October 9, 2024
Cindy Lopez: Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen.
It’s easy to feel like everything needs to be perfect. Our youth can pick up on that, and they can become obsessed with being perfect in school, with their bodies, even their hobbies. In this new episode of Voices of Compassion, we explore the complex world of perfectionism in children. What does perfectionism look like? From fear of failure and constant self-criticism to anxiety over making mistakes many kids struggle with wanting to be perfect. We’ll discuss the potential causes of perfectionism, societal expectations and personality traits. Parents and caregivers will learn how to support their children by fostering a healthy mindset, encouraging effort over perfection and maintaining balanced expectations. Are high expectations helpful or harmful? Well, join us as we explore ways to nurture resilience without feeling the pressure to be perfect.
Welcome, Dr. Geller and Dr. Ebadi. Please share a little bit more about yourselves with our listeners and perhaps why this topic is an important one to discuss.
Whitney Geller, PhD: So my name is Dr. Whitney Geller, and I think that this is a particularly important topic. So I am a neuropsychologist, and I do a lot of assessments, and I see this with so many of my kids, both the neurotypical and the neurodivergent kids. It comes up all the time.
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: So I’m Dr. Marjan Ebadi. I’m a psychologist, and I do assessments as well. And as Dr. Geller said, perfectionism in kids is happening a lot, and we see it so often that I think it’s very important for parents to be able to recognize it and figure out how to help their kids.
Cindy Lopez: Thanks so much. We’re glad that both of you can join us today to talk about this topic and before we dive into, like, strategies and really like why this is happening, let’s define it first. So what is perfectionism?
Whitney Geller, PhD: Yeah, perfectionism can show up in a lot of different ways, but it really boils down to that drive and that need for things to be just right, almost to a flawless or exact and unrealistic extent.
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: It’s kind of like a hyper fixation and if it’s not working, it causes a lot of anxiety, and it can be kind of like overdoing it as impacting your life in many ways.
When your goals and expectations for yourself are so unrealistic and unachievable, in a way you’re setting yourself up for a failure. And then you get disappointed and more anxious when you actually inevitably fail.
Cindy Lopez: I’m wondering though, we’re talking about perfectionism and this need for things to be just right, can you provide some examples of that? What are you seeing in kids?
Whitney Geller, PhD: Absolutely. I mean, a lot of times it shows up in kids, you know, younger kids may be wanting their toys organized a certain way and getting really upset if you move them, or if something’s not in its place. For school age children, this often shows up as a need for attention for their academic work to be just right, writing and rewriting and erasing and rewriting and needing their letters to look perfect or a sentence to sound a certain way. It can also show up when they can’t deal with change. For instance, you have a plan for the weekend. You’re going to go to the park, but oh, it’s raining, and now we can’t go. And just that small change, that small unpredictable change, can be really challenging for them to cope with because they’ve got in their mind this perfect day planned and then all of a sudden it’s changed and they don’t know how to fit that into their new framework.
Cindy Lopez: I’m sure that our listeners are thinking, oh, I think I might do that a little bit you know, I probably do some of those things too. And so as you’re talking, I’m thinking about when your goals and expectations are unrealistic, that you’re setting yourself up for failure or disappointment. So sometimes, you set high goals and high expectations that seem unachievable, but you actually do achieve them. So how does that play into perfectionism?
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: Everyone can have high goals, it’s how you plan for it. So how you plan your steps or how much time you expect for something to actually take place. So what happens with perfectionism is, I can’t make a mistake on this one, or I should be able to do this within 30 minutes. And it requires you to do like a full week on it or thinking about how, in a way you set up such a high expectation to not make a mistake or your goals are not very well organized. So then it makes it harder for you to actually get what you want done, and it becomes this kind of like an anxiety-provoking thing because it’s not matching what you have in your head and then you’re not planning it correctly. Whereas, I think when you have a high achieving goal and you plan it well, and you set enough time for it and you kind of be like the full forgiveness, like it’s okay to make mistakes and have that growth mindset. That makes it different than the unrealistic of perfectionism.
