Is She Really Doing Well in School?

Have you ever been in a relationship with a narcissist? It begins with charm. At first, they seem to care, to adore you, to know exactly what’s best for you. They flood you with attention, promises, little tokens of affection, and you are swept up in the glow of belonging. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the performance fades. The warmth gives way to control, the affection to manipulation, the love to conditional approval.

Our schools operate in much the same way. The love bombing starts on day one. Parents dress their children in new clothes and backpacks, snapping first-day photos as though sending them off to the greatest adventure of their young lives. Schools play their part too: teachers stand at the doors giving high fives, principals pump music through the hallways, directors stage elaborate shows to make the first day sparkle. Soon after come the golden stars, the shiny stickers, the certificates of achievement. Parents are handed bumper stickers and license plate frames declaring their pride. Diplomas mark every passage, every step along the way. It all feels exciting, affirming, celebratory. It feels like love.

But once the glow wears off, the deeper reality comes into view. Schools, like narcissists, thrive on control. Children learn quickly that they cannot decide when to move, when to speak, when to eat, even when to use the bathroom. They discover that worth must be earned through external validation—grades, scores, the approval of teachers. They learn that individuality is risky, often punished or labeled “misbehavior.” Over time, like in any toxic relationship, children adapt. They mask their discomfort. They learn to comply. They perform, even when it costs them their authenticity.

And just like in toxic relationships, schools gaslight their captives. Children who say they feel bored, restless, or suffocated are told that school is “for their own good.” If they resist, the fault is theirs—lazy, disruptive, behind, or “not living up to their potential.” Parents who notice cracks are reassured with phrases like, “She’s thriving,” “He’ll adjust,” or “This is just how kids learn.” The system insists that the problem is not the system itself but the child’s inability to fit. In other words: don’t trust your own perception, trust ours. That’s classic gaslighting.

It works so well that even as adults, most of us defend it. Ask grown men and women about school, and many will recall anxiety, boredom, bullying, or humiliation. Yet in the same breath, they’ll insist that it was necessary, even good for them. That’s Stockholm syndrome: we cling to the very institution that confined and harmed us, rationalizing our suffering as something that “built character.”

I know this pattern firsthand. I was one of those girls who appeared to thrive. On the outside, I looked like a success story. Teachers praised me, my parents beamed with pride, and my friends thought I had it all together. But inside, I was absorbing a different education. I was learning that my worth depended on pleasing others. I was learning to silence my needs, to chase external approval, to perform rather than to simply be.

Years later, I found myself repeating the pattern. I married a narcissist. For ten years I lived in a marriage where I was emotionally abused, financially dependent, and cut off from my loved ones. The dynamic was devastating, but it also felt disturbingly familiar. It was the same script I had been rehearsing since childhood. School had taught me that if I complied, if I performed well enough, if I pleased the authority in the room, then I would be okay. It took a painful three-year separation and divorce to finally reclaim myself and recognize how deeply those lessons had shaped my life.

And the truth is, my story is not unique. The numbers tell us what too many girls are quietly living. In the United States, nearly 40 percent of teenage girls report symptoms of anxiety or depression linked to school, compared with just 5 percent of boys. Globally, girls experience anxiety at nearly twice the rate of boys, and in surveys, they consistently report feeling less capable of handling stress. During the pandemic, the numbers became almost unbearable: sixty percent of American teenage girls said they felt persistently sad or hopeless, and nearly a third said they had seriously considered suicide. In Australia, three out of four teenagers reported significant anxiety or depression by the age of eighteen, with girls much more likely to suffer prolonged symptoms.

Meanwhile, homeschooling has quietly grown. Today, more than 3.7 million students in the U.S.—about 6 to 7 percent of the K–12 population—are educated outside the system. And while I often see boys pulled first because they cannot mask their distress, the numbers nationally tell us that slightly more girls are homeschooled than boys. Both are struggling, but in different ways: boys tend to show their resistance openly, while girls continue to adapt, excel, and smile through the pressure, hiding the toll it takes.

But here is the uncomfortable question: what happens to the girls who adapt too well? What happens to the children who ace every test, charm every teacher, collect every gold star, and internalize the belief that worth is performance? Some, I fear, become the narcissists themselves. They go on to elite colleges, chasing prestige, excelling in environments that reward manipulation, charm, and performance. They climb into careers where success is measured by power and profit rather than authenticity or care. They become the executives who smile for the camera while exploiting workers, the CEOs who talk about “culture” while hollowing out communities, the leaders who “love bomb” their employees with perks and slogans while wringing them dry. In other words, the system doesn’t just create compliant victims. It also produces the next generation of narcissists, perpetuating itself at every level.

When parents say, “She’s doing great in school,” I hear something different. I hear a familiar mask, a familiar script. I want to ask them to pause, to look more closely. Is she thriving—or is she surviving? Is she whole, or is she learning to disappear into performance? And more urgently: what kind of adults are we raising when we normalize systems that operate on manipulation, gaslighting, and conditional worth?

Because children do not need to earn love. They do not need to perform for worth. They need spaces where they belong simply for being themselves. I know, because it took me decades to learn that lesson the hard way. And my hope is that the next generation of girls will not have to.

So when we say, “She’s doing fine in school”… we should ask ourselves honestly: is she really? Or is she rehearsing for a life inside yet another narcissist’s embrace?