I first noticed my eldest daughter’s bent toward perfectionism when she was not even a year old. She would crawl anywhere and loved pulling up on the kitchen stool, toothless smile on display, but wouldn’t try walking until she was sure she could do it. A week after her first steps, she was toddling all over the house.
As a lifelong perfectionist myself, I saw the pattern emerge in her again and again: when she wouldn’t read aloud until she was completely proficient, the many times she gave up on learning to ride a bike because she didn’t get it right away, and the activities she’d barely begun before saying, “I’m just not good at that.”
I questioned myself at first. I was a new mom, not yet confident in listening to my gut when it came to my kids. But my instinct was confirmed when I had my second child and especially my third: it was my eldest who was my mini-me. While that filled me with a sort of pride, I also dreaded watching her go through the same things I had when it came to a life of perfectionism.
My heart ached with the familiarity of it, making me both happy that I could understand her and sad that she would struggle with perfectionism as well. I wondered if I had somehow given it to her: a contagious disease I didn’t know I could spread.
My own perfectionism had started young, growing from ideas like needing to be “talented” at something to have the right to even try it. I still remember being tested for the Gifted and Talented program in elementary school. I completed puzzles on one side of a long table while two adults twice my size evaluated me from the other side. I didn’t know what they wanted from me. Though I did my best, I didn’t have fun.
Still, they had seen in me what they were looking for: a “gifted” child. I realized then that adults had high expectations of my success, and I didn’t want to let them down. Or worse, let anyone know I wasn’t as “gifted” as they thought.
I didn’t want my any of my children, especially my predisposed eldest, to feel the same watching eyes that I had felt ever since I entered that testing room. Even childhood memories of coloring with my mom at our coffee table, Florida sun streaming in through the windows, are shadowed with perfectionism: I was always devastated when she could color in the lines and I couldn’t.
So with my eldest daughter, I went on an anti-perfectionism campaign. I was determined to teach her that working hard was its own reward; that how she felt about her performance — and herself — were the most important indicators of a job well done.
I started emphasizing the work she had done instead of the result. I replaced, “Good job!” with “It looks like you worked hard on that! How do you feel about it?” I pointed out the colors and shapes in her scribblings rather than saying I liked it. I told her over and over that everything needs practice. No one is good at something the first time, and we’re not supposed to be.
I brought science and brain development into the conversations to make it less personal — to help her understand that it wasn’t a problem with her, it was the human condition. I taught her that brains have to make new pathways to learn something new and it was hard work. Part of why taking a break when she was struggling made it feel a bit easier the next time was because she gave her brain time to make those pathways. “That’s just the way brains work,” is still one of my favorite refrains.
I told her that age doesn’t have anything to do with ability, except that older people have had more time to practice. “You can be better than someone way older than you, if you’ve practiced something and they haven’t.” She proved me right by teaching herself chess when I still don’t know how to play (something she takes pride in pointing out).
When I first started this anti-perfectionism campaign, it was hard for me to praise my daughter at all because I was so conscious of not wanting her to look for outside validation. But soon I figured out how to dote on her by saying that her brain was amazing and could do anything she wanted it to. Praise without pressure.
I had become who I needed when I was younger. All the wording I repeated because I hoped it would become my daughter’s inner voice had started to change my inner voice as well. The support I strove to give to her, I found for myself in a therapist. Whenever I felt perfectionism creep in, I used the same phrases I’d crafted for her. I allowed myself to feel proud of my work and put it out into the world.
Her attitude slowly shifted alongside mine, although to be honest hers was faster to change. Along the way, she found a love for drawing. I was happily surprised (and inspired) when she didn’t get discouraged as she improved over several years. Now, at ten years old, she gets compliments all the time about her drawing skills.
Her response is always, “I practice every day. That’s why I’m so good!” And I couldn’t be prouder of not only her drawings, but of how much she’s grown — how much we’ve grown together. I still feel that weight of being watched sometimes, that shadow of perfectionism, but my inner voice has become my daughter, repeating my own words back to me.
More Stories from Parenting
Leave a Comment