Like many educators across the country, San Diego High School biology teacher Tonia Berman sees kids who don't get enough to eat at home, who brave neighborhood violence after school each afternoon—and increasingly, she sees students with what she calls the "Superchild syndrome."

These young people, from all economic and ethnic backgrounds, work so hard that they risk early burnout or worse. "We've heard all about the Supermom," she says, "the woman who tries to do everything perfectly," who pursues a high-pressure career, agonizes over the family's dinner menu, drills her kids with flash cards, rushes to charity events and so on. Parenting magazines are full of cautionary tales about how Supermoms (and Superdads, too) can crash and burn. "But what about the kids who are running on the same treadmill, sometimes even faster?" asks Berman.

Students in Berman's class have a few things to say about that.

"My day consists of going to school, coming home, eating, doing my homework (which usually takes up at least three and a half hours to complete) and then going to bed," says one 17-year-old. "I don't even really live for myself until Friday night, when I just sit and do nothing." Don't get this student wrong. He likes being challenged, but at such a young age, he audaciously thinks he deserves a life beyond work.

Another student says it's not just the A+ students who feel this way. "I sometimes feel de-motivated about all the things people tell me to do or things that I have to do," she says. "It's almost like curling up into a little ball because I don't wanna deal. It gets so overwhelmingly ridiculous sometimes. C'mon, reading 25 books in a year? I don't even remember the last book I read because I'm in such a rush to start the next one. I just tune them out. I'm all for work and everything, but when superintendents and principals shove it down my throat because of demographics or rating teacher/school/city/state/country performance, that's when I just kinda go, 'man, whatever.' And this is just from some unemployed, opposite-of-jock, B-average student."

Another young man writes: "I think my parents put unrealistic expectations on me, even though they try very hard not to. So do my teachers. It's not always very overt. I think one of the best examples is when I got an 88 percent on a calculus test. My teacher asked me gently whether I was all right. I've been used to scoring higher than that. The ironic thing is that I was not all right." He feels overwhelmed, even frightened, by the academic pressure.

One girl broke into tears in Berman's classroom because she didn't want to take her progress report home. The reason? She had an A- average instead of an A+ average. "Her parents are telling her she won't get into college with that GPA," says Berman.

More to it than grades
Often, there's more to the Superchild syndrome than simple worry about grades. In The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America's Children and What We Can Do About It (Addison-Wesley), Harvard professor Richard Weissbourd writes, "Media attention focuses on the extreme and flamboyant problems and ignores the quieter emotional problems that afflict large numbers of children." He adds, "Whether parents are chronically stressed or depressed are often more powerful influences on a child's fate than whether there are two parents in a home or whether a family is poor."

In fact, many overachieving kids come from troubled families; they begin to think they can make everything better—if only they work harder. They often assume too much responsibility for their fellow students' problems, as well.

One of Berman's students writes: "My parents got divorced a few years ago and took most of their anger towards each other out on me. I still get a lot of it. They are constantly bad-mouthing each other. Since I never complain about my life to my friends, they feel as if everything is fine with me and they come to me telling me their problems. I feel it's important to be a good friend, so I listen, but it's getting difficult."

Listen to another teenager's schedule: "Just as a partial list of some of the things I do: play tennis during season, hike, lead a community service club as president, take a community college course in how to work with people with disabilities, volunteer in the community, work as a child care helper at my place of worship, take six extremely advanced classes (for extra credit when I enter college), am a really good friend, counsel my peers because I would not turn a friend or other person down, etc." Over winter and spring breaks, she continues her volunteer work, and studies to get a head start on the next semester.

And that's only part of her list.

She prides herself on personal honesty, but cries inside when she sees other students, who cheat, do better on tests. "I am a very worryful person (is that a word?)," she writes. "I am the type of person that thinks about things a great deal." After a particularly stressful few weeks, she fell into a slump that scared her. What if she couldn't get back to her schedule? What then? "I considered suicide as an option. I didn't really care about myself and would rather hurt myself that my parents or friends. I suffered so they would not have to know what I was going through—my weaknesses, my failures, the hatred I felt at the world."

