realize was the kinds of pressure that we’re putting on our kids is there can be too much of a good thing at some level there can be.

And I think that so often in our efforts to support our kids development, we do things that undermine their development. And so I began to focus more on that, understand it, read more and more research about this, and became clear and clear to me that that so much of what we’re trying to do is undermining, not supporting their development.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 06:40

Right? Right. No. And I think, I think we there are some funny audience questions, you know, about, like, should we move to a bad suburb where there’s terrible schools? And I, you know, kind of chuckled thinking, yeah, good.

Question. Right. But it’s not the it’s not that it’s bad to have the resources and the supports in place, but but what do you think it is specifically about, you know, being in an affluent society, being in a good school district that causes, you know, or is highly correlated with these negative outcomes?

Dr. Doug Bolton: 07:10

Yeah. So the I think that that in many ways we’ve created these communities, these these ideas of scarcity and, and and also and I think that we’ve cultivated this idea that there’s one path to get through, one really good path to get through childhood. And we cultivate that for our kids. And so and, and I’ve, I was a part of that. I’ve got two kids who, you know, they’ve just graduated from college in the last couple of years.

But in the height of this, you know, we began to curate their lives very early on, Believing that achievement achieving in school, achieving in sports, achieving in all of these different areas is what will get them to be happy and healthy and successful as adults. And so, you know, for us, we started with Baby Einstein. That’s, you know, it was like 2001 and everybody, you know, so we’ve got to get their brains ready so we can get them into high achieving preschool and then get them into high achieving preschool. Then they’re going to do really well in elementary school, which allows them to get into the accelerated classes in middle school, which then allows them to take AP classes. And the more AP classes, the better, right?

And that will allow them to get to a into a highly selective school, because we know highly selective schools are better for our kids. And then and then they will be we will launch them into a life that is happy and successful. And and what I realized as I began to dive into the research is that all of this is just a house of cards, that that none of the research supports any of these assumptions. And yet we put a ton of pressure on ourselves and our kids to create these opportunities for them. We call them opportunities, but in so many ways they actually undermine their wellness.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 09:09

Yeah, yeah. No, it’s it’s so true. And you’re right, it kind of like starts so early before I think parents are even aware of what’s happening, partly because of how the community is almost set up. You know, whether it’s sports or dance or this or that, they’re really, you know, you’ve got to kind of pick a path and it’s it’s really hard to get out of that structure. But it’s true that kids end up feeling that pressure even even though parents I don’t think intentionally are, you know, fueling it.

And you’re right. There’s I mean, on Instagram, there’s these videos of of college aged kids, well, while almost college age kids with these bad parties. And so whatever, whatever college they get into, I mean, I think thousands of dollars are being spent on the gear and you see them like, whew, I got into whatever school. And I know that kids are exposed to that in middle school. Yeah.

So, you know, they’re already like, thinking, oh, I have to get into a good college, even though I think many adults would say it’s not going to matter. You’re going to be fine. You know, like most careers, this is not going to make or break you, you know. So you’re telling us that, of course. High achievement.

Right. Being being in an elite college is not actually what’s going to make your kids healthy and happy adults, tell us. Tell us more about how you know that.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 10:32

Well, well, the. As I began to dive into the research, it really surprised me because I had been filled with these assumptions as well. So there’s a a number of researchers out there who’ve taken a look at things like. How much how successful kids are following. Following graduation from an elite college versus a non-elite college.

And one of the things they did, for instance, was they took a look at kids who got into the elite colleges but weren’t unable to go for one reason or another and had to go to a local school, state school, whatever it may be for family circumstances. What they found is that there’s no difference in earning ten years after graduation. So this surprised me. There’s other research that took a look at at learning, in particular, because I assumed that if you go to a Harvard, you know, you’re going to learn more than if you or if you go to northwestern, you’re going to learn more than you do at northern. And what they found is that that that’s not true, that kids don’t learn more in highly selective schools.

