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How hard should our child strive for perfection?
He's extraordinarily talented. Should we push him to excel?
by Dennis O’Brien
No. Stop promoting expectations that might be possible, but might also ultimately be destructive. Instead, identify realistic and healthy goals you can guide your child to pursue. Unhealthy expectations pose serious dangers for talented children.
Children who face this jeopardy come from loving, well-educated families and, if helped to develop in a healthy fashion, will make significant contributions to our society.
But sometimes it does not work out so well. With a little misguided help from their parents, many talented children drive themselves crazy trying to achieve perfection. Their sense of identity and personal well-being get tangled up in the notion that they must be the best at whatever they undertake. Pushing for perfection often backfires by sending a child the message she must be perfect—or she's a failure.
Some of these children defend themselves against the pressure to excel and the pain of failure by deliberately underachieving or refusing to try many activities that they may actually enjoy just because they fear they cannot do them "perfectly".
Talented but misdirected kids too often define themselves by their achievements. They live in a black and white world, and "being best" at whatever they do becomes the enemy of being good enough at a variety of things they might enjoy and benefit from.
That's tragic, and it's also why they need to learn to do things "poorly". Often in life doing something well enough is more important than doing it perfectly. This is another reason why goals need to be both realistic and healthy.
Parents must help academically talented children keep life in perspective and activities in balance. Gifted kids who don’t learn to live a healthy, balanced life may place terrible pressures on themselves until they snap, frequently when they begin college. More than a few National Merit scholars drop out to wait tables and write the great American novel. Here are some tips for raising a healthy, well adjusted child:
Examine your own values and attitudes.
- Begin with an honest self-assessment. Do the unspoken norms of your family require perfection? To what extent are you inflicting success-at-all-costs values on your children by the way you lead your own life, plan activities or communicate? How does your child reflect this?
- Discuss your concerns with your spouse. Identify current challenges and the gains your child seems to be making to become a well-rounded person with appropriate goals and behaviors. Make sure you and your spouse are on the same page so that you can send your child a clear, compelling message.
Help your child set appropriate goals and plans to pursue them.
- Evaluate how your child defines failure. Is success too important? Will your son work hard even if not rewarded by complete success? Is he defensive when he falls short, or can he shrug it off and keep going?
- Help your child set reasonable goals and develop a practical plan to achieve them. Can you help your daughter redefine success in terms of making a reasonable effort, not perfection? "Not perfect" should not mean failure. The real failure is staying on the sidelines of life and not trying at all.
- Help your child develop a strategy for school. Does your child know how much he needs to study to earn an acceptable, though not a perfect, grade? Does he realize he doesn’t have to know everything to be prepared for a test? How important is an "A" on a fourth-grade French quiz? Has getting all "A's" become more important than learning? Than being well-rounded?
- Train your child to recognize when it is really important to do her best and when "good enough" is good enough. Never say, "Just do your best" unless the circumstances really call for it. This will allow your child to do well—or "poorly"—enough to succeed and still have a life! When should a child "do her best"? That depends on priorities and circumstance. For some, it might be taking a school entrance exam such as the ACT. For others, it may be memorizing her lines for a school play. The take-home message is that not everything a child engages in can be a top priority. Help your child sort it out.
- Encourage but don't pressure. We all want our children to work hard and accomplish much, but pressure usually backfires. Gifted children are not inherently lazy and do not need to be flogged through life. Praise your child's efforts and risk-taking, not the results. Parents have to be extraordinarily alert to avoid putting too much pressure to achieve on children who seem to have the most promise.
- Empower your child to develop a sense of self. Encourage her to pursue her personal interests and talents. Be careful not to inflict your ambitions on her. Far too often, high achievers are pushed to pursue their parents' dreams so vigorously they don't have time to develop their own. No wonder the pre-med student shuts down her freshman year: she no longer is willing to pay the price required to fulfill her mother's ambitions for her.
- Nurture a well-rounded child. Encourage him to participate in a variety of activities, which are fun or enriching, even if they are not venues in which he excels. Praise your child's participation and his efforts, not his performance.
- Be sure to stress your interest in your child's social skills and progress developing relationships with peers. Too often parents of gifted students focus narrowly on their child’s academic progress—especially grades—to the detriment of the development of the whole child.
Don’t enable irresponsible behavior.
- Expect appropriate social behavior and reasonable efforts to achieve healthy goals your child has set. Hold the line on this. However talented your child may be, she needs to learn to live in the real world, get along with others and behave responsibly.
- Don't make excuses for your child. Parents of gifted kids often do, and it drives professionals crazy. Who wants to hear mom say, "He only did it because his older brother does that to him?" Sure, and who lets older brother get away with that? Besides alienating others, parental excuse-making damages the child. Parents who rescue and excuse their child's behavior actually enable him to misbehave repeatedly and avoid responsibility for his actions.
- Examine your motives if you are tempted to excuse your child's misbehavior. Some parents make excuses because they doubt their child can live up to their expectations. Others make excuses because they are anxious and want their child to be seen doing everything perfectly—beginning in preschool. Having the perfect child proves how wonderful they hope they are. Of course, in reality, it does nothing of the kind. It actually signals a parent's personal insecurity and inability to separate her life from her child's and to parent responsibly.
Bottom line: Assure your child that you want her to be happy, well-rounded and enjoy activities with friends. Then follow up with parenting strategies that will make this possible.
For more information regarding Gifted Resource Council, please call the GRC office at 314-962-5920 or e-mail us at: info@giftedresourcecouncil.org.
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