Ohh man, I'm right there with you, misskitty. My whacko mother would get on my case so bad about my grades starting in like the first grade, and if I did badly on something, she'd scream at me that I'd never get into college and "not even Walmart will want you" if I didn't do better. Of course in her mind, any score below a 90 was a bad grade, and any score between 90 and 94 was always "why didn't you get a (higher grade)?" or "why didn't that bitch (the teacher) give you a better grade?"
Of course, she also would get super super mad at the teachers when they gave me lousy homework grades too because she did my homework for me, so getting a crummy homework score was an insult to her effort and intelligence, but hey if she was screaming at someone besides me, I was fine with it. But she was soooooooo weirdly obsessed with me getting good grades and going to college that my anxiety over homework carried over well into adulthood. I'm 35 and I still occasionally have nightmares about forgetting my homework. She felt that grades were the only thing that mattered. But she would also tell me all the time how stupid I was, so if I was stupid, I don't know why college mattered?
The funny thing is when I started doing my own homework so I didn't have to get screamed at for 4-5 hours every night because my mother couldn't understand the assignments, my grades improved. In spite of being told all my life how stupid I am, I was still smarter than my mother. Not that that's a big hurdle to overcome.
Man I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. If I could go back and do it again, I still have no idea what I'd do or be. I never had a dream job because I never dreamed about working.
But no, I definitely agree. Just let kids be kids. Have expectations, have boundaries, have rules, but they'll have their whole adult lives to be adults. Let them enjoy being kids for those precious handful of years. Grades are important too, but not end of the fucking world important.