Written by Dr Kaylene Henderson (First featured on the Storypark blog)
There’s a perception in our society that perfectionism is a good thing, akin to ‘being perfect’; That it’s something to strive for or to drop into conversation in job interviews… Yet the reality is quite different. Perfectionism leads people to place unreasonably and often unrealistically high expectations on themselves, which, when inevitably unmet, leads to frustration and self-blame.
Of course, this can be very unsettling to witness in young children and it can be hard for parents and educators to know how best to help. Perhaps you have a young child who refuses to draw because their drawings don’t look exactly like those of an adult artist. Or maybe you work with a child who has become distressed by a small mistake in their school work and who has insisted on starting the whole project again (while the rest of the class moves on…)
Of course the earlier we can help children change unhealthy habits, the better. So let’s look at a few tips for how we might address this in young children.
Firstly, be mindful of how you use praise. There are two ways in which we tend to praise children. ‘Content’ praise often draws attention to the end product, for example, “What a beautiful picture”, or, “That’s a fantastic block tower”. In contrast, process praise focuses on how the child got there. When we use process praise, we draw attention to their good ideas, problem solving approaches, effort, persistence, concentration and enthusiasm. While it’s helpful for all children to experience more process praise than content praise, this is particularly true for children with perfectionistic traits. This allows us to draw the focus away from how impressive the end result might (or should) be and instead highlight the importance of having a go and learning along the way.
For example, rather than saying, ‘That’s a fantastic drawing of a bus! You’re an amazing artist – what were you worried about?’, it might be more helpful to say something like, ‘It’s great to see you having a go at drawing. I love watching you try new things’. Of course, most of the time we needn’t praise children at all. Saying simply, ‘Drawing is fun isn’t it?’ is often enough to provide children with that important sense of connection.
Secondly, model making mistakes. Our abilities as adults generally exceed those of our children. Children may see us as perfect and strive to be the same. It’s helpful for little ones to see that we mistakes too, and importantly to also learn through our modelling how mistakes can be handled.
Look for (or create!) opportunities to do this. When you’ve been asked to bring over the pencils to the table, you could bring the scissors instead and say, ‘Oops, my mistake. Not to worry. I’ll just go back and swap these over.’ Or, perhaps you could draw alongside your child and deliberately keep from drawing inside the lines, commenting as you go, ‘I love drawing with you’. By doing so, you model for your child that mistakes are okay, that they needn’t hamper your enjoyment of a task and importantly, that the end result isn’t all that matters.
Thirdly, consider how you react when your child behaves in an ‘imperfect’ way. Do you respond calmly when your little one accidentally spills cereal all over the breakfast table or do you tend to overreact? It’s important when we’re teaching our children that they needn’t be perfect, that our responses back this up. By accepting our children as they are – wonderful, ‘good enough’ young learners – we teach them to do the same.
And that’s so much better than perfect.