Could she turn to her parents? She felt she could not. "They pass right by who I am, looking only for what they want to see." She says that she might not be here today if not for people, like her biology teacher, who "reached out to me when I was too confused and stressed to reach out ... I know exactly what it feels like to try to be the Superchild that everyone wants you to be."

How parents, teachers and other adults can help How can parents and teachers know when they cross the line from appropriate expectations to unhealthy pressure? That's a tough question for another day. But just recognizing the amount of pressure kids are under is a good place to start. Beyond that, here's what Berman and three experts suggest.

• Do a fun-check. "Parents need to ask when did you they last see their child read a book that wasn't assigned reading, attend a movie or play that didn't earn them extra credit, or listen to a CD without doing homework simultaneously?" says Berman. Kids need time to know it's OK to kill time, to think without a defined purpose, to dream.
• Don't expect a Superchild to ask for help. "I was one of these kids," says Gregory Rideout, 28, a social worker and director of the San Diego-wide Youth-to-Youth Hotline. "I can tell you from my own experience, and from counseling so many kids like this, that they assume they can accomplish everything alone. They can't admit that they're not perfect."
• Assess family stress. "Look at the whole household before you single out the teen as the source of difficulty," advises Gerald Oster, a professor at the University of Maryland Medical School and author of Helping Your Depressed Teenager (Wiley). Is it a parent who's actually bringing undue stress home from work? "Once you've analyzed your own contribution to family stress, you can ask how much the teenager is contributing."
• Perfectionism and depression go hand in hand, says Michael Yapko, a Solana Beach psychologist and author of Hand-Me-Down Blues: How to Stop Depression from Spreading in Families (Golden). "So keep your eye out for signs of true depression." Is your teenager having trouble concentrating? Are there dramatic changes in their eating or sleeping habits? Are they avoiding friends, not talking on the phone as much, isolating themselves? "Superchildren typically become so overwhelmed that they don't think they have time for friends anymore. Kind of like workaholic parents," says Rideout.
• Study your teen's "explanatory style." That's Yapko's phrase for how people explain the events of their lives, particularly their failures and near misses. A Superchild, he says, "will unrealistically attribute anything less than perfection to what they perceive as their own internal shortcomings, rather than to external forces or events over which they have no control."
• Assess the current school experience. "Young people are particularly stressed during the spring, because of year-end papers, advanced placement exams, and pressure to apply for college admission," according to Rideout. "A teacher who has had your kid in class for more than a year knows what he or she is capable of, and can help you adjust any unrealistic expectations."
• Set aside frequent times to talk with your teenager. That's easier said than done; typically, Superkids are also never at home—they're at ball practice, at work, at a school event—so parents don't catch them often. Oster suggests agreeing on a regular time, a weekly dinner or family meeting to ventilate family issues. Brainstorm, don't criticize, he says. Ask, don't advise. Or at least try not to.
• Try indirect communication. "Go where there's no phone, no distractions," suggests Oster. Go for a walk together; the physical movement and avoidance of eye contact can loosen things up. Rideout adds, "Take your kid for a car ride and listen to the music they like, and talk to talk with them about the music. Discuss something they've watched on TV. Before you know it, you'll have a conversation going. The nice thing about doing this in the car is that they can't leave."
• Help your teenager devise a realistic goal-setting strategy. "Sit down with your kid and make a list of goals," advises Yapko. "Next to each goal, write down each thing that must happen, in order for that goal to be realized. Then ask the child to assess how much control they really have over the outcome of each of these variables. For instance, if they're applying for a job, they have nearly 100 percent control of whether they show up for the interview on time, but they have zero control of whether they remind the interviewer of Billy Ray Bob, their least favorite cousin, or whether the job opening still exists." Perfectionists of every age, he says, have trouble accepting that they can't control every variable.
• Avoid preaching about motivation. "I advise parents to quit saying things like, 'If you really wanted to solve that problem, you would have solved it,'" says Yapko. That's code for: You can do it all; you can have everything. Today, we're supposed to believe that we can cure ourselves of cancer, become wealthy, and have washboard abs, if only we're properly motivated. Motivation is important, but no amount of motivation is gong to compensate for a lack of ability— and no one is good at everything.
• If better communication fails, seek professional help. Sometimes even perfect parents can't do it alone.