It’s all in the effort with Parenting
Your child doesn’t need a perfect parent. They need an authentic one. The love, dedication, and effort you pour into each day mean far more than striving to get everything right.
Parenting is a journey, not a performance—there’s no perfect script, and mistakes are part of the process. Your child doesn’t need a flawless parent; they need a real one. The love, effort, and care you put in every day matter more than getting everything right. By showing your child how to navigate challenges, apologize when needed, and keep trying, you’re teaching them resilience and authenticity. So take a deep breath—your best is often more than enough.
“There is no such thing as a perfect parent. So just be a real one.”
Keep an eye out for perfectionism
Here’s some parenting tips to encourage your child to believe in themselves and their successes.
Perfectionism is closely aligned to anxiety of various sorts. It can be triggered in many ways, but once it takes hold it can very destructive. It can become toxic. Children particularly can be affected by perfectionism. It may manifest itself when doing a test. It can be all about not completing work for fear of getting it wrong. It can also encourage procrastination where a child chooses not to make decisions. There are many irrational beliefs that a child can develop when perfectionism creeps in. I have noticed that first children can have reservations about completing tasks that are not good enough. Often, the second child was more relaxed, the first child showed reservations caught up with fear of making a mistake. Here it was about not letting anyone see their mistakes, the least of which was parents. Perfectionism holds you back from achieving your goals.
As parents, we can be partially responsible for our children having fears and doubts, as they do not want to disappoint us. This is very big in their mind, especially as they see how excited we are about their achievements. At a very early age, they see the excitement on the face of their parents when they are successful.
Consider:
When affirming your child, try to comment on their efforts not focusing too much on the outright success. The measuring of success can make a child anxious. Sometimes good is good enough.‘You got everything right just like the other day. How smart you are.’ This can set a precedence where the child has to keep up the performance. Nothing less that perfect is what is required!
Explain that nobody is perfect and it is all about the effort and outcomes that come from the drive.‘You certainly put all the effort into your work. Congratulations.’
When you talk about your child’s strengths, occasionally mention those areas that they are working on.‘I notice how great you are at helping with setting the table. Thank you. Sometimes help with the dishes is good also. Let me show you the best way to stack the dishwasher’. Here we say we are always working to improve and learn new skills.
Always state that you do not expect your child to be perfect. In fact perfection is a myth. It is important to articulate that to your child. Sometimes they simply need to hear it! Often! Remember perfectionism is all about earning approval.
Use the rating scale. It comes in handy. Ask your child occasionally what number out of ten do they give themselves for some activity. Talking about the number reminds everyone that life is a work in progress. It is all about continuous improvement.
Children love heroes. Talk about some of their idols such as sporting heroes and their struggles and determination to overcome being the perfect athlete etc. How do they manage being satisfied with their performance especially when they don’t win? How do they manage a lack of perfection? Where or how do they find contentment in their flaws?
Sometimes simply making one mistake can be catastrophic and take over a child’s belief that they are a complete failure. We could call this self abuse! This is of course a major problem for some children. From an early age focus not on the performance but the effort and passions that your child shows. Affirm their contributions and applaud their recognition of other children’s efforts. ‘Well done. You tried so hard and worked so long with that project. Such endurance. It is also pleasing to see that some children also showed great creativity in their work.’ Teaching them to share the glory strengthens empathy. It defuses the importance on the child as well.
Finally, children learn from an early age to compare themselves to others. Many external influences are out of your control. Your role is simply to remind them by word and deed that they are a special individual and that performance is not a measure of how successful they are as a person.
‘Perfectionism is the art of never being satisfied.’
-Unknown
Perfectionism...to be discouraged in our children
A child who is a perfectionist does not feel free to make any mistakes and we know that mistakes are an important form of learning for your child. If the child feels too anxious to make mistakes their confidence drops and all sorts of behavioural complications can enter the scenario. Read here to navigate the world of perfection in your child.
This can be a problem for some children who really struggle to accept anything less than perfect. How frustrating this can be for them as they never seem to be at peace unless they are correct 100% of the time. For themselves, they set very high standards. They also see that other people value them for how much they have achieved rather than for who they are. These are unsafe values upon which to be basing your sense of self. A child who is a perfectionist does not feel free to make any mistakes and we know that mistakes are an important form of learning for your child. If the child feels too anxious to make mistakes their confidence drops and all sorts of behavioural complications can enter the scenario. There is no joy in working from perfectionism and it can be seen as early as young children not writing a sentence for fear they make mistakes.
Teachers are very astute when they find students reticent to have a go or reluctant to put themselves forward. They realise the more they allow the child to step back and make no attempt, the more poor conditioning steps in and the harder it is to get them back in the groove of doing activities.
At home there are ways to help the child begin to overcome this problem.
Consider:
Firstly and most importantly consider if you are a perfectionist. You can have a major influence on your child if they see you operating as a perfectionist.
Show your child how you work through problems. Let them see that making a mistake is a way of learning.
When they show you their work, affirm its worth. Remember it is the effort you are affirming and not the quality of the work as a final product. This habit should start with very young children to be successful.
For these children, competition is important but within reason. Very young children are often keen to show you what they have done be it a drawing, sand sculpture etc. This is a tender age for building the understanding that you are impressed with all their attempts.
Keep installing the value of ‘have a go’ and telling your child that through trial and effort learning occurs happily.
With older children, it is worth talking about some great successes such as Einstein who based his life on learning from taking risks and mistakes.
Use practical examples in your own life when things went wrong and still you learnt.
Wherever possible take away the pressure to succeed. That may mean talking to your child’s teacher about potential problems that could stem in the classroom. It could mean putting your child in situations where there is not an obsessive focus on success. Healthy competition is important but some environments may be not suitable for your child who becomes fixated on being perfect.
When a challenge comes your child’s way, we do not talk about meeting that challenge for fear of failing. We meet it to simply have a go and improve in some capacity.
‘Have go at swimming backstroke. You will learn so much from just making an attempt.’
‘Well done you made a great effort and for the first time swam a little on your back.’
Here it is about picking up on the effort and noticing a difference. There is no focus on being perfect.
Children who have a tendency to be perfect often prefer to stay in their comfort zones. This give them assurance and they don’t need to try as they may fail. Give your child various opportunities to try different things. Take them out of their comfort zones and challenge them to do different things. This could be through sports,family holidays etc.
Sometimes children feel under pressure when the issue of success comes up. For example, school tests,sports event, social event etc. Preparing the child before the event is helpful by reminding them of the time they had a go and it worked out. Also reinforcing how you award the effort not so much the outcome.
Try to avoid being an overprotective parent. Such a model limits the child’s opportunities to take risks and discover their own potential.
Finally, as a parent whose child has perfectionist tendencies try to be more relaxed and let your child see how the value in life is about not fearing the unknown and learning to embrace some risk and challenge. Let them gradually feel the joy of simply exposing themselves to change and feeling success from the experience.
‘Focus on progress not perfection’
-Bill Philips