What they did find is there’s one thing that does impact how much kids learn, and it’s how much they study. And so so that’s the variable. It’s it’s it’s not whether you go to an elite college that that drives your learning. And Malcolm Gladwell talks a lot about you know in he talks about how in some ways, if you go to Harvard, you know, and you you’ve always spent time in the top 5% of your class. There’s a Harvard psychologist, Shawn Achor, who in his freshman seminars, he will say, how does it feel for half of you now are in the lowest 50th percentile for the first time in your life?

How does that feel? And there’s more and more competition for, you know, internships. There’s more and more competition for being able to be assistant if you are a chemist. Missed. And what what Malcolm Gladwell talks about is that, you know, if you go to a state school, you’re much more likely to work with to get that internship.

You’re more likely to have a closer relationship with a professor who then helps you get into graduate school versus getting weeded out at Harvard. And then all of a sudden, I guess chemistry isn’t for me. If I had gone to the University of Maryland or, you know, you know, Southern Illinois, I would have been I’d be going to graduate school in chemistry.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 13:18

It’s fascinating.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 13:19

Yeah. And so so as I began to look at that research, I realized that that the thing that we’re that we we’ve got all these impressions that this is what’s right and what’s best for our kids. And that’s not true. But there’s also a way that in the that that society is gearing us more and more towards our feeling like we need this. So the US News and World Report’s You know, who doesn’t want to go to the best school in the country?

Right. And and the metrics on that are not geared towards what is a good student experience. You know, what is what is this experience that drives wellness. It’s how much money do they put into the dorm rooms. It’s how selective are you.

And so all of a sudden selectivity becomes the measure. And. Creating this scarcity that everybody feels like they’ve got to work toward. So I need to if I, if I don’t get the Act score I want, if I don’t get into an if I, if I don’t get fours and fives on my 5 or 6 AP classes, right, then all of a sudden my future is doomed. And and so we begin.

And as parents, we we can fall into that too, by focusing so much on their achievement and their grades and everything else.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 14:41

And what’s interesting is, you know, the part where you said how much you study actually does matter, which makes sense, right? Like, of course, you know, you could listen to a bazillion books on audible and you could actually teach yourself on YouTube, and you could you could go to college online. And, you know, the idea that that that actually matters or getting real work experience will matter. And make you more marketable and make you, you know, able to eventually figure out your career path. But, you know, not necessarily like the tier of school that you go to.

It’s interesting because I feel like in the North Shore especially, but all affluent, you know, communities, you know, people are really starting early, getting private college counselors, really trying to figure out what can I do to stand out, you know, for my child. And, and it’s and we try to say to kids, you know, take relax, you know, it’s going to be fine wherever you go to school, it’s going to be fine. But they don’t believe us always. So this is very helpful just to say no, there’s actually real data that says that where you go to school is not, you know, going to indicate your level of wealth, happiness really much post it sounds like post ten years. So maybe short term, but not not much after that.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 15:57

Right? Right. You know, it’s interesting the I had a a family coming into my office really worried about their daughter, who I think had always been kind of light and had an easygoing. And suddenly she was a junior and I think she was maybe first violin and, you know, captain of the lacrosse team and and what she was able to say is that all of a sudden the, the level of competition as you, as you seek these selective places ends up interfering with the thing that really does lead to wellness, which is our relationships with other people, our ability to be. You know that if you take a look, it’s our relational health, not how the college we went to, not how much money we make.

