'A' standard students set the benchmark, average students feel the stress. I personally feel this is true to some extent. A lot of times when students do not score well in assessments, parents will reprimand or think their kids did not put in much effort. It used to be a norm for parents to compare their kids' results with one another in the past (in my case, my cousins). One parent will go like 'my child scored 79 for maths' and the other parent will go like 'oh, my child scored 95 for maths'. Thereafter, the first parent would expect his/her child to score above 90 for subsequent math tests. Failure to obtain that score, disappointment sets in and negative emotion will be experienced by the child.

Such negative emotion would tend to have a negative impact on their development, especially so when they think that they have put in so much effort to score well yet not rewarded. Expectations from parents do contribute to their child's stress level besides the benchmark set by academically competent students. While parents may see the problem as the child spending too much time on computer games and watching TV programmes at the expense of their study time, the child may attribute their poor performance to the high standard set by parents as well as the benchmark set by the high academic achievers.

Relating this to the Fundamental Attribution Theory, it states that the self tend to view the cause of failures to be attributed by situational factors rather than dispositional factors. In this case, parents' point of view tend to attribute the cause of failure to the child's dispositional factors. They would tend to think that the child did not put in more time and effort in their study or that they played too much games, spent too much time on the internet. To the extreme of having the perception that their child is not smart enough.

The consequential effect of prolong negative affect experienced by the child overtime would only caused him/her to develop emotional disorders such as excessive worry, fear and sadness, especially so when they continue to face external pressure to have better performance academically.

Relating this issue with the recent article on More troubled kids turning to IMH reported over The Sunday Times (16 March 08), it mentioned:

"These experts were concerned that, besides the higher stress faced by young people today, there seemed to be a greater lack of parent-child interaction.

Longer hours in school and at work meant that family members were spending less time together.

During interactions, parents inevitably asked about schoolwork and test scores rather than about their children's well-being,... "

She has noticed a trend of children equating their self-worth with how far they had met their parents' expectations.

Today's children also have another thing vying for their attention: the Internet.

Ms Jessica Leong, a counsellor in private practice, said that more parents had problems getting their children to bed as their kids stayed online till early in the morning."

In this instance, parents' high expectations potentially pose great pressure on their child regardless whether the latter is able to cope. The hope for better results could be for a good cause in wanting their child to get into a better school. However, they neglected the fact that the child faces pressure from school too.

On the other hand, the child's failure to meet parents' expectation could stem from their short attention span on school books, especially so when they are so 'addicted' to the use of Internet. In this case, the child should see that the cause for his/her poor performance is attributed to dispositional factors rather than situational as they have failed to prioritized their goals.