[noneeeed]

To me, this issue is one of the biggies. I understand where that feeling comes from, we are constantly told that everything is a competition or a race.

My wife and my sister are both teachers (languages and physics respectively), and they often encounter parents like that, who insist that their kid can do no wrong, or cannot be allowed to fail (or that any failure is someone elses fault), and it breaks the kids. Some of the kids understand what's going on and do well in spite of their parents, but others become convinced that either they don't have to take responsibility for anything, or insist on doing courses they are simply not going to do well in (like if you have solid Ds in Maths and the sciences, don't insist on doing A-level Physics, and no you are not going to medical school).

My wife's school had a family where all the kids were hard-working, conciencious and all-round lovely, but everyone dreaded dealing with the parents. Any time a kid got a bad mark in anything they would be on the phone demanding an explanation. The kids were always fine about it and knew when they had not worked on something. They sounded permentantly embarressed by their parents.