Whitney Geller, PhD: Yeah, and I think that the other thing that you highlighted too with your question is that almost everyone has a little bit of perfectionism. In a lot of ways, it really serves us well. It serves our kids well. It helps us achieve. It helps us try and do better and a little bit of it is okay. I think that it can really help us meet some goals that maybe we wouldn’t otherwise be able to meet, but where Dr. Ebadi was talking, I think it’s important to consider when does it cross the line of impairing our functioning and preventing us from meeting our goals.
Cindy Lopez: So what happens, are perfectionists, children, youth who are perfectionists, when they do succeed, are they able to like pat themselves on the back, are they able to enjoy their accomplishment?
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: I guess sometimes, but most often, especially when they get really, really anxious because they’ve been sitting with this idea of, It has to be perfect. It has to be great. It rather becomes more like a sense of relief than accomplishment, like, oh, it’s over. It’s done and it kind of like briefly makes everything, okay, again, because you’re not in that hyper state of it needs to be perfect, and I need to get it done. So most often they forget to celebrate. They’re like, it’s over, what’s the next thing I have to do? Or let’s just sit with this weird content that’s happening.
Whitney Geller, PhD: Yeah, I see sometimes with children too that are like extreme perfectionists, it’s never done right. Even when it’s done and they have the relief of it being over, they still sit there and they ruminate about what they did that messed it up and how many mistakes they made and how the final product was not what they wanted or not what they expected.
When it’s really extreme, it’s like nothing’s ever good enough, and that can be really disheartening over time, right. Thinking about just anyone, if you feel like you never do anything right or up to your standards, it can make you anxious about the future and, you know, “oh, I’m never going to do anything, right.” It can make you feel sad, like, “oh, I’ve never done anything right,” and it can cause kind of this negative thinking pattern that’s very cyclical because they’re constantly proving themselves right. They’re constantly trying something, feeling like they fail and then, oh, well, that wasn’t good enough. So I’m not good enough. And it can get really internalized over time.
Cindy Lopez: So, hearing both of you talk, it reminds me as an educator, some of the students I’ve had in the past who are like, I can’t do that. Sometimes I’m not even going to try because I can’t do it perfectly. I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. So I’m reminded of growth mindset, and you brought this up, Dr. Ebadi, we used growth mindset in the classroom.
And I think that is a tool for educators and for parents and caregivers that you can use to help your perfectionist kids. And it’s that idea of yet, it’s the idea of giving yourself some grace, and there’s a big body of work around growth mindset. So we’re not going to dive into that today, but we have resources in our resource library around that.
So, I’m wondering is perfectionism a mental health condition or is it connected with other mental health conditions?
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: As Dr. Geller said earlier, like we all have a little bit of everything, like a little bit of perfectionism. So it only becomes a problem when it’s very dysfunctional, when it’s like impacting your schoolwork, your relationship with other people. When it’s kind of like rewriting your essays to the point that you can’t even turn it in anymore, or you’re having so much hard time, like ruminating what you did before that you can’t talk to your friends.
So it’s like when it becomes dysfunctional in multiple places of your life that it kind of impacts your regulation skills cause you can become really angry and frustrated because you’re sitting with those thoughts all the time or like impacts your sleep and impacting multiple places in your life to a point that as we said, you don’t even celebrate anything successful. You’re just sitting with, How do I fix this? How do I make it better? So it shifts from how I get to my goal to more like a fix it mentality or like, how do I make this better or I’m not good enough. That makes it a problem.
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Cindy Lopez: So, for our listeners it sounds like if perfectionism in your child starts to interfere with school work or causes distress in the family or with friends, that might be a time to seek some help. And of course you can reach out to CHC. You can get a parent consultation. You can contact our care team and schedule an appointment, and there are lots of resources as well on our website that are free and you can access at any time.
