Perfectionism among children and teenagers seems to be on the rise and it’s no wonder – the pressure for them to be perfect seems to permeate every aspect of their young lives. Whether it’s gaining a string of A*s or 9s, making the 1st XI or the A team (and looking good doing it), winning that music scholarship or posting great Instagram content while constantly being in the right place on Snap Maps, the pressure can feel ubiquitous and unrelenting. It’s exhausting, stress-inducing and can affect their mental health.
It’s worth clarifying that a perfectionist tendency doesn’t have to be a problem if it inspires healthy striving for self-satisfying excellence through hard work, improvement and learning. It becomes a problem when our children are trying to live up to unreasonable expectations, accompanied by a fear of criticism, making mistakes and failing – and an anxiety that they are not enough just as they are.
We’d like our children to set healthy high standards for themselves rather than to feel constrained by the expectations of others and the need to live up to social pressure, or to worry deeply about making mistakes. As Tom Nehmy of puts it: ‘We need to teach our [children] the distinction between a healthy striving to achieve and an unhealthy perfectionism, which is usually a self-imposed pursuit of unrealistic high standards.’ Being overly self-critical or worrying that trying hard will shatter the perception of who they are can stop children from taking risks and being creative, and get in the way of reaching their potential. To grow, learn and be their best authentic selves, they need to attempt lots of new things, get messy and feel comfortable making mistakes.
The good news is that we can help our children develop the skills they need to become the most courageous, confident and authentic versions of themselves. For those with overly perfectionist tendencies, we can help them shift their mindset. Instead of focusing on and worrying about meeting unrealistic expectations and outcomes, we can help them learn to relish the process and enjoy the journey. They can still have high standards but they can learn to accept and embrace failure and recognise that improvement comes from struggle. Perhaps most importantly, with our support and unconditional love their self-esteem will grow and they will have the self-compassion to tell themselves that they are enough just as they are: brave and resilient but not perfect.
Five ways we can help our children to believe in themselves and embrace the struggle
1.
Be an Emotion Coach. One of the most important gifts we can give our children is self-awareness – helping them, with empathy, to become aware of what they are thinking and how they’re feeling. It’s their thoughts and feelings that drive their behaviour. Their fear of not getting it right, of making mistakes or not living up to expectations can be the barrier to stepping outside their comfort zone and become a cause of stress and anxiety.
Our job is to help our children recognise and to unburden themselves of their fears, worries and doubts and to learn that all feelings are OK. It might sound like this:
- ‘I understand. It can be really embarrassing when you think that everyone is watching you.’
- ‘Even though it’s how we learn, making mistakes or not knowing the answer can feel awful.’
- ‘I’m wondering whether you don’t want to try because you think you might fail. That’s a tough feeling. I get that.’
- ‘The fact that it didn’t turn out precisely as you’d hoped can be so frustrating.’
We can’t fix or make things better – that’s not our job – but we can empathise, understand and support them. Research confirms that naming and sharing emotions helps lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in our system. When we empathise without judgment, criticism or trying to sort the problem, we create a safe place for our children to share and work through their thoughts. When they are aware of their feelings, they can then learn to respond in a healthy and constructive way.
2.
Change the soundtrack. The habit of negative and critical self-talk can fuel and reinforce perfectionist tendencies. We can help our kids understand that we all have a running commentary in our heads and even though it can be loud, forceful and compelling, we need to work hard to make this talk positive and kind. The inner voice is there to protect us, but it can also overreact and make us jump to conclusions, set unrealistic standards, blow things out of proportion and get in the way of being capable, brave and compassionate.
We can help them adjust their internal soundtrack by noticing and pointing out when our children get things right, such as:
- ‘That was very brave of you to give it a try. It can feel frustrating when we are learning something new.’
- ‘Even though you didn’t think that the work was quite right, you realised that you have done enough and that’s a huge improvement.’
- ‘You weren’t sure about what you were wearing but you went anyway. That takes courage.’
- ‘That is very honest to say that you are worried about making mistakes.’