It’s it’s the quality of our relationships. And so what she was saying is all of a sudden I was competing against against my best friends for these places on these, you know, whether it be on the swim team or on the lacrosse team or my place in the on the class, you know, in terms of ranking in the class ranking. Yeah. And so and and she was miserable and she started to shut down and became an anxiety started to really paralyze her. And it’s because we we are focusing less on the things that lead to wellness and actually open our brains up for learning.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 17:31

Right.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 17:32

And the more we create these, this scarcity, The more we create. Communities of competition and competition can be good, but it can also become toxic if it takes away from the things that are most important to us.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 17:46

Right. Absolutely. Well, like if you encourage someone in high school to study with a friend, you know, and some will and it’s much more enjoyable and they’re connected and there’s, you know, the stress levels goes down. And like you said, others who are super, super cutthroat, competitive are going to isolate on purpose so that they don’t help the other student. And you can just see how that affects mental health, too.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 18:08

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 18:09

Yeah. I also think about, you know, how some kids are, you know, their brains are kind of wired for success in high school. You know, the way that the high schools are traditionally looking at student development and others are maybe not quite as ready in that way in terms of their executive functioning skills. Can you tell me a little bit or tell us a little bit about how our school systems are designed and how that’s not a one size fit all for everyone.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 18:41

I love the question. Thank you for for asking that. You know, our schools are really built for compliance and more than anything else, you know, it’s do we get to class on time? Do we have all of our materials? Do we can we sit still for 45 minutes and pay attention?

Can we make smooth transitions to the next class? Can we do this for six hours a day for 180 days a year? Can we follow directions on assignments so that when we come home, will we get all of our work done? And and so there, you know, to me, this is. It’s these are not indicators of what we need for a career.

It’s not an indicator of what we need, this this level of our ability to comply is really a brain. Does it does it fit our brains right? And if if we’ve got a brain that thinks in these ways logically and sequentially and is able to plan, things go pretty well, I’ve got I’ve got two kids with the same parents, and they couldn’t have looked more different in, in their growing up. And you know, one they they talk about these skills as executive functioning skills. You know, these skills that allow you to plan and organize, kind of like what an executive would do.

That’s I think that’s how they coined the term, what an executive would do to run a company. Can our brains kind of adapt to things that allow us to. It’s really about does it allow us to be compliant with the expectations of a highly structured world? I think that we see these skills as I think we over overplay the importance of these skills in life. Because what you’ll often find are people who are really good at organizing and planning often have a hard time being present in the moment, because I’m so worried about what’s coming up and I can’t talk to you, I can’t sit down and have a relaxed dinner because I’ve got to get to all these different things I’ve got to do.

And so there’s a it’s important to be able to be compliant and follow through. And it’s important also to be present and and enjoy each moment. And and unfortunately our schools are really built towards the former and, and really punish kids when they struggle with the latter. And, you know, one of the things that I think is interesting is these skills are developmental. And so I think that our schools, number one, have increased our what we’re the what they talk about the cognitive load on on kids.

So we’re I think we’re asking kids to do an eighth grade. What I was being asked to do as a junior and senior in high school, in terms of the kinds of of time and organization I need to put into all of the homework in terms of the elaborate projects. And this is all to push the envelope on rigor, right? But if if my brain’s not ready for that, that’s what we know, is that when stress comes from putting too much demands on people who don’t have the skills yet, and when I talk about not having the skills yet, I mean yet.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 22:03

Yet yet being an important word.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 22:05

Exactly. My daughter. Those skills came. I think she had her full prefrontal cortex and executive functioning skills. Where.

Right. Like she had them developed in the womb. Right. And my son, it took longer and it. And just like we we have we take a look at kids and and we can tell in eighth grader, you know, you’ve got an eighth grader who’s six foot tall and has facial hair growing or sprouting.

Right. And, you know, they’re walking. They’re walking down the hall with another kid they’ve been friends with for years who’s still two years away from puberty. Right. But what we would do is, you know, the same thing is true in our brains.

We just can’t see it. We say, oh, that, that the the other, the the, the second one just hasn’t hit their growth spurt yet.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 22:49

Right.

Dr. Doug Bolton: 22:50

But we don’t see inside the brain. So we just assume when kids aren’t organized in the way we want them to be, we think they’re lazy. We think that they’re unmotivated. We think that they’re oppositional. We think that they’re distracted.

And so we begin to punish them for that. We we’d never punish a kid for not growing facial hair.

Dr. Leigh Weisz: 23:10

Right? Right.

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