So, is it okay for parents and caregivers to have high expectations and want their kids to be high achievers? I want to say yes, but does that just like further exacerbate this perfectionist tendency?
Whitney Geller, PhD: I mean we all want our kids to achieve and be successful. We want the best for our children, I think that’s normal as a parent. You want your children to do well. And it’s perfectly fine to want them to do well and encourage them to set goals. It’s important to keep in mind that some kids already have really high expectations of themselves. And those children are the ones that are a little more sensitive. So when you’re saying, “Hey, how come that’s a B and not an A,” and maybe you’re just asking it in a really open, just genuine way of trying to figure out if they were having a hard time with something that is now internalized to, I failed. I failed. I didn’t get an A. Mom or Dad wanted me to get an A and now I failed. So, again, some kids are more sensitive to that. Some kids brush it off and say, “I don’t know,” or, “Oh yeah, that one test was really bad.” And that’s kind of more of a healthy, like being able to let go of something that didn’t meet your expectation or being able to kind of move past it.
But the perfectionist kid holds onto that. And then over time, if you’re asking and kind of feeding that, I also assume not on purpose, right. Because again, we want the best for our children, but little things like that over time can kind of build up. So it’s important to continue to watch for those signs of, does your child seem distressed. Did you ask them, “Hey, what happened? How come you got a B?” Do they get really upset? Do they react to it? Is that question really anxiety provoking for them? Do you hear a lot of negative self-talk? And so it’s kind of, again, challenging because we want the best. And for the kids that are perfectionists, they’ve already set that standard for themselves.
Cindy Lopez: So all this talk about perfectionism, I’m wondering how parents or caregivers can help to prevent this perfectionism from developing in their kids.
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: We know for kids and everyone, we learn from modeling it. So one of the best ways actually modeling it for your kids and how it’s okay to like make mistakes or not being able to make it as perfect as you had in your original mind or kind of celebrating progress or like seeing failures as a way of, oh, it’s the next step for me to learn better or oh, it’s, you know, kind of being okay with things going sideways and then planning as you go along, right, like planning ahead and then changing plan as you’re going along. So definitely, modeling it in the house is very important. And then as we’ve been saying, most of these kids are already pretty hyper-attuned or like hyper-focused on what they’re doing wrong. And their brain gets really good at picking those up pretty fast. So like, you know, the small mistake can become like the most unforgettable thing that as Dr. Geller said, they just ruminate about for a long time.
So, one thing that they can also do is naming things that they are doing well because then that kind of helps a lot of kids start noticing things, right? Because the brain is again, hyper-focusing on what’s going wrong. So if a parent notices like their kids finish something faster making positive comments and helping them see it or, see the progress you made, it could be as simple as like, oh, you finished one page within 20 minutes, that’s exciting, like it doesn’t have to be like you finished a book in two hours. So little small successes and a little progress like naming those would be very helpful to just help them shift their focus a little bit.
Cindy Lopez: So we’ve already talked a little bit about what perfectionism looks like in kids. What are some signs that parents or caregivers might be seeing?
Whitney Geller, PhD: That’s an excellent question. One of the things that I think we kind of mentioned was that organization and needing things to be a certain way. That’s certainly one of the places that it shows up. Also with the schoolwork, like doing and re-doing and re-doing. This can also show up in, like, day-to-day activities. For instance, a kid that folds their laundry 10 times until it’s folded just perfect or the insistence on adhering to routines, I think, tends to be a pretty big one and then the breaking of routines can cause these extreme meltdowns. In fact the emotional outbursts and kind of the low frustration tolerance do tend to be pretty frequent in the kids that are highly perfectionistic because like Dr. Ebadi said, the little things get blown way out of proportion. And so the little mistake all of a sudden becomes this huge thing that they’re having an outburst or a meltdown about. They also tend to have just generally a lower frustration tolerance or maybe even be kind of irritable day-to-day. Then you’ll hear a lot of that negative self-talk, and low self-esteem comments like, “Oh, I’m terrible. I can’t do anything right.” I’m never going to be able to do this. Those kind of extreme extremes of how we view ourselves in the world. The other thing that you can also see too, is sometimes kids will be really critical, not only of how they do things, but also how other people do things, right? Because they’ve got to be perfect so other people have to be perfect too, and this can cause a lot of resistance in day-to-day functioning, resistance to trying new things because, you know, I’m not going to do it right. You’re not going to do it right—nobody should do it.