This positive descriptive acknowledgement reinforces for them that they are capable, brave, kind and that they have strength. We want to avoid evaluative praise such as ‘clever’, ‘genius’ or ‘perfect’ – it’s often not credible and our children don’t believe it. As their self-esteem builds with our factual, effective and credible praise, they’ll be more comfortable operating outside that comfort zone, taking risks, being flexible and bouncing back from mistakes.
3.
Help them develop a growth mindset. We’d like our kids to value the struggle and feel worthy just as they are, rather than being perfect. We can help them focus on the attitude, the effort and the striving to do their best rather than focusing on the achievement or outcome or indeed the performance of others. This is a healthy growth-mindset approach as developed by Carol Dweck of Stanford University and something we can teach our kids at any age.
In a growth mindset, you believe that your most basic talents and abilities can be developed through focus and hard work. As Dweck explains, this view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Her found that perfectionism is associated with a fixed mindset, where you believe that your basic abilities are unchangeable, which can hold us back from reaching our potential. A fear of failing and not being right, or thinking that working hard is inconsistent with innate talent, can all get in the way.
We can positively and proactively reinforce growth-mindset skills by acknowledging the struggle and descriptively praising our children for the effort, attitude and hard work they put in. As Carol Dweck points out, we can teach our kids that whenever they step outside their comfort zone and work on something hard or learn something new, their brain forms new neural connections and over time they will get smarter.
Our commentary might sound like this:
- 'That was a struggle! What an effort you put in. You will have learned so much.’
- ‘You kept going even though that was hard and you didn’t get it right at first.’
- ‘When you got stuck you asked for help and you found another way to do it. That shows perseverance.’
- ‘You set that sensible goal and you worked hard to reach it. You should be proud of yourself!’
- ‘You are working hard, so be kind to yourself.’
Over time, this soundtrack becomes their own.
4.
Make your family a shame-free zone. Research underscores the role that parents play in how kids perceive struggle, mistakes and failure. We can unwittingly pile on the pressure when we are overly invested in our kids’ achievements. The way we react to their mistakes and disappointments can contribute to how they feel about them. Rather than ‘What mark did you get? And what did everyone else get?’, ‘I can’t believe your team lost’ or ‘It can’t have been that hard’, we can try:
- ‘How did you feel it went?’
- ‘That was a tough result. What do you think you learned?’
- ‘What a struggle you had, you really persevered!’
Children take on our values when they see them in action. When we model using mistakes as a learning opportunity and show vulnerability and openness while focusing on things that we can control, our kids absorb these qualities. We walk the talk by showing our children that what we put in is more important than the outcome. Approaching challenges positively one step at a time is a life skill that has not only helped us in this tumultuous year but one which builds confidence and helps us feel competent – all of which build self-esteem.
We can talk about our failures and frustrations but also about how we coped, focusing on the positive: there is always a silver lining. Importantly, we want to show how we move on and don’t revisit or dwell on the mistake. We can teach our kids that they are not defined by their mistakes but rather what they learn and how they move forward. Making mistakes gets us closer to getting things right!
5.
Dispel the myth of effortless perfection. Our children are increasingly influenced by the relentless bombardment of images and messages of perceived perfectionism in all aspects of their lives – and especially through social media. Whether hidden or overt, the message is often that accomplishment is effortless: the perfect look, the perfect family, perfect friends, perfect academic performance and so on. We want to dispel this and get the conversation going that these are impossible ideals.
Carol Dweck asks first-year students in her Stanford seminar to write a paper on a person they admire. She does this to reinforce for them the effort, sacrifice, long-term perseverance and struggles that are normally the precursor to success – and to bust the myth of effortless perfection that is so prevalent in our culture.
Finally, recent research published by the American Psychological Association shows that the drive for perfection among college students has increased significantly (as much as 33 per cent) compared with previous generations – and that it may be taking a toll on their mental health.
By helping our children to develop an awareness and a healthy mindset around their own self-worth and endeavour, we have an important role to play. We want our children to reach for high standards but we want them to do so believing that they are worthy, competent and doing things for themselves. They should not define themselves by their success but rather how they travel along the road, struggling and striving and all the while knowing that they are loved and accepted for who they are: brave, compassionate and wonderfully imperfect.