Social Researcher Brene Brown has studied a lot about perfectionism and what it is and isn’t. In her book “The Gifts of Imperfections,” she states, â€śPerfectionism is self-destructive simply because there is no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal. Additionally, perfectionism is more about perception—we want to be perceived as perfect.”

This makes me think long and hard about how we speak to our gifted students. Are we only praising them when they succeed? When they don’t achieve perfect scores on academic assignments, how do we talk to them? What messages are we sending our students? Don’t we want children everywhere to try new things even if they fail the first, second, or even a hundred times? When a child thinks they must be perfect at something to enjoy it, this will ultimately lead them not to take risks on anything in life.

Here are some steps to help our gifted students deal with perfectionism.

• Talk to them about your own mistakes. As educators, students often think we have never made a mistake in our own lives. Have age-appropriate conversations about our mistakes and failures and how they helped us grow and lead to future successes.
• The process is more important than the outcome. Often a gifted student will think of how something should look when it is completed, and if it doesn’t look that way, they will be defeated. Sit with them while working on something and talk through the process, asking questions about why they are doing something different. This will help them realize that the process is as important as the outcome. Explain to them that results don’t always look the way we expected them to, but that is ok and why the process is essential.
• Laugh! When it sometimes goes awry, laugh with them. Children will always look to the adult first to react. If you’re working with your gifted child and you make a mistake, you must laugh with them first, so they know it is ok to that a mistake was made. Then talk with them about what happened.
• Don’t make being a perfect part of their identity. This can be hard with gifted students who often excel, especially academically. Reward them for their excellent work but not so much that they think anything less than 100% on a grade means they are not good enough. This is especially important as they get older and are exposed to a more challenging curriculum.
• Set limits with your gifted child. Whether that is a time limit, a word count, or a problem count, setting hard defined limits will help children from becoming hyper-focused and help them learn about setting boundaries. At first, this will be a challenge as your child will want to continue to work but helping them know that it’s ok to take breaks and come back to something will help them in the long run.

I hope these tips can help you a little bit. I also want to reiterate that striving for healthy growth and success is not the same as perfectionism. We want to be the best version of ourselves, and we want the next generation to be the best version of themselves, but we must work towards this healthily. As Brene Brown says, “ stay awkward, brave, and kind.”

Jennifer is the Program Coordinator for , ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ’s pioneering summer camps that unite gifted young people ages 10-15 with experts in highly able youth. In a nurturing setting, campers explore and grow the intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects of their lives. Yunasa is the Lakota Sioux word for “balance.”

“Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is the only moment.”

-Tich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk

At Yunasa, we begin each psychosynthesis session with a similar directive. Tich Nhat Hanh’s words remind us that all of life is held in this moment; his words encourage us to smile and seek gratitude for the moment we are in. Psychosynthesis, as practiced at Yunasa, is meant to cultivate balance amongst its participants, whose minds are often swirling with thoughts, anxieties, ideas, and observations, and for whom a peaceful moment is a true gift.

The word “balance” connotes an array of ideas – time management, sanity, stress-control, and lithe circus professionals sauntering across tight ropes. At Yunasa and within all of ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ’s programs, we strive to impart the type of balance that helps us to understand and interact with every piece of ourselves in an effort to pursue wholeness. In his commentary, “The Heart of Understanding,” Tich Nhat Hanh refers to the five elements that comprise a human being as five rivers that flow through every one of us: “…the river of form, which means our body, the river of feelings, the river of perceptions, the river of mental formations, and the river of consciousness.” These “rivers” are “made by the other four,” he says. “They have to co-exist; they have to inter-be with all the others.”   Just as each limb, neuron, cell, blood particle, and organ work together to sustain physical existence, so do the body, myriad emotions, soul, mind, and relationships interconnect to create life experience. Thomas Merton, a Catholic Trappist monk, says, “There is in all visible things…a hidden wholeness.” We strive to be whole, to seek balance, because wholeness brings us closest to who we are – complex and alive.

The pursuit of wholeness requires vulnerability because it means that we are intentionally acknowledging parts of ourselves that are less developed, even broken. In our culture of social media, it is tempting to present a polished rendition of ourselves – the most attractive, the cleverest, the most sophisticated version – as though we are ashamed to reveal the bits that we are working on, the parts of ourselves that need help. If we are not careful, this tendency creeps into our real-world presentation of our self, as well; this self is safer, impervious, protected by the armor of contrived impeccability. To grow in understanding of ourselves, however, and to establish meaningful, mutually empathetic connections with others, we must embrace vulnerability. As Brené Brown, author and public speaker, discusses in the podcast On Being: The willingness to approach life with our whole heart cannot be less than our willingness to be broken-hearted.

“We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.”