Cindy Lopez: It seems like if that’s the case too, if they’re critical of others, do they tend to make friends and keep friends or is that hard for them, too?
Whitney Geller, PhD: Yeah, I think that certainly they can have challenges with making friends, right? The other place I see this come into is that it’s kind of breathes a little bit of social anxiety, right? If you feel like you can’t ever do anything, right, and you’re always getting down on yourself and questioning the things you did, it’s going to make it so much harder to make friends and meet new people and build relationships. I mean, we’ve all been through this, right? We think back on that social interaction we had, and we think, Did I say something wrong? Did I do that wrong? And the perfectionist kid is doing this all the time, all the time. And they’re always thinking, Well, I did that wrong. So it causes like this sense of hesitancy in being able to build the social relationships and maintain those friendships. So they can be a little isolated from peers and have few or no friends. It can also, you know, help in some ways and that they’re always trying to compete with their peers and maybe a little bit of competition is helpful, right? They want to be the best. They want to be the top student. But then it can also sometimes backfire, if they’re getting down on themselves and others and like, I have to be the number one, the other kids kinda don’t like that, right?
Cindy Lopez: So thinking about these kids and how the perfectionism impacts their life from school work to social relationships to, I’m sure, family relationships. What are some strategies that our listeners might be able to use to support their kids who are kind of stuck in this perfectionism loop?
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: Let them hear about your mistake, kind of going back to modeling, like modeling talking about mistakes you made or make, you know, light of the mistakes you made, like, oh, this happened and it’s okay. Also, as we’ve been saying, especially the social aspect of it, teaching them practicing and losing, like, it’s okay to lose in a game or how to be okay with losing. And also you’ll still be supportive, like all of those to be very helpful. And again, kind of shifting their mind to focus on the process of things and not the outcome, like what are the steps you have completed and like what goals you have already accomplished and where are you going rather than like what it needs to look like.
Also, I think, like everything else, just being silly and accepting that it’s okay to make mistakes, make jokes of it, laugh about it and, you know, as Dr. Geller said earlier, the organization and structure is pretty big for kids, who are this perfectionist. So kind of breaking that cycle. And it’s like, you know, moving from, you have to plan it to the T and it has to work the same way to more like, it’s okay we made a plan and then now we’re making a new one. Again, like also planning to rest or being able to kind of, you know, make mindful rest time. I feel like sometimes with a lot of perfectionistic kids that what happens is they get so anxious and so worked up that the body kind of shuts down and you’re like, I’m gonna watch Netflix or I’m going to watch TV or something, but they’re still anxious and ruminating. So they’re not really resting. So if you’re planning to rest, like how to actually be mindfully resting and noticing where the whole anxiety is moving in your body. So planning rest time will be very helpful.
Cindy Lopez: So we’ve talked a lot about why kids are experiencing this perfectionism and some of the impact it has on them, both emotionally, socially, relationally, all kinds of things. So given that all this is happening, I’m sure our listeners are thinking, “Oh my gosh, so what can I do? How can I help?” So what are some strategies that we could share with our listeners for kids who are stuck in this perfectionism?
Whitney Geller, PhD: Perfectionism is challenging, right, and it’s hard to think about how to teach your kid to let things go and not be quite so perfectionistic. One of the ways that we’ve kind of mentioned a couple times now is modeling. Let them hear about your mistakes. Let them hear about what you’re struggling with. This is really important because kids are like little sponges. They absorb everything around them. And watching you talk about like, “Oh, I missed my deadline. That’s okay. You know, we only do what we can do. And sometimes we don’t make our deadline and that’s okay.” Next time I think I’m gonna, you know, maybe try to start a day or two earlier.
