January 2008

The perfect child

Real life in the real world is a messy business. Real life often surprises us, when one thing is expected but another thing happens. The most important skill for living successfully in an imperfect world is the ability to make mistakes, and to make them well.

Marcus makes straight A’s in school, yet he often procrastinates on starting his assignments and then works until late at night to complete them on time. Angelina loves her friends dearly, and she always lets them choose what movie to see or which mall to go to. If they ask her what she wants to do, she lies and says, “I don’t know…” and “we can do whatever you want to do.” Robbie is a good kid who tries very hard to please his parents, but they are asking more from him than he can realistically do at his age, and he can’t keep up with their expectations—sometimes, his frustration becomes despair, and he lashes out with snarling ferocity. Sophie is the oldest of three kids in her family, and she likes being known as the “smart” one in her family. Her two younger siblings are also very clever, and therefore Sophie criticizes them and makes fun of them at every opportunity.

Sometimes the child who seems—at least on the surface—to be the most successful child in the family, is also the most discouraged one. The more a child feels that they should be perfect, and the harder the child tries to be perfect—the more they will feel like a failure. Therefore, the children who are the closest to “perfection” are also frequently fearful and insecure, instead of confident and courageous. Some children show this by being openly anxious, and other children cover up their insecurity with noisy bravado, but both kinds of kids feel like they are skating on thin ice. Every success for them raises the bar of expectations. Every word of praise they hear reinforces that they are supposed to be wonderful, and that something must be wrong with them if they aren’t performing well.

Frankly, I think that the whole idea of perfection is perfect nonsense. Because, let’s face it, perfection is a fantasy. The real world is not a perfect place, and there are no perfect people. I have never known anyone who has had even one perfect day, where nothing went wrong and everything went perfectly.

Real life in the real world is a messy business. Real life often surprises us, when one thing is expected but another thing happens. The most important skill for living successfully in an imperfect world is the ability to make mistakes, and to make them well. Skillful mistake making is being curious, instead of ashamed, about ‘what went wrong?’ Skillful mistake making treats each mistake as an opportunity to learn something new.

Making mistakes well also builds courage—because the fear of making a mistake has been eliminated. It takes a lot of energy to try to be perfect. Determining to do things as well as one can, under the circumstances, is more relaxing—and frees up energy for creativity, taking risks, and enjoyment.

In contrast, consider what happens when mistakes are feared and avoided at all costs. Then when mistakes happen, as of course they will in the real world, they result in feelings of shame. Feeling ashamed of being less than perfect often leads to the impulse to lie, or hide the evidence, or blame someone else for the mistake.
Perfectionist children are only going to feel more and more discouraged as they go along, because their goals are impossibly idealistic. Marcus believes that no one will respect him unless he is making top grades. Angelina believes that no-one will like her unless she always pleases them and agrees with them. Robbie believes he is not lovable and acceptable to his parents unless he meets their expectations. And Sophie believes she is nothing if she loses her place as the smartest kid in her family. All of these children need to learn that who they are is not the same thing as what they do.

Child psychiatrist Rudolph Dreikurs coined the phrase, “the courage to be imperfect.” As he further elaborated, “We have to realize that we are good enough as we are; we never will be better, regardless of how much more we may know, how much more skill we may acquire, how much status or money or what-have-you. If we can’t make peace with ourselves as we are, we never will be able to make peace with ourselves.”

Creating a mistake-friendly family, and teaching children the ‘courage to be imperfect,’ frees children from the misery of perfectionism. With the ‘courage to be imperfect,’ children can enjoy doing their best simply for the pleasure of doing something well—and thus they are free to grow just as well, or even better, than by driving themselves to be perfect.

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