This is a spinoff from an article I’ve been talking about by William Doherty, of the University of Minnesota, with the provocative title See How They Run. His theme is that “… for many kids, childhood is becoming a rat race of hyperscheduling, overbusyness, and loss of family time.”

In his article he uses an image that has become important to me in my private practice: He says that parents fear that their children will “be left behind when the achievement train leaves the station.”

I have the privilege of working with a good many twenty-something ex-kids. Some are already done with college and looking at grad school; some are thinking about trying out a community college after a disastrous high school experience. Some are desperately hoping for their first serious relationship, some are married and beginning to imagine having children. Some are still living with their parents while they struggle with “What will I be when I grow up?"; others are five years into a career and wondering if it was the right choice. You get the idea: the most varied of situations.

For a frightening portion of this generation, I’m hearing the same fear, one I’ve come to reflect in a train image. When I present it to my 20-something clients, it seems to resonate for them. I say to them, it’s like you’re telling me:

There’s a train and everyone else is on it, and I’m not. Or maybe I’m on it, but it’s the wrong train and everyone else is at the right station and I’m not. Or maybe it’s the right station, but everyone else got here first and I’m the one who’s behind. ”

Worse than that, as I listen, is my sense that they’re saying

There’s only one train, only one track, only one schedule, only one set of stops, and I don’t even know where the station is, or what the stops are, or when I’m supposed to be there, but I know I’m behind.”

The train image helps, I think, because it lets them giggle a bit at their fear, and start to look at it. Because underneath, they know there are many trains, many stations, many routes to the same destination, many good destinations, and no fixed schedules. The train they thought they missed is what’s missing – it doesn’t exist and never did. And if that’s so, who’s to say I’m behind? If everyone thinks they’re behind, but no one even has a schedule, who’s feeding us this fear? And anyhow, I am on a train, and there’ve been some educational stops, and some decent scenery; maybe I just need to keep riding a while.

But if I’m reading this fear correctly, what are “we” doing to them? To their career choices? To their sense of freedom to develop a life that works for them?