So talk through it with them. Talk about like, oh, the mistake you made. Show them that you can brush it off and that you can kind of recover and come up with a more realistic goal for next time, right? And sometimes our best learning comes from our failures. Remember that we learn a lot when we fail and teaching our kids that just because you made a mistake or you failed at something, take something away from that. Don’t let it just ruin your day and become debilitating. The other thing you can do is teach them to practice and to lose, right? The perfectionist hates losing. They don’t want to lose. They don’t want to lose the board game. They don’t want to lose the soccer match. Remembering to have them practice and practice gracefully losing. It’s okay if you lost the game. It’s okay if you, you know, didn’t do as well as you wanted to. Make sure that they appreciate maybe the little wins along the way, like Dr. Ebadi mentioned, right? Help them celebrate, well, you did make that one goal. Yeah, you didn’t win the game, but hey, you made a goal. That’s pretty amazing. Help them learn to appreciate the little wins along the way, and then, you know, accept that sometimes it’s okay if we don’t make our big goal. Sometimes a helpful way to do this too is playing games, like board games and card games with your kids. So you can start with like chance games, right, like Sorry or something like that, and then work your way up to like skilled games like bridge or chess, something where they’re actually having to have a lot of skill to do it. And so the reason that we kind of talk about starting with the chance games and working your way up to the skilled games, is the chance games, it’s kind of easier to brush it off when something doesn’t go your way because it’s not your fault. But then the skill games, it’s a little harder to brush it off, right, because chances are you made a, an error or a mistake that resulted in the loss. And so that can be harder for kids to accept. So you kind of want to build up to that piece.
Cindy Lopez: Dr. Geller as you’re talking, I’m thinking also probably because we just did an episode on validation, but I’m wondering too, like, how to respond. So as the parent or the caregiver, the coach, the teacher, how do you respond in a way that’s meaningful to the child? So I think what you are saying, all these things are meaningful and the strategies you’ve been talking about are meaningful. What if it’s my tendency as the caregiver to just say, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”
Whitney Geller, PhD: Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point because, you know, they made a mistake and for them it’s the end of the world, but you see it as something like, “Oh, it’s not that big a deal, right?” So in those cases, it is still important to meet them halfway. And I think you brought up a really good point of validation. For them it feels like the end of the world. And sometimes part of that learning to lose graciously is also just learning to sit with the loss and learning to sit with those hard feelings. And so sometimes it comes down to, yeah, you seem really bummed out that you lost the game. And then you just leave it at that. Let them sit with that. Let them learn to feel that discomfort because that’s an important part of the learning process too. If we’re kind of getting into that toxic positivity of, no, you’re still good. Great. No, you’re wonderful. I love you. You’re my shining light. Yeah, like of course they are, and they don’t feel that way. So it can be very invalidating for them.
I think focusing on the process and not necessarily the product. This is somewhere that kids with perfectionism tend to struggle, right? It’s the outcome that has to be perfect, and then they get tripped up along the way because each little part has to be perfect too.
So, sometimes with kids, they set these unrealistic goals, and helping them learn well, what should the finished product look like, right? Sometimes it might even be necessary to set a time limit for it, right? Set a time limit, and you know, you get done what you get done, and you don’t need to sit there and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite your essay or redo and redo and redo something. Set the time limit for them so that they can learn to start having these boundaries themselves and then focusing on like, well, what did you feel like went well during the process, even if the outcome wasn’t what they were looking for. What felt good about that? Was there anything you felt like you did well? Was there anything you did feel good about accomplishing during that process?
