Helping Children Cope with Perfectionism

PARENTING & TEACHING TIPS - PERFECTIONISM

WHAT TO DO:   

  • Acknowledge the perfectionism, identify, own and appreciate it
  • Don’t try and ELIMINATE perfectionism, just help your child learn to COPE with it


RECOGNIZING THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PERFECTIONISM:

  • The AGGRESSIVE perfectionist
  • The PARALYSED perfectionist
  • The EXHAUSTED perfectionist

RECOGNIZING THE SIGNS:

  • Overly high expectations of self and others
  • Not starting anything, for fear of not being perfect
  • Constant desire to do everything in a precise & exact manner


UNDERSTANDING WHY CHILDREN EXHIBIT PERFECTIONISM:

  • Asynchrony between thoughts and abilities
  • Accustomed to success / unfamiliar with failure
  • Complicating tasks to motivate themselves


DEVELOPING MORE REALISTIC ATTITUDES:

  • Speak directly / confront the issue
  • Discuss coping with failure (less than 100%)
  • Encourage them to give themselves permission to fail
  • Emphasise the PROCESS not the product
  • Discover the joy of EXPLORATION
  • Encourage and praise risk taking
  • Learn to let certain things slide


DEVELOPING SKILLS TO HELP COPE WITH PERFECTIONISM:

  • Learning through mistakes
  •  Developing a realistic self perception
  • read biographies of famous people and their mistakes
  • Setting realistic goals
  • “It’s okay to be perfectly wonderful in some areas and perfectly awful in others” (Winebrenner, 1996)
  • Set short-term / achievable goals
  • Model ‘coping with failure’ and trying again


COPING WITH FAILURES:

  • Ensure children attribute / see their failures:
  1. AS SPECIFIC – don’t generalise
  2. AS TEMPORARY – not permanent
  3. AS A RESULT OF ACTIONS – not a result of their personality
  • Encourage children to be BRAVE or CLEVER in trying again or considering an alternative solution
  • Model appropriate responses / behaviours and discuss feelings of frustration and disappointments of your own


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MOTIVATIONAL POSTERS - Perfectionism