When Jack Kochman was a toddler, he would ride his tricycle for miles. By the time he was 4, he was riding a bike with training wheels. But when it was time to ride a regular bike, Jack thought about every scenario in which something could go wrong. He could fall or hit a mailbox and, according to his mother, Eve, her son decided he never wanted to ride a bike again.
Jack, now 8, is a perfectionist. He overthinks situations, said Eve Kochman, and he wants to do them correctly on the first try. It is a behavior the Aurora mother of three knows well, because she is a perfectionist, too, struggling to feel satisfied that she has done the best she could once she has completed a task. She tries to assure her kids that they do a good job, but she knows they watch her unwitting example–especially after Jack turned to her one day and said, “I’m just like you. I want everything to be exactly right.”
Though perfectionism might be considered a desirable quality, it can be crippling for a child, experts say. It can hinder the learning process and even cause students who could otherwise excel to become underachievers.
“When children become so concerned with `What grade am I going to get?’ they stop having fun and taking the steps needed to explore new ideas and new possibilities. It makes it too stressful. There is no joy in it,” according to Joan Franklin Smutny, director of The Center for Gifted at National-Louis University in Evanston. “Learning should be about the joy of discovery.”
And because parents of perfectionists are likely to be perfectionists themselves, it can be especially difficult for them to help their children loosen up.
These parents’ struggle takes place amid a parenting culture that has been increasingly performance-oriented in recent years. This culture, according to Thomas Greenspon, a psychologist based in Minnesota and the author of “Freeing Our Families From Perfectionism” (Free Spirit Publishing, $14.95), is about scrambling for top places, with overscheduled kids devoting their childhoods to building resumes to get them into the best colleges.
“All they [children] have to do is walk out the door or turn on the television,” Greenspon said. “The pressure is all around them to pass this test, to be successful.”
An unattainable goal
All that pressure just exacerbates the problem for perfectionist children.
Perfectionism is several beliefs in one group, according to Greenspon. “It is a desire to be perfect, a fear of being imperfect and most essentially a kind of emotional conviction that if you fall short of being perfect, you’re not acceptable as a person.”
Human beings are not perfectable, he added, and therefore perfectionism is unhealthy and should be separated from the pursuit of excellence. Most perfectionists you talk to, he said, see it as a burden. Accomplished perfectionists are successful in spite of their perfectionism, he said, not because of it.
Psychologists estimate that every classroom has one or two perfectionists. They are found all along the intellectual spectrum, even though the behavior has mostly been noted in gifted children such as Jack Kochman, who is in a scholarship program with the Davidson Institute for Talent Development, a Reno-based non-profit organization for gifted children.
Jack has experienced a lot of success in his young life. He learned to read by age 2, and he understood multiplication before kindergarten. The boy who dressed as Harry Potter last Halloween is learning how to square a binomial in one of his favorite subjects, math, and yet mistakes bother him.
“It seems I haven’t learned it completely,” he said. “I’m not sure of it [the subject]. It seems that something is wrong.”
In gifted children, perfectionism may arise because of little experience with failure or because the school curriculum isn’t challenging enough. It also can turn up in children of perfectionists, like Eve Kochman, who also was identified as bright by test scores as a child.
But Greenspon said perfectionism also can develop in kids with an emotionally chaotic home life–for example, children of an alcoholic may feel that if they are “perfect” their parent won’t drink. Also, children who receive little attention may aspire to be perfect to gain recognition by parents.
Influence of nature and nurture
Kristie L. Speirs Neumeister, assistant professor of educational psychology at Ball State University, has studied the role of parenting in perfectionism. It can be an innate part of someone’s personality, she said, having witnessed a 3-year-old trying repeatedly to build a Lego tower, to get it just right.
But in her research, she found that the children who are most at risk for a debilitating form of perfectionism are those whose parents are authoritarian, meaning that they’re highly demanding and not very responsive. In those households children are not told, “I love you,” she said. Instead they are told, “Do well in school.”
Speirs Neumeister said parents need to communicate that they love their children unconditionally, and parents should never confuse achievement with the value of a child. They also have to show that it’s OK to make mistakes.
Karen Brammer, an Oak Park mother of a boy and four girls ages 10 through 17, says her whole family is perfectionist to varying degrees. A former graphic designer, she wants to impart to her kids that the perfectionist’s need to be exacting isn’t necessarily a bad trait. We need professionals, like brain surgeons, she said, who are precise. She built a dollhouse with one daughter to “demonstrate how to use those skills in a good way.”
At the same time, Brammer is concerned that a fear of making mistakes will hinder her children’s progress, so she emphasizes that errors are a part of life. She places quotes, such as the famous one by James Joyce–“Mistakes are portals of discovery”–around the house.
“They are reminders that mistakes are opportunities to learn,” she said.
Brammer also makes light of situations in which plans go awry–for example when she had less-than-delectable results from heating potatoes in the microwave.
“I told them that it’s OK,” she said, noting that it’s important to show a sense of humor. “Next time I’ll put them in the oven or boil them.”
Confronting the fear of failure
It also is helpful if parents encourage their kids to participate in activities they know they will not be the best at but will find worthwhile anyway.
“If they’re not athletically inclined, get them involved in a soccer or a swimming program,” Speirs Neumeister said. “If they don’t learn early on about failure, it will loom over them and they’ll obsess and have a fear of failing.”
Eve Kochman says she tries to get Jack involved in activities that are challenging but don’t necessarily involve a competitive atmosphere, such as playing piano.
“When Jack first started and he couldn’t play well the first couple of times, he cried,” she said. “But now he understands that it takes a week to learn the lessons for a reason. He’ll practice every day a little bit.”
Jack gave bike riding another try last summer because he wants to go cycling with his friends and his 6-year-old sister, Maggie, his mom said. He also likes to play baseball, because each position gives him something new to learn, which is what he really enjoys.
“I want to be a teacher or a professor in science or math,” he said, “because learning can be fun, and you get to create.”
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Signs that a child’s perfectionism is going too far
Here are a few signs parents can look for to see if their child’s perfectionism is interfering with his education, says psychologist Thomas Greenspon:
– “If your child is sitting and struggling and won’t write a paragraph until it seems perfectly done and they’re crumpling and throwing it away and obsessing about getting it this way or that, their anxiety may have crossed over the line,” he said.
– Some children procrastinate and don’t do schoolwork until the last minute, so they can blame a low grade on a lack of time, instead of facing what feels like a judgment of their ability.
– Children who believe their work is imperfect also make statements about their self-worth, calling themselves “stupid” or saying they can’t do anything right.
– If your child exhibits any of these signs, Greenspon advises that you sit down and talk to her about why it is, for example, she procrastinates. He said, “Don’t be discouraged if they shrug you off the first time. As a parent, it’s important to open the doors to communication to discover what’s going on.”
– If problems seem “intractable and acute,” he said, professional help might be needed because there could be signs of a mental disorder such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.
— R.S.
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q@tribune.com
