But, with competition to get into colleges stiffer than ever, a new generation of students is feeling inordinate pressure to achieve. Students in the Top 10 still graduate with 6.0 GPAs while juggling chorus and tennis. A national PTA poll conducted with PBS last year found that 54 percent of parents with kids ages 2 to 5 had anxiety about their children's academic performance. Some 90 percent believed they needed to start pushing kids early to achieve academic success.

Debate over the well-rounded kid is nothing new. In 1981, psychologist David Elkind wrote his best-seller The Hurried Child (Da Capo Lifelong Books, $16.95), arguing that we were over-programming our kids and turning them into neurotic perfectionists. The problem is, some experts believe, we're having the same debate more than 25 years later.

Just last year, Elkind published Power of Play (Da Capo Lifelong Books, $24), again admonishing us for rushing our children into adulthood. WHEN TO SAY "NO"

Everybody has different degrees of stress tolerance, says Jon Shaw, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Miami. A key job for parents is to recognize how much is too much for their kids -- and when to say no.

At the same time, that doesn't mean parents should stop making demands.

"There are going to be parents who demand violin lessons twice a week and most kids don't want to do it, but there are a lot of violin players out there who took lessons twice a week, " Shaw says. "So, moderation in all things. You don't want kids to have absolute free reign, but the other extreme is just filling up the schedule."

INTERNAL DRIVE

With some kids, the drive to succeed is largely internal. Carrington Bester, who graduated 14th in his class at Carol City High with a 4.4 GPA this year, was taken from his drug-addicted mother at the age of 1 and placed in foster care. His younger brother and sister soon followed and for the next eight years they lived in a foster home in Homestead, where he struggled to negotiate school and a house filled with a rotating roster of children.

When the three siblings returned to their mother's home in Little Haiti, Bester's mother had to work two jobs to support the family. Carrington, then 9, took over the cooking and laundry. Still, he managed to overcome the odds. He credits the support of several teachers and his recovered mother, who used to call him "little president." But his own will to succeed can't be dismissed.

Carrington will attend the University of Florida in the fall to study political science. He hopes to go on to law school. An accomplished public speaker, Carrington has this advice for today's parents: Keep telling kids they can do whatever they set their mind to, but if they fall short then tell them it's OK. Let them know you will always support them.

STRESS LEVELS

Miami Lakes parent Dan Franquiz sees how kids respond to stress differently in his own children -- Lauren, 14, and Ryan, 11. His son, Franquiz says, responds to tough drills; Lauren does better without pressure.

"Ryan eats it up, " says Franquiz, who coaches his son's baseball team. "Whenever he gets a little lazy, I say, 'You're not a natural-born homerun hitter. Don't think you're some wonder kid. You've got to put in the time and that's why you get results.' "

His daughter, he explains, is more self-motivated and tends to do things well at her own pace.