How to Parent a Perfectionist

One day, while helping a group of second graders with a project, I encountered a student who was thought to be an underachiever. The children were drawing a picture to go along with a poem they had written. As the other children in the group worked happily on their drawings, this one boy would begin a picture, scribble over it and begin again on a new sheet of paper. As the time came to an end, I encouraged him to finish the current picture he was working on, but he refused and wanted to start over again.

"It's not perfect," he told me, his face red with frustration. In the end he had no picture finished to turn in. The classroom teacher only shook his head. "He never completes his work," he told me.

Unfortunately, what neither his teacher nor his parents saw was that this boy was a perfectionist. What he needed was to be taught work skills instead of being written off as lazy or incompetent.

Perfectionist or Healthy Achiever

There is a fine line between a child who is a perfectionist and one who is a healthy achiever. As parents, we must first determine which personality our child has before we can attempt to help him cope with his traits. In its simplest term, the healthy achiever has drive while the perfectionist is driven.

The main characteristics of a perfectionist are: Setting high performance standards that can't possibly be attained; motivated by fear of failure rather than applying their skills toward success; self-worth is based on accomplishments; perfection is key, anything less than perfection is not good enough; expects to always be successful therefore does not enjoy when success is attained; procrastinates on work that will be judged; and work must always be perfect so they will re-do a project several times, no matter how long it takes, to achieve perfection. Other signs include: unwillingness to volunteer answers to questions unless certain of the correct answer and overly emotional and "catastrophic" reaction to minor failures.