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.”

The is within all of us. As I start writing this blog, I find myself typing and deleting, starring at the screen trying to brainstorm the perfect sentence to write. Perfect sentence to write? That sounds oxymoronic!

Perfectionism is often branded as a positive stereotype, whereas if a person is a perfectionist, he or she must already mastered their school/work, they are going above and beyond and do not require additional help – much like the positive stereotypes associated with the needs of a gifted student.

Perfectionism is defined as the disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable. When in reality being perfect is just a myth, people who struggle with perfectionism are left with doubts and unacceptability. Perfectionists often experience self-criticism, anxiety, and isolation, which can lead to lack of confidence, low self-esteem, and sometimes depression.

Gifted children – who exhibit , highly self-critical, and have a high standard for excellence – are prone to struggle with perfectionism. They crave the perfect feedback from their teachers and parents; they take great pride in being known by their peers as the person who knows the answer to everything; they believe, based on their experience, that learning should always come easy; and they are good at anticipating expectations and try to live their lives by the approval of others.

Perfectionism manifests itself in multiple ways, and the struggle can be a lifelong challenge. It is important to recognize the debilitating qualities of this trait, but trying to manage it or even overcome it, is certainly possible.

These are some of the techniques people have shared:

1. Value the journey

In so many cases, people put a tremendous amount of effort working toward their goal. Just because you fall short of your own expectations, does not mean you did not learn anything or you are a failure. The lessons and skills you learned along the way are valuable and can be applied to other tasks in the future.

Take exercising for example. It is one of the best ways to give value to progress. You may not be able to run a marathon in one week, but every time you run, you can feel the muscle ache and know that you are getting ever-so-closer to your goal. The end does not justify the means. The journey matters.

2. Meditate

Meditation is a great opportunity to catch up with your thoughts and regulate imagination. Rather than allowing your imagination to conjure the worst possible outcomes when you feel you have let yourself or other people down, take a mental “time out” and meditate. Meditation increases sensory awareness, and helps with self-regulation. It is a moment to practice leaving behind self-doubt and judgement to just focus on the power of now.

3. Practice self-compassion

When you feel overwhelmed with intense emotional stimuli, take a moment to practice breathing, and relive your favorite moment of the day. Take pride in small achievements of the day – did you make your bed this morning? What acts of self-care did you do? Asking positive mindset oriented questions can shift your mental state and lift you out of the dark place. Fill in the blank and remind yourself that “I am worthy of___.” No one is best at everything, all the time. Recognizing your potential and allowing yourself to learn from mistakes is a great way to practice self-compassion.

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Jennifer danced competitively for nine years growing up. Her dance career finished on a high note as a four-year letter winner on her college dance team.

Many gifted children are perfectionists who put a lot of pressure on themselves to perform at the highest level. Many are also prone to anxiety when put in high-pressure situations. Because of this, we often advise parents to help their gifted children find non-competitive extracurricular activities that will alleviate some of this pressure and allow the children to find their passions at their own pace and level. Sometimes, however, gifted children with the tendencies just described can find themselves passionate about something that is competitive by nature. You don’t want to discourage them from pursuing their passions, but you may see that perfectionism, anxiety, or introversion is getting in the way of their success – and happiness – in this competitive activity. So, how do you help your child in this situation?

I was an introverted, anxious, gifted child who loved to dance. Throughout my childhood, my parents had enrolled me in many extracurricular activities so that I could try new things and find something I was passionate about outside of school. At age 9, I took my first dance class and never looked back.

Dance class was good for me. It kept me active when the rest of the time I just wanted to read. It gave me a creative outlet to express myself. As someone who didn’t struggle (read: “wasn’t challenged”) much academically until high school, dance was something I liked but that I wasn’t automatically good at, so it also taught me a lot about pushing myself and setting goals and working towards them.

But dancing meant performing. What’s more, I enjoyed competitive dance. Competitions gave me constructive feedback, and they allowed me to work on something throughout the year and see progress from one competition to another. Plus, most studios in my area competed because doing so provided more opportunities to perform. I liked competitive dance, but the act of competing gave me tremendous anxiety. By definition, I was being judged. The stress competition created in me caused my body to react in seriously unhealthy ways. I couldn’t get myself to eat during competition; I didn’t get hungry and nothing tasted edible. I didn’t sleep the night before competition. My stomach would act up. The pressure affected my dancing – moves that I had mastered in the studio resulted in major bobbles onstage.