Another thing that can also be really helpful across all settings is just being silly, right? Be silly sometimes. Show your kids that they don’t have to be so serious. The perfectionist tends to be very serious and has a hard time letting go and just being silly. Laugh with each other. Teach them that it’s okay to mess up and then make it into a joke, right? Show them that, oh, I dropped the jar and broke it, but okay, that’s funny, you know, I got butterfingers, right? Make it into something silly that can be a joke. And I think that also remembering that it’s okay to break the routines, kind of as we talked about the perfectionist craves routine. They need things to be done a certain way, in a certain order. Show them that it’s okay, you can leave the house and maybe a couple chores didn’t get done, but that’s okay. We can leave it for later. It doesn’t have to all be done now. Structures and routines are meant to help us focus and get through our day. They’re not meant to be something that is debilitating to us or prevents us from getting other things done.
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: So, making progress toward our goals is also another intervention that you can use because helping your kids see the bigger picture and also realizing their mistakes and trip-ups as part of their journey. If they’re putting so much weight on small mistakes I think celebrating changes and little wins can also help a lot. So shift that weight from just focusing on what to fix and more like, let’s see all the progress you have made throughout. Also remembering to rest ‘cause a lot of kids who are perfectionistic or people would say, tend to always be in more state of like, I need to fix this or I need to work towards something.
So planning mindful breaks and also like helping everybody practice that well restedness and everyone taking a rest and letting go of things. So if you have a really busy day and you can’t get everything done, it’s okay to let it go and do some tomorrow or it’s not the end of the world if you don’t go through all of your lessons. It’s important to rest and sleep enough as well. And as we’ve been saying a lot, role modeling, healthy excellence. So, I feel like more often when we get angry at ourselves, we just start criticizing like, “Oh, I’m an idiot” or “Oh my gosh, I can’t do this right.” But also moving from that and kind of congratulating yourself if you’re doing it correctly, like I’ll pat yourself on the back, or I got this done in two hours. We’re going through the list quickly. So highlighting those a lot for your kids will also help them celebrate small progress or they’re noticing the whole progress of the project rather than like, what’s the end point, and these kids often tend to compare themselves to everyone else too. Just because like, you know, it’s, “Oh, it’s taking me two hours to do this or everyone else is probably getting it done faster,” but helping them kind of compare themselves to their past self, like what are some things that has changed, like you did this so much faster than when you were a little, or you did three goals instead of like last time. So helping them notice the progress within themselves can also help with shifting from fix it and seeing the whole progress.
Cindy Lopez: Dr. Geller, Dr. Ebadi, you shared so much with us today. So many good things that I’m sure our listeners are like, Oh, I’ll have to remember that. I have to write that one down. I’m wondering as we wrap it up, what do you really want our listeners to remember from this conversation today?
Whitney Geller, PhD: Yeah, I think that for me the takeaway really is we’re all looking for balance, both in our own lives and for our kids’ lives. And a little perfectionism is okay. You just need to make sure you keep it from spiraling out of control, and then continue to help your kids learn through modeling and showing them how you find balance and then helping them practice it themselves.
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: For me, I think, kind of moving from sometimes things are just good enough, and it’s okay to let it go. You can’t make everything perfect in life. That’s just carrying too many things, and you’re eventually going to drop something. So being okay with letting go, and then also kind of helping your kids be a better detective to catching doing things correctly and succeeding in it because they’re already good detectives on catching what they’re doing wrong. So helping them move from that to also celebrating little wins.
Cindy Lopez: Thank you so much. Both of you for sharing your insights and your expertise with us today with our listeners and to our listeners, thank you for joining us. If you are in a position where you’re feeling like your child’s perfectionism is really impacting them. I mentioned this in the podcast, but you can reach out to CHC. You can call us at 650-688-03625, or you can email the care team at careteam@chconline. org, and just tell them what’s going on, and they’ll connect you to the right specialist who can help you and your child. So again, thank you, Dr. Ebadi, Dr. Geller for joining us today and to our listeners.
Whitney Geller, PhD: Thank you for having us.
Marjan Ebadi, PhD: Thank you.
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