“Don’t aim for perfection. Aim for ‘better than yesterday’.”
― Izey Victoria Odiase

As parents and teachers, you want your child to achieve whatever he sets out to do, but for some perfectionistic kids, this can come at a cost.

Imagine you sit down to write a paper for class. You know you’re a good writer, in fact, you have been identified as gifted in writing. You write your first paragraph. It’s not good enough, so you delete it. You do this five more times. You walk away. It’s not going to be good enough, you think, so why try? If this sounds like your own child or a child in your class, I want to give you ten tips on how to help them.

In a society where failure is frowned upon, perfectionistic teens have debilitating and anxiety-filled tendencies. It’s easier for perfectionists to not even attempt the task because then they will be 100% sure that they won’t fail.

Hear it from the teens themselves:

Hearing from my past students may help you understand perfectionism from their point of view. Thank you Riley for sharing your “This I Believe” video about perfectionism.

Thank you, K.D., for sharing what it’s like for you to live with perfectionism.

We tend to think it would be great to have kids or students with perfectionism. Who doesn’t want someone who strives to do their best 100% of the time? Unfortunately, this isn’t a healthy state for kids to be in. It can lead to clinical issues such as depression, low self-esteem, and anxiety. It can be self-imposed perfectionism, other-oriented (such as parents), and socially prescribed (as in social media).

Do you wonder if your child is a perfectionist? Since everyone loves a quiz about themselves, here is a quick one that you or your child can take online:

https://www.verywellmind.com/quiz-are-you-a-perfectionist-4006910?quizResult=6d80b3fa

What? The results came out that your child is a perfectionist? Here are ten tips that you can do to help your child or student in class. Many of these came out of my Gifted and Talented Parent Group that I facilitate at my school each week.

Ten Tips:

1. What is the worst that is going to happen? If your child is starting to stress about the outcome of an activity or project, take the time to ask them, “What is the worst that is going to happen?” Then ask them, “What is the best thing that can happen?” Help them see that their fear of failure can actually lead to success in the long run. A week or so later, ask them what actually did happen. Rarely will their worst fears have come true.

2. Trust that the failure won’t hurt them. It’s only natural for a parent to want to jump in to help your child when they are struggling. However, this can drive your child to feel insecure in their own abilities. You need to trust that the failure won’t hurt them. As one of my GT parents said, “Helping a kid…isn’t to help a kid feel better.” If a parent feels more relaxed about the failure, then the child will feel more relaxed as well.

3. Share the failures of your own life. Obviously, this statement doesn’t fit for kids of all ages, but if you have a teenager or you teach one, share some of your own struggles in life. They need to see that everyone struggles and fails at times in life, and then share what you have learned from your failure. As a public speaking teacher, I share stories with my students about my struggles of presenting to big groups. I feel like I basically bombed a presentation once, but I definitely learned a lot from it. It’s important for them to hear that everyone struggles in life at times.

4. Change the way you teach at times. As a teacher, remember that you don’t always have to do something the way you learned how to do it as a student. Let kids struggle. Let them show YOU how they achieved the answer, instead of the other way around. Let them tell you how they would change the unit you just completed in class in order to make it better. Let them see that it might not have been “perfect” the first time you taught it.

5. What did you learn from this? Kids need to see that things won’t always be perfect. No one can give 100% to everything 100% of the time. This one will be your most difficult tip. Encourage your child to be late to school one day. Encourage them to miss a problem on purpose. Encourage them to say a wrong answer out loud. They need to learn that the world didn’t end because something didn’t go perfectly as expected. Trust me, this will not be easy for them.

6. It’s not a big deal. Never. Say. This. Period. By telling your perfectionistic child that their fear of not completing something perfectly “isn’t a big deal,” you are diminishing their feelings. If they come to you about their fears, you are better off by asking them questions. Take an unbiased stance and just listen to them. If they see you react, you will have a teen retreating back to their bedroom. This isn’t the time to tell them to go bed and just not finish their work; you will have a teen who doesn’t sleep that night. Working on their perfectionistic tendencies needs to happen at other times when they are not stressed. Remember that you need to give them the tools ahead of time, instead of just when they are feeling anxiety.

7. Be their role model. Kids take after their role models. They’re watching you stay up until all hours to get that one project finished for your own job. They’re watching what you do when you mess up that recipe while cooking. Let them see you relax and having some fun. Let them see you put down that phone even though there are ten texts waiting for you as you’re talking to them. Share with them the PROCESS of how you achieved something successful. Don’t just share the success.

8. Loosen up your standards. We’ve talked a lot about self-imposing perfectionism, but it can also be imposed from others. As parents and teachers, are your expectations realistic for each child? That doesn’t mean you have to let your child fail academically; you need to have realistic standards.

Sometimes you may need to look at your standards for your child’s social-emotional success as well. If your child doesn’t want to go to a school dance, and you can’t understand why since you LOVED school dances in school, you might need to look at it from their point of view. Are you causing them more anxiety by expecting them to live up to your standards of what a “perfect teen life” should look like? Yes, it’s important for them to socialize with other teens, but does that mean that they need a huge group of friends who go out each weekend? Let them know it’s okay to have just a few close friends.

9. Set a realistic schedule. Teach your kids how to break down a schedule in order to overcome procrastination. Show them how you break down big tasks as an adult. Hang a big wall calendar in their room, if they don’t use a Google calendar, and have them write out what they are going to accomplish each day. On the flip side, perfectionists also tend to overdo their own schedule. They don’t want to let people down, so they compensate by adding too much to their schedule in and out of school. Instead of prioritizing the important aspects of their life, they devote their energy by doing too much. Show them that everyone needs some down time to relax.

10. Celebrate the process and their strengths. One thing I have learned as a teacher is to celebrate the process and the effort that students put into their work, instead of the final grade. Point out the risks that they have taken, instead of just saying, “good job.” For gifted students, many things they do will come easily. When they start taking classes that are more of a challenge, their perfectionistic ways start to rear their ugly heads. They don’t know how to handle not doing something well the first time, so they choose not to try in the first place. If you notice your child starts to not do well in class because he isn’t trying, you might want to think about whether his perfectionism is getting in the way.

Perfectionism isn’t always a bad trait to have. These kids tend to be organized and like to please others. As teachers, we tend to enjoy having perfectionists in our class. Their projects are well-done and they tend to go over and above just to get the A as a grade. They are usually on time to class and are the first ones to raise their hand to answer a question. What we don’t see as teachers is the inner struggle of these kids. We don’t see them fighting with their parents because it’s 2 am and their project isn’t perfect yet. We don’t see them crying because they made a mistake on their math paper, and instead of erasing the mistake, they have to start all over.

This isn’t an easy problem to just “fix.” It’s going to take time to unwind these learned thoughts and behaviors. If you notice your child is suddenly struggling with depression, anxiety, seems more withdrawn than usual, and/or starts to not care about school, then you should definitely look into getting some help for your child. Professionals can give your child the right tools to deal with their thoughts of perfectionism in order to become healthy adults.

*This blog post is dedicated to Rong who encouraged me to start writing about the issues we talk about in our GT Parent Group. He even created flashcards about how to help your child with perfectionism. https://quizlet.com/465237751/helping-kids-with-perfectionism-12112019-flash-cards/