Let’s face it, we all want our kids to be the best they can be. Better than all the rest. Top of the class. Best on the sports team. Outstanding in every way. In other words we want them to be perfect in everything they do.
The question is, is it really a good idea for us to push our children to be perfect? Or are we sabotaging them by doing so?
Unfortunately, by pushing them to perfection, we may actually be pushing them away from it. See, when we tell them, or show them, that we want perfection, and they fail to reach our goals, it demoralises them. The result being, they don’t even want to try because they know they can never do good enough.
So what do we need to do to encourage our little ones (or not so little) to do their best? There’s actually two different areas we need to look at to do this.
The first is how we talk and behave when they’re doing their homework, or whatever the activity may be. We need to encourage them without pushing for perfection. Maybe talk about doing their best, instead of striving for that perfect score. If they don’t da as well as they could have, don’t overreact, talk to them about where they went wrong and how they can do better next time. Note the word better, we’re not pushing for perfection. And if they do get a good score, don’t over praise it, instead praise the work and effort they put in. By taking the focus off the score or result, we can encourage the behaviour. And in doing so, they’ll end up doing better than if they were trying to be perfect.
The other area we can focus on is our own behaviour. Wait, I hear you say, didn’t we just do that? That was about how we react to our kids accomplishments, or lack thereof. What I’m talking about now, is how we react to our own successes or failures. Our behaviour is one of the most influential things in our children’s lives. They want to act like us. They want to be like us. So it only makes sense that if we stress out over being perfect, and let’s face it, throw a tantrum when we don’t reach that level, then they are going to act in similar ways.
It’s not that it’s bad for them to see us doing our best, it’s the part about us being obsessed with perfection. We want them to strive for their best, not be bogged down in a fruitless attempt at being perfect, cause let’s face it, most of will never be perfect, but we can be the best us we can be.