Are You Raising a Perfectionist?

How to avoid the perils and pitfalls of intrusive parenting

By Sanya Pelini, Ph.D.

There are certain things we do as parents because we believe that we are acting in our kids’ best interests. Other times, we do things because we feel pressured to act in a certain way to ensure that we align with social, cultural, educational or even familyrelated expectations. But here’s the thing: Expecting more from our kids than they can achieve ultimately leads them to develop a self-critical attitude and what has been referred to as “maladaptive perfectionism.”

The good news is that several parenting strategies can help prevent intrusive parenting. Here are four things we need to stop doing in order to prevent our kids from developing a self-critical attitude.

Do not push your child too far. When setting expectations for children, we need to consider their level of development and what they are actually capable of doing. Having unrealistic expectations will only make your child more critical of themselves.

Avoiding pushing your child too far also means refusing to emphasize excellence. This could refer to academic excellence or excellence in extracurricular activities, such as sports, music or dance. When we emphasize excellence, children tend to find it harder to admit or even deal with mistakes and failures, which makes it more difficult to give them the support they need.

Do not overreact to your child’s mistakes. When we expect too much from our kids, we tend to overreact to their mistakes. When you focus on mistakes — and teach your child to focus on them as well — you encourage them to develop what pioneering Stanford University professor Carole Dweck refers to as a “fixed mindset.” People with a fixed mindset view mistakes as unchangeable.

Instead of focusing on mistakes, help your child develop a “growth mindset” by encouraging them to view mistakes as a normal learning process and by helping them to focus on what they can do in the future — or on the skills they need to acquire — to overcome setbacks.

Do not live your life through your child. Many of the choices we make for our children are based on our own past experiences, but that does not mean those choices are necessarily good for our kids. Before pushing children in a given direction, we need to think about whether we are doing it for them or we are doing it to achieve our unfulfilled dreams.

Do not be an intrusive parent. Abundant evidence suggests that children benefit when parents are involved in their lives, except in cases when they are overly present.

Researchers David Bredehoft, Ph.D., Jean Illsley Clarke, Ph.D., and Connie Dawson, Ph.D., have noted that doing too much or giving too much to children can “hinder them from performing their needed developmental tasks, and from learning necessary life lessons.” They say that parental intrusiveness and overindulgence prevent children from reaching their full potential.

Intrusive parenting can be defined by: • Doing too much for your children. Intrusive parents control almost everything their children do and refuse to allow them to experience age-appropriate control.

• Overnurturing. This means giving your child too much attention and preventing them from developing the emotional skills they need to effectively deal with emotion-provoking situations.

To avoid intrusive parenting, it is important to give children the tools and resources that will allow them to perform tasks by themselves, and to let your child make age-appropriate decisions. It is also important to avoid providing guidance for every decision they make.

If we want to raise children who are less critical of themselves, we need to teach them that obstacles are normal, and, more importantly, we need to show them that we believe they have what it takes to overcome them. ■ Sanya Pelini, Ph.D., transforms educational research into practical tools and resources on her blog Raising Independent Kids (raising-independent-kids.com).