-Thomas Merton

We must take risks to be whole. For a shy intellectual, it might feel terrifying to acknowledge his innate need to integrate into an accepting community, especially if he suffers from the internal vituperation of , when every word that he uses to forge a connection with another leaves him riddled with doubt. Likewise, understanding the connection between one’s emotions and her physical reactions, or engaging her physicality through outdoor adventures, might seem scary for the individual whose exceptional gifts are rooted elsewhere. Some of us prefer to eschew emotion altogether in an effort to remain focused on our work or to avoid the discomfort emotion sometimes renders. To live in relationship with ourselves and others, to pursue wholeness and balance, we must, with vulnerability and honesty, take the necessary risks. Yunasa is important because it is a safe, accepting place to take these risks and to delve into intensive learning about ourselves and our world.

This is our intention: to develop our ability to relate to others and our capacity to empathize with different perspectives; to explore and cultivate our blazing intellect; to create honest connections with the world, with nature, and with our community; to grow in understanding of our range of emotions – intense, subtle, tender, and wildly uncomfortable; to engage the intricacies of our spirit – both delicate and resilient; and to acknowledge the interconnectedness of each of these pieces – how they influence and inform one another at every moment.

In seeking balance, we are not striving to achieve equilibrium amongst every element of our personhood. Living in balance does not mean that one’s social skills are on par with her ability to reason, or that one’s physical agility matches her profound emotional reaction to beauty in nature or literature or art. Balance isn’t a strange and unnatural perfection; rather, balance is to understand the relationship between all of our parts – the developed pieces and the fragile ones. A musician does not employ every note of his instrument simultaneously or with equality; if he did, the result would be shrill and offensive. Instead, he creates an interaction between each of the notes; they complement one another, culminating in mellifluous accord – beautiful and alive.

Like this post? to receive more information and resources about gifted youth straight to your inbox.

Lisa is the mother of 3 gifted children and lives outside of San Francisco.

Every time I write about my kids, I’m afraid you’ll think I’m a whiner* or a braggart* or smug*. And it isn’t just when I write. I feel the same way when I’m talking with people I know. So I try not to write or talk about their accomplishments. Of course, my fear comes from my own insecurities (my husband tells me I care too much about what people think). But it also comes from the experience of seeing other parents of gifted kids get ridiculed for talking about their children. A neighbor’s child was called “the experiment” because his mother got him extra time in the kindergarten classroom. Blog posts like “” and “” berate parents for complaining about their first-world problems. Most of the time, I try to ignore these comments, put my head down and quietly work on my children’s behalf. My behavior, for the most part, gets my children what they need. The problem is that it robs me of what I need.

I need to feel connected.

I didn’t expect to find a connection when I ran into a 19-year-old boutique clerk with fuchsia hair. I immediately liked this girl after she recognized me 15 years after attending nursery school with my son. While exchanging updates, I told her about his new major: Storytelling. She got very excited and told me about a storyteller/researcher she admired. On the back of my receipt, in big loopy letters, she wrote, “.” I went home and watched the Ted Talk three times.

According to BrenĂ© Brown, connection is what gives meaning to our lives. To be connected, we must be vulnerable. The problem is that vulnerability is also at the core of shame– the belief that there is something about us that makes us unworthy of connection. So, people try to numb vulnerability through drugs, alcohol and food. Less obvious are those who seek to numb this feeling by making what is uncertain, certain; or pretending that what they do doesn’t have an effect on other people. These are the people who are convinced that parents are creating Frankenstein creatures when they get extra time in the classroom for their children. These are the bloggers who are so annoyed by the problems of others that they tell a segment of the population to “shut up.” The beauty of the last two reactions is that they feed right into my insecurities and silence me. I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t always know what to say. My children make me feel vulnerable. Maybe I should just be quiet.

My son is teaching me how to embrace vulnerability. During his ninth grade Identity and Ethnic Studies class, he made a video explaining the feelings he has about his sexual orientation. I was concerned when he posted the video on YouTube, so I checked the entry daily for unkind or cruel comments. Two thousand eight hundred views and two years later, he doesn’t have a single negative comment on his video. He allowed himself to be seen, and people responded with admiration. Fourteen years old and he was already braver than I was at 49.

So this Thanksgiving, I would like to give thanks to those people who embrace vulnerability. Thank you to the mothers who share stories of their gifted children’s personal struggles with an audience of people who may not understand or appreciate their pain. Thank you to the parents who face a potential backlash when they confront teachers and administrators to say their gifted child needs more than the school is offering. Thank you to the children who expose the personal details of their lives on the chance that some other child might benefit from their story. Thank you to the whiners, the braggarts and the smug because you make me feel connected.

*borrowed from the comment section of a blog about parents of gifted children.

Where do you find community as the parent of a gifted child? Please share in the comment section below.

Like this post? Please share!