Do You Want to be a Perfect Parent?
Perfectionist parents come in many varieties. There are those who are called "helicopter parents" because they hover over their precious children. They swoop down on the school at the slighted possibility their dears are not being given every opportunity to advance at the pace the parents think they should.
Then there are the "snoopervisers" who constantly check on their child's progress from morning 'til night. Their sense of importance in life comes from a belief that their child could not succeed without their constant parental admonitions. Unfortunately, they fail to give their children the one thing all children need, the opportunity to learn that failure simply means they missed the mark and they can learn for themselves what they can do better next time.
Then there are perfectionist parents who, like myself, don't necessarily demand perfection from our children, but we are always trying to be the best we can be. It doesn't seem like such a terrible goal. In fact, I promote the idea of being the best you can be both on this site and on Learning Place Online. The problem is that, with perfectionists like us, what we think of as doing our "best" isn't 80% or 90% of what the most superior individual could do with a given job, but doing it at 110% capacity. 110% of the time.
You may not realize it, but when perfectionists are in the midst of striving to make something as absolutely good as we possibly can, we don't experience ourselves as trying "too hard." We simply feel as though we're trying to do a quality job (which doesn't seem to be too shabby of a goal). The problem is that other people can stop at a reasonable point and proclaim a project "good enough." I have a very hard time knowing what "good enough" means, which I explain in the sidebar in a description of the dynamics between a perfectionist's inability to recognize the need to feel omnipotent and the fear of impotence.
A good example of how life can get more complicated for perfectionists than it needs to be occurred many years ago when I painted the garage. I put two coats of paint on the wall behind the power saw. The saw never gets moved. No one will ever see that wall unless we sell the house. But I had to make certain it was well painted!
Unfortunately, the standards of perfectionists are usually drawn from what the perfectionist thinks others believe is "right" for them to do. These standards are not necessarily those the perfectionist herself would choose if she were able to follow the dictates of her own heart. But often perfectionists are so focused on what they assume others believe is "right" for them to do that they neglect to listen to what their own hearts would tell them is a better, less difficult, standard to meet.
What Children Learn From Perfectionist Parents
What children learn from perfectionist parents depends upon what drives the parent's need to be perfect. Is it that the parent wants a perfect child so he or she can get an award for being the best parent on the block? Is it that the parent wants the children to always do their best because he or she feels inadequate in some aspect of their life? Or is it that the parent is simply a perfectionist who hasn't learned that making a mistake only means you've missed the mark, and that failure is not the end of the world?
I ask clients to describe themselves to me so I can get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses. Over the years I've heard many descriptions that almost always indicate either one or both of their parents is, or was, a perfectionist. Here are a few I've heard in various forms:
1. I know I set impossibly high standards for myself, but somehow I feel I'm only okay if I get the top job or win the highest prize.
2. If I make a mistake, I think others won't like me.
3. I have no idea what people mean when they say I should just "be", because I always have to "do".
4. I rebelled against my parents' high expectations of me when I was growing up by goofing off and getting in trouble, so I missed a lot of opportunities I might have otherwise had. But I sure wasn't going to give my parents the satisfaction of thinking they could control my life.
5. It's very hard to accept defeat because I'm always trying so hard and if I don't succeed, I think people will assume I didn't try hard enough.
6. I have to put on a good face when I fail to reach my goals, because otherwise people will think I'm a bad loser, but I feel really torn up inside and find it hard to accept my mistakes.
7. I can't say no and I take on more jobs than I can handle.
8. I feel guilty much of the time.
9. Because my mother was so busy being perfect in her life, both in her job and in keeping a clean house, she didn't have time to simply enjoy me doing the normal things kids like to do, so now I don't particularly feel close to her and I figure it's her loss.
10. I think image is important.
11. I have very high standards for others and find it hard to accept other people's mistakes.
12. I hate to admit it, but when I help someone, I feel I'm superior because they're not able to do something for themselves and I could do it for them.
13. I often check to see whether other people are making mistakes, for example, I count the items in the twelve-item or less aisle in the grocery store to see if customers have tried to sneak in more than they should.
14. I spend a lot of effort checking to see if I'm doing as well as or better than other people
15. I'm tired of always have to be good, but I don't know any other way to be.
SIDEBAR TO ABOVE ARTICLE:
Omnipotence Vs. Impotence Equals Lack of a Middle Ground
In a series of articles for Learning Place Online called Lessons of a Recovering Perfectionist, I wrote an article titled, "Perfectionism is Pain in the Butt." It described something I learned at a therapy workshop many years ago. I offer it here in case you, or someone in your house, is a perfectionist. It may give you an insight you hadn't thought of before:
"Until then [that is, until I had attended the workshop], I had certainly known I had high standards for myself and for others. I knew I was controlling. I knew I felt much more judgmental toward others than I liked, but I didn't know how to simply accept other people as they were, warts and all. But I never realized there was a name for what I was.
"Then, during the workshop, which was on personality styles, the instructor began with the obsessive-compulsive personality, of which perfectionism is a prime example. As she went through a long list of characteristics, I was flabbergasted to discover how thoroughly I met the criteria.
"My first clue was when she said that 'the polarity that defines the perfectionist is one of omnipotence"' — at which point she held one hand so the fingers were facing straight up — 'versus impotence' — and then she moved her hand so the fingers were perpendicular to the floor.
"I was shocked! That's a gesture I had often used to describe myself, although when I did it, I would say that I felt either "Okay" — hand perpendicular to the ground — or "Not Okay" — hand parallel to the ground. That day she called a spade a spade and really caught my attention. I didn't like those terms, although I recognized them as accurate.
"She had me pegged all right. I could sometimes feel empathetic toward (and envious of) the middle ground where others lived and worked. But when it came to myself, I was caught in the land of either/or — black or white, up or down, with me or against me, success or failure, omnipotence or impotence.
"What starts this pogo stick approach to life? Well, it begins when we (and here I include my fellow recovering perfectionists, as well as those who haven't yet admitted their affliction) were young. We decided that our parents, good souls though they may have been otherwise, didn't think we were okay unless we met their expectations. These expectations may have been perfectly reasonable, but we concluded we weren't okay just as we were — only when we performed. Come home with all A's and one B? I'd be questioned on why I got the B.
"We didn't learn that mistakes were a natural and acceptable part of life, that they were to be honored because they offered a chance to learn.
"As the workshop leader proceeded to describe the obsessive-compulsive/perfectionist, I was both appalled and relieved. Appalled that I had to admit I was a member of this group — lumped in with the obsessive-compulsives — and relieved that someone understood my pain.
"Yes, as the title of this lesson indicates, it's a major pain being a perfectionist. Why? Don't we get praise for all the good stuff we produce? The problem is that few of us are either omnipotent or impotent. Pretty much we all inhabit the central ground. So a great deal of the pain comes from the realization that we're ordinary, which, of course, is nowhere near omnipotent, which is what we think we're supposed to be."