Q: What can I do to help my daughter? She was always an extremely intense but happy, confident child until she hit eighth grade. Then she started questioning herself and moving away from school activities. She had always been a leader, but she couldn't seem to navigate the "cool" persona of middle school and befriended a group of girls who didn't feel very good about themselves. She had opportunities to participate in dramatic performances but seemed "ashamed" of not being offered the lead role, so she declined.

Now she's 17 years old and has huge regrets for not being involved in school life. She tells me it's too late for her to get high marks in high school, so she's given up. She can probably still get into a university, but she tearfully says she should have been able to get a scholarship. I tell her to keep moving toward things she likes, but she says it's too late to really do something interesting. She doesn't socialize much. She's very close to me, which makes me uncomfortable, as I think she should be feeling more strongly connected to friends her age. She's also close and loving with her sister who is 6 years younger. She has strange ideas at times about hygiene and goes for a week or more without showering or washing her hair. She's very tall and gains about 30 pounds every winter and can't fit into her clothes, so she walks around in dirty sweatpants. When she puts effort into school, she gets high grades. When she puts effort into her appearance, she looks beautiful. When she puts effort into music, teachers remark that she has a beautiful way of interpreting pieces. She can walk into an art gallery and come home and reproduce a painting almost identical to the one she saw in the gallery.

She spends endless hours "getting organized" without getting down to real studying. I feel like she's slipping away. My sister and mother were like this, but I was always really passionate about my career and found it easy to motivate myself. I loved studying and being part of teams, so I don't know how to support someone who gets really excited about things for about a month and then drops them.

What can I do as a mother? I have told her I'll support her in whatever she wants to pursue from chef school, to fine arts, to travel, to working in a factory for a year. I spend a lot of time with her, but she still has this melancholy idea that we don't spend enough time together. I want to scream that nobody I know spends as much time with her daughter as I do. I'm really worried that she's going to keep piling on regrets.

A: You've described your daughter in a way that clearly suggests that she has too high of expectations for herself and feels paralyzed because she can't meet them. You described yourself as being passionate and driven by your own interests as a young person, and no doubt she's heard your descriptions. While you may never have stated specifically that your expectations for her are high, your childhood seems like a model for her, but one she doesn't feel competent to achieve. She may even feel depressed.

Please be sure not to suggest that she search for her passions. That seems to be fashionable now, but passions set extremely high expectations. Also, they are interpreted by young people as easy to meet. When work becomes difficult, adolescents lose enthusiasm and assume they must search for a different passion. Finding interests is more likely to help, and if you can explain that to be a gradual process, your daughter may find more hope. Most students are not certain of their majors or careers when they first attend college. They do a lot of exploring and changing. Your reassuring your daughter that searching and lacking confidence are normal parts of adolescence can hopefully release her from the pressure she feels. It is far from too late for anything, but she has some exploring and confidence-building ahead. She may also benefit from working with a counselor if she seems to be becoming sad. Achievers set moderate, realistic expectations. Underachievers set their expectations either too high or too low. In her case, she is doing both by both giving up and assuming she must be a lead in a play to participate. If she can keep busy engaging in interests, she is more likely to gradually build confidence.

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Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or [email protected]. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.