All my life I have set for myself unreachable standards of perfection. I have eyed my fall-shorts and felt the disappointment needling me, and I have heard that voice of condemn whispering it: Do better.