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The Perfect Child: How to help perfectionist kids

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series The Perfect Child

I have clients who are perfectionists and they know they are perfectionists. They have been to some form of counseling or have seen psychologists and they claim that things have become worse since they discovered their perfectionism. The label “Perfectionist” has allowed them to justify their behavior and that has increased the friction in their relationships even more.

Most of them came for life coaching when they reached rock bottom in their relationship due to their high demands when their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, friends, work colleagues or even boss said, “Get lost!” and kicked them out of the relationship or left them.

In the previous post on perfectionism, I wrote about ways to assess whether you or your children are perfectionists. In this chapter, I will give you some tips to help perfectionists. If you want to use them to help a child, remember that your goal is to plant those thoughts into your child’s mind or create circumstances that will help them overcome the fear that is associated with things not happening exactly the way they want them to.

I hope these tips will help you help your perfectionist child and if you need the help yourself, translate them into adult vocabulary and your own circumstances and make perfectionism a period in your life, not a lifestyle.

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The Perfect Child: Is your kid a perfectionist?

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series The Perfect Child

As a life coach promoting happiness, I find myself talking a lot about perfectionism as an obstacle on the way to a happy life. After researching the science of happiness and seeing thousands of clients, including many parents and children, I can tell you that happiness and perfectionism cannot live in the same body. They are like the good and the bad wolves living in your body and when you feed one, the other one starves.

The problem with perfectionism is not only that perfectionists are not happy but also that those who are close to them are not happy either because of it.

Many grownup perfectionists started out as perfectionist kids. In my kids’ assessments, I can tell if a child has a tendency towards perfectionism from age 3. Most people believe this cannot be helped. Some kids are born perfectionists and that is that, but I think this attitude makes our life much harder, because repeating this mantra guarantees there is nothing we can do about it.

Much like any other “disease”, perfectionism can be cured and the best time to do it is during early childhood, before the child develops strong behavior patterns that are hard to change.

I also believe that the best people to cure child perfectionism are parents, because their love for their child will help them overcome the resistance.

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Predictably Happy Kids

As parents, we are supposed to do what is best for our kids. One of the biggest choices we all need to make is how to develop our kids when they too young to choose for themselves. Obviously, without being able to see into their future, this could be a case of the blind leading the blind.

But maybe it does not have to be.

In the past few days, I have been reading an excellent book called Predictably Irrational by Professor Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT. In one of the chapters, he describes experiments that show humans are so sensitive to loss they do everything they can to avoid losing even things they could have, but do not actually have. One of these things, he says, is options.

In his description, he give parents’ decision-making about their children’s development as an example of how irrationally expensive it is to keep our kids’ options open. If you do the math, he says, you see that spreading the family resources over 4 different activities each week, say ballet, piano, art and karate, means your child makes 1 unit of progress in each of them every week, as opposed to choosing just one activity, say piano, which would allow the child to make 4 units of progress every week and become really good at it.

I was tempted to agree, and this post was almost about how much his point made sense, but then Eden and I went for our morning walk (it is so great she starts late on Wednesdays) and reviewed her life, the lives of Tsoof and Noff and those of other kids we know, and my view of this issue changed completely.

Read Predictably Happy Kids »

Wonders of Creation

Are your kids the most precious, amazing and wonderful things in the world?

If you are not sure, keep reading.

Parents, like most people, often view the world in absolute terms – “This is pretty”, “This is wrong”, “This smells good” or “How rude!” Naturally, the way they view their children is similar. They break each child down into separate properties, such as looks, math skills, strength and manners, and assign a rating or a score to each one of these important aspects in each child.

The result is disappointing more often than not, simply because nobody is perfect in every way, let alone kids, who undergo big changes and have not mastered every rule in their parents’ book. This is particularly apparent during the teenage years, when even calm and obedient children turn into full-sized, defiant and opinionated creatures. Many parents of teenagers are so focused on what their sons and daughters are not doing (right) they have a hard time remembering how they behaved last year, when they were still in primary school.

But your kids are the most precious, amazing and wonderful things in the world.

Really.

First, consider the odds of any of them being born at all. Out of thousands of potential partners in your life, you have chosen only one to have each child with. That child would not be the same if you had chosen anybody else.

Out of hundreds of eggs and billions of sperm, only one sperm combined with one egg to produce each child. The odds of having that particular child with those particular physical traits and basic character make winning the lottery seem like a sure thing.

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Me Too

Kids go through many periods as they grow up, including the “What?” period, the “Why?” period and the “No!” period. Each one of them serves a purpose and, if the parents go through it well, the children develops another healthy part of their character and understand the world a bit better. But the “Me too” period seems to last all the way through childhood, adolescence and sometimes never ends…

From the parents’ perspective, “Me too” can be very annoying, because kids sometimes ask for really inappropriate things, but for children learn about the world by observing and mimicking others, so there is nothing more natural and healthy than wanting what the others have or trying to do what the others are doing.

In our family, 10-year-old Noff is much younger than Tsoof (16) and Eden (23), so when she wants something they have, they used to get upset, until they got used to it.

When she was little, we often tried to respect her choice of food, so we asked her what she wanted to eat, gave her some options and helped her prepare the food she liked. But often, when she sat at the table, she saw that Eden had something else to eat and seemed to be enjoying it very much. Noff would promptly forget she ever wanted anything else and ask Eden to share.

“Eden, can I have some mango too”, she would say.

“But you said you wanted cereal”, Eden would complain, “I brought enough mango for me, because you wanted something else”.

“Yes, but now I want mango too”, Noff explained, as if that was the most obvious an innocent thing in the world. And for her, it was.

