The Perfectionist

Posted by LisaV | 0 comments

When our firstborn son was two years old, I found the burgundy couch pillows perfectly lined up on the sofa cushions, one per cushion. A little later, when I bought him large-sized crayons, I showed our toddler how to place the crayons back in the box. However, he rearranged the crayons so all the tips pointed upward. I thought: What have I done? Did my perfectionist tendencies transfer to our son?

While he has largely outgrown these tendencies now at age 12, I see them more clearly in our second son whose handwriting has to be perfect and who cringes at the thought of ever failing.

What can we do to encourage excellence in our homeschool without pressuring our kids toward perfection? With a child who is already a perfectionist, we sometimes have to encourage him to relax. The lines don’t have to be perfectly straight. We don’t have to erase every imperfection on our handwriting page. We also encourage him to try new things, to accept some failure as part of the learning process, and to know when something is “good enough” even though it’s not perfect.

Our 9-year-old reminds me a lot of myself as a student–very studious and focused–someone who can finish a day’s schoolwork in an hour if everything is lined up and ready for him. He pushes himself to excel, trying to keep up with his big brother and often succeeding. I noticed this when he was very young.

When we started homeschooling at ages 4 and 7, the younger one would often call out the answers to the older one’s math problems. Our then 4-year-old pushed himself to read, as his older brother was doing. He could do it, though not without much stress. Our educational counselor advised us to put off reading for a while. I had mixed feelings about this, but eventually told our younger child that he didn’t have to read right now. The look of relief on his face told me this was the right decision. During his kindergarten year, we worked on phonics and then right before his first grade year, he picked up a book and started reading on his own.

Our younger son tends to be the perfect student, doing his work quickly and well. He’s ahead in most of his subjects, which seem to come easily to him. On the other hand, he takes things very literally and sometimes has difficulty with idioms and figures of speech. I had the same problem growing up, not gaining the deeper meaning of literature but only seeing the surface. Too much study can be weariness to the soul, so we encourage him to take breaks and rest if he seems stressed or has a headache.

Perfectionism may always be a balancing act for some, to accept a little messiness or imperfection without getting upset or stressed. My perfectionism has greatly decreased after I had kids, realizing that some things are more important than a perfectly cleaned home. As a homeschooler, I’ve let go of the perfect schedule in favor of more flexibility and fun in our learning times. May I instill this less-than-perfectionist attitude in our children as well.

Lisa (aka Morning Rose) has been teaching her two elementary-aged sons for four years and incorporating study, work, service, and play into their homeschooling days. She enjoys reading, writing, and photography and blogs publicly at Pockets of Time and privately at Scooter and B.