Susan Cain describes a similar situation . She was a competitive figure skater as a child, and the nerves that made some skaters the best in the world caused her to flounder.

Here are some tips from Cain:

• Help your child understand himself; identify the primary source of the anxiety – fear of public failure, for example – and encourage him to accept it once it has been named.
• Help your child understand that being nervous will not automatically equate to failure.
• Encourage your child to “enter low-stakes competitions far away from home, where she will feel anonymous and no one will know if she” fails (261).
• Help your child learn how to fail gracefully.
• Make sure that your child has practiced thoroughly.
• Try to arrange for your child to practice in the same environment in which he will compete if the location is unfamiliar.
• Talk through the consequences of failure in this situation, helping her see that life will go on if she makes a mistake or loses.
• Help your child visualize a successful performance or game.

Additionally, some helpful strategies my parents employed with me were:

• Remind your child that no one is perfect. Demonstrate this by pointing out your own imperfections over time.
• Teach your child that he does not have to be “the best” at anything. My parents did this by telling me that there will always be someone better than I at a given task. Unless your child is the undisputed champion of the world in the field of choice, this will hold true for him, as well. They then encouraged me to aspire and work towards being the best without expecting it to be the case.
• Make sure that your child has the opportunity to be as prepared as she can possibly be, and then remind her that that is the case. Plenty of practice at the 100% effort that your child puts into everything she does means that she did everything possible to prepare. That is the best she can do in that moment.
• Help your child remain focused on why he participates in this competitive activity. Bring him back to the love and passion for the activity that brought about the desire for participating in competitions in the first place.

Some of this is much easier said than done. However, over time, these lessons will hopefully become engrained in your child’s consciousness, until one day, she steps out on stage with just the right level of nerves to execute the best dance performance of her life and is completely at peace when that is not enough to win because she is really there to just do what she loves.

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Perfectionism is a quality that I struggle with first hand. Even as an adult, I find myself obsessing over errors in my weekend softball games and silently competing with the runner on the next treadmill at the gym. As a child, I would spend countless hours tearing out pages of sketchbooks and notebooks because there was a misspelled word, a fragmented sentence or even a smudge from my left-handed cursive. A mistake meant that the entire project had to be redone, because if everything didn’t line up perfectly, including my penmanship, it wasn’t worth turning in. Projects and deadlines became daunting, because how could the perfect drawing be executed in just one weekend? After spending time with gifted adolescents throughout the summer, I realized that this was a common trait in gifted students and that I was not alone. I have found ways to focus this perfectionism into more constructive goals as I’ve gotten older, but I still see the importance (especially with gifted children) of addressing the ever “strangling” concept of failure.

Perfectionism often points to “giftedness” because perfection in itself is an abstract idea. Looking for perfection is the thought of pursuing what is possible yet is not concrete in reality. Striving for something better, or reaching your full potential, is not a bad characteristic. However, it can take an emotional turn when you do not create balance in your life. “As with all dimensions of physical, cognitive and emotional well-being, the objective for children who have perfectionistic tendencies should be to find a healthy balance in which there is enough growth, but without undue and debilitating stress” (Matthews, Dona J., and Joanne F. Foster. 2005). Many times this overwhelming stress is an internal conflict that perfectionists impose upon themselves. However, extracurricular activities along with the daunting deadline can have the result of students losing initiative and procrastinating until the last minute. It’s rewarding to pursue excellence; it’s exhausting to disillusion yourself into thinking you’re incapable of completing the task at hand.

Now, as I reflect back on past personal experience, I see how making mistakes can be used as a learning tool. Open communication with students and consistent support is a great start to soothe the frustrations perfectionist behavior inflicts. It can be helpful to address the importance of rewording failures as “learning experiences”, and have faith in the perfectionist to reach his or her overall goals. Not once did I observe what I learned from scoring a 95% on a test. Learning should have been my priority as a perfectionist student, not the grade. This balance of errors and achievements is important for daily life. Without this willingness to take risks and face failure, there would be no innovation or modern day science.

