Absolute Perfection

What do airline pilots, doctors, police officers, fire fighters, and teachers have in common?  They are professions in which a mistake cannot be made.  Not that these professions shouldn’t be held to a higher standard, but these are examples of society’s demands for perfection.  Unrealistic demands for perfection are not only found in the teaching profession, but our students are expected to be perfect, too.  Perfection permeates all aspects of our lives.  More and more society expects us to treat one another perfectly, and the fact is we are going to offend each other from time to time.

The Perfect Student:

Many children strive for perfection in both their school and personal lives.  Often, children impose perfection upon themselves.  Both traditional and social media bombard us with images of the perfect existence, so it is no wonder children get these ideas.  Parents and even teachers can impose perfection on our children and students, too. Some parents feel that if their child does not achieve the perfection trifecta - perfect grades, excellence in athletics, and becoming a musical prodigy they will not be admitted to the right college.  And this is often on top of an active social life.

Mental health problems such as eating disorders, depression, anxiety and even suicide can be caused by perfectionism.  The leading cause for death of Americans in the teen years is suicide.  In 2018, an average of 132 Americans died each day by suicide for a total of 48,344 deaths.  One in four people in the 18-25 age group reported they seriously considered taking their own life according to a recent Center for Disease Control and Prevention survey.

The amount of homework and extracurricular activities may seem like the cause for stress in a child’s life, but it may be due to the need and feeling that these tasks must be done perfectly.  When a child sets an unattainable goal of perfection the cycle begins.  If the goal is not achieved, the child sees him/herself as a failure which can cause depression or anxiety.

By building awareness of the damaging effects of perfection, it will hopefully allow us as parents to give up the need for perfect children.  We want our children to become the best version of themselves they can be. My opening comment was to show society’s increasing desire for perfection.  As another societal example, you may have heard of the coach who does not take “good” as being “good enough”.  This is wrong regardless of the age of the player.

A Parent’s Sense of Perfection:

A parent’s life may be infiltrated by the idea of perfection - no problems, no flaws, no issues, and we all know this isn’t true.  Come to grips with your own imperfection.  If you want the perfect workplace, be ready to admit the petty mistakes you make.  If you want to be the perfect parent, admit your parenting shortcomings as well as the shortcomings of your own parents.  It may seem strange to think that accepting imperfection is necessary to live a more peaceful, almost perfect life.

Consider discussing perfection with your child.  Ask her/him why she/he thinks that society expects people to be perfect when we all make countless mistakes?

Keep in mind that elementary school report cards, or even middle school report cards for that matter, are not predictors of a child’s success in college or a career.  In parent conference after parent conference I was asked countless times to predict how the child would do in the future based on his/her performance in sixth grade. Predicting the future was just about the most difficult thing I was asked as a teacher.  I have had students who earned all A’s on their sixth grade report card and didn’t finish high school; conversely, I’ve had D and F students go on to graduate school after earning their degree.  I’ve had parents conference with me about a report card that contained all A’s and one B.  They would often ask, “How can my child raise the B grade to an A?”  I’m sad to say I’ve lost three former students to the opioid epidemic as young adults.  In sixth grade all three of these students were polite, well-behaved children who earned mostly A’s on their report cards.

Strategies that help children with perfection:

Part of the problem is that it is possible to achieve perfection on a particular task; however, the goal of being perfect in everything is not possible.  If your child is striving toward being perfect, it often means he/she is compensating for a sense of inadequacy.  An exaggerated sense of shortcomings leads children to want to strive for perfection.  Typically early in life, children received messages that they weren’t good enough which caused them to feel that by being perfect they would be beyond reproach.  These messages may not have come from you as parents.  Students pick up on the messages they receive from peers, school, media, and other adults in their life.  It’s hard to find the root of the feeling, but a lot of discussion can help the child lose the sense of feeling inadequate.

I set goals with my students each fall at our school’s annual goal setting conference.  I would steer a child away from a goal that stated he/she would earn all A’s.  Instead, I had the student set a goal for the behavior that would help lead him/her to good grades.  One example of such a goal is studying at least three nights before a test.  This helped students as they didn’t have to be perfect.  As you set goals with your child as she/he grows, be sure they are not excessively high, unrealistic goals because your child will more than likely feel defeated when those goals are not met.

Celebrate achievement with your child, but also celebrate tasks in which he/she has tried, struggled, and on which he/she improved.  In the learning process, students are surrounded by new ideas and the progress made toward learning those lessons is never perfect.  One of the most difficult things for any of us to do, let alone a child, is to accept feedback in the form of a grade less than perfect.  Stress with your child that learning is real, mistakes are real, stress is real, but perfection is not.

I loved taking my students to outdoor school on Catalina Island.  Between putting on a 7 mm wetsuit,  to snorkeling in the cold ocean, to living away from home with classmates on an island, to kayaking, to the climbing wall there was something which each student had to struggle with.  Those struggles led to more growth achieved in that week than in any other of the school year.

The imperfection of the human being should be embraced.  Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, said, “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”