Read Me Too »

Reading Skills for Kids

Most of the new information kids receive at school comes from reading. Even if that information is on the computer, they still need to read it. So if there is something you need to do well as a parent, it is to make sure your kids read well, that they understand what they read and that they read in order to find and use information.

Kids are not born with reading skills, but they still need them to build their knowledge and understanding. We develop these skills in them by reading for fun or by reading to get information.

Although I believe that reading for fun is very important and can help increase your vocabulary and understanding, I think it is limited, because kids cannot check on their own if they understood the stories or not. Many books have layers of understanding and the young reader cannot tell which layer he or she is reading at and what they might be missing.

School is pretty much the only place where we can check kids’ understanding and help them develop their reading skills and teachers are qualified to tell which level of reading and which reading skill is expected at each age, but as a parent, there are things you can teach your kids at home that will help them greatly with their reading development.

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Unlocking Creativity

I believe that all people have some creativity in them. It may not be the same form of creativity and it may not be the same level, but we all have the capacity to create.

Creativity is the art of making something new and original. We can expose our kids to making things from a very early stage and that will boost their self-confidence and their flexibility. The good thing about being creative is that it helps when you need to solve problems. Creative people are better problem solvers, because they are able to take a solution from one area of life and apply it in another area.

Children are in “learning mode” during most of their childhood. They try things, fail and learn and this grows their confidence. We all want to have creative children, so when they are not, before we start with the Genetics mantra (“He’s not a creative child. Some people are born with it and some aren’t”), we should examine our parenting style and how it locks or unlocks this creativity. Yes, there are people who are born with high creative potential, but I tend to think they need to be stimulated enough to actually reach a high level of creativity.

I think parents hold the keys to their children’s creativity. No matter how genetically creative your child is, you can help them be more creative. Your attitude will determine if your children keep trying or label themselves as “not good with those things”, which is worse than not being able to create.

Over the last 25 years, I have worked with thousands of children that talk about their ability to create in a bad way. You might think, “Well, maybe they discovered they were just not very creative”, and I say”

You cannot discover you are just not good at creating. You can only be blocked from discovering that you are.

Read Unlocking Creativity »

Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Decision Techniques

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series Kids' Declaration of Independence

As with most things in parenting, prevention is a better approach than putting out fires. Prevention is done when you are calm, cool and collecting, while putting out fires is always when things are heated and you and your kid are both emotional and confused. Teaching your kids techniques that will help them make good decisions quickly will make them more independent and ensure they will be able to fulfill their own needs. In return, this will reduce your parenting burden and make you more confident they can manage once they leave home.

Here are some more things you can do on a regular basis when you are relaxed that will help you send a message of respect to your kids and strengthen their “choice muscle”.

Some kids are afraid that because they cannot see a way out, they are stuck. We all get stuck when we do see no option that will get us out of a painful situation or get us to a desired situation.

That is OK, because thinking of options is a skill that needs to be taught. Ask your child, “What’s the worst that can happen?” or “What can go wrong?” or “Tell me the craziest solution you can think of”. It is important to think of options and while I suggest coming up with crazy things, I would like to emphasize you should aim for solutions, not problems. If you focus on endless possible problems, you are going to find them. Looking for many problems is a dangerous zone that may create more fear than help.

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Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Teaching about Choice

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series Kids' Declaration of Independence

Many parents understand the importance of helping their kids make good choices, but they are not sure how to go about it. This post is dedicated to those who want to promote their kids’ independence and help them develop an emotional backbone and confidence, but do not know how.

Accept choice as part of life

Be open and share with your kids stories about situations that have made it hard for you to make choices and how you have solved your dilemmas. It is very important for kids to understand that those situations are part of everyday life and our life is full of choices. Kids generally feel small and helpless and when they understand that you, their almighty parent, feel small and helpless sometimes, that you are not always sure what to do, that you are even afraid sometimes, it will help them be more tolerant towards their own difficult choices. If you talk to them about bad choices you have made and how you have grown from them, that will be of great service to your kids, because they will be able to learn from them too.

Read Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Teaching about Choice »

Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Opportunities

This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series Kids' Declaration of Independence

I know many grownups that cannot choose. It just so happened they were kids who could not choose and their parents did not help them overcome this. Not being able to choose is being overwhelmed by choices. Sometimes, it is so severe they struggle even when they have only two options to choose from. For some, it is a character trait (those kids seem to be procrastinators), but most have just had no chance to practice choosing and enjoy the ride.

The best way to get over this is to teach kids strategies for making decisions and to give them opportunities to practice. The most wonderful thing is that you need to do it systematically only for three weeks to start noticing change. Many of my clients, even those parenting babies and teenagers, say their kids have fewer “tantrums”, they express themselves better, it is much easier to communicate with them and they are more confident, more decisive and less “hormonal”.

Kids need to learn to make choices and it is our job to give them opportunities to do so in situations that are not so critical to allow them to gain confidence and learn that there are advantages and disadvantages to the options in front of them. You can give your kids opportunities in many areas of life.

In our home, we have been creating systematic ways to give the kids opportunities to make choices regarding food. They can choose what they want for dinner, what to make (if they are making it), what to buy from the market and how much to put on their plate.

When I was a girl, my mom used to serve us food and we had to eat whatever she put on our plate. Sometimes, she would put too much and we were forced to finish it. I never liked it and always thought it did not show respect to us kids and did not help us make our own judgment about how much would make us feel full. Kids can always have “seconds” and no one likes waste. Gal and I decided that in our family, the kids would serve their own food. When they were too young, we put a little bit and asked them, “One more spoon?” or “Would you like some more?” before putting it on their plate. Kids need to learn to say to themselves “That is enough for me” or “That is too much for me”. Let them serve their own food.

Read Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Opportunities »

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