When an assistant asked Thomas Edison, “Well, Mr. Edison, how do you feel about having 1,500 failures to your credit?” Edison replied, “No, they weren’t failures. We now know 1,500 light bulb filaments that don’t work!”

References

Matthews, Dona J., and Joanne F. Foster. Being Smart about Gifted Children: A Guidebook for Parents and Educators. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential, 2005. Print.

Silverman, Linda Kreger, and Leland Baska. Counseling the Gifted and Talented. Denver, CO: Love Pub., 1993. Print.

How have you or your kids worked through the challenges that come with perfectionism? Please share in the comment section below.

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Radiating Possibility is an inspirational video highlighting the insight of Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. In partnership with his wife, Rosamund Zander – an executive coach and family systems therapist – he created five key steps to radiating possibility. The short film gives viewers the opportunity to witness Ben in action as he conducts his orchestra and individually tutor musicians in a very unique way. He draws his students out of the competitive mindset of performance and, instead, pushes them to experience life in their talent and a real connection to their skill. His dynamic instruction, combined with Roz’s therapeutic intuition, opens up a vibrant world of possibility that lies beyond fears, habits and assumptions. Viewers discover that every human being brought into the world of radiating possibility will be encouraged to keep their song going.

For the gifted child, Radiating Possibilty is the perfect conduit for self-discovery in a world often times wrought with competition and pressure. At , we presented Radiating Possibility on the first night of camp and used it as a touchstone each day for accelerating the pace of interaction among peers. The goal was to give campers the courage to open their hearts and enter the dance, to drop the assumption that people aren’t interested in what they have to say.

The Zanders offer the following five steps to radiating possibility, each of which can be applied to help gifted children embrace themselves and their potential:

1. Sit in the front row of your life. Participate!
   After a rousing clip of Ben conducting his orchestra with so much gusto that the musicians around him grin from ear to ear, he exclaims, “Throw yourself into life like a pebble in a pond and notice the ripples!” Gifted children may feel pressure from themselves or their peers to minimize their focus in a particular field because it is “too much” or “too intense.” They often receive verbal and nonverbal cues from the community around them suggesting they hold back or “rein in” their passion, enthusiasm or contributions in order to fit in with the group. But when gifted students are inspired to participate, with whatever skill sets they bring to the table, they are given an outlet and a means of giving back to their community, their peers and their families.
2. When you make a mistake, say: “How fascinating!”
   Many gifted children struggle with perfectionism. Gifted children are well above average in certain areas, but they are still bound to make mistakes as part of being human. When gifted children practice looking in the face of failure; raising their hands, their voices and their eyebrows and shout, “How fascinating!”, they learn not to waste time dwelling on mistakes and to use mistakes as learning opportunities.
3. Quiet the “voice in your head.”
   When Ben is instructing a student, he says he is “dealing with the student and the person standing next to the student” who whispers statements of doubt and fear in the student’s ear. We can’t necessarily get rid of the voice in the head, but we can choose how we respond to it. Ben suggests we say, “Thank you for sharing, but I’m busy,” to that negative voice. When gifted children focus themselves on being a contribution, they are able to achieve great things. Giving credit to the voice in the head only conceals their special talents. The gifted community can benefit greatly from self-talk as a means to overcoming these negative voices so they are free to perform, showcase and contribute in a way that holds nothing back!
4. Live in radiating possibility. Become part of the song!
   The realm of possibility is all about dreams. In the dream world there are no barriers. The gifted mind is naturally full of possibilities and creative dreams. Allowing oneself to radiate in those possibilities takes practice. Practice begins with acting as if no barriers exist.
5. Invent a new game: “I am a contribution.”
   Ask yourself, “How will I contribute today?” In the classroom, in group settings, in peer relationships, gifted children should see what they have to offer as a contribution, not just evidence of individual talent. Whether it’s playing an instrument, competing for a title or even earning grades, each act of will viewed as a contribution builds on the feeling of being fully alive. When gifted children think of themselves as contributing to something bigger than them, rather than measured as an individual success or failure, they strengthen their emotional and social muscles and discover a renewed sense of energy.

Gifted people radiating possibility become powerful forces in our society for good. Let us be the parents, teachers, family and organizations that help silence the voice in the head and become part of the song!

Have you or your kids tried any of these steps? How did they work out? Please share with us in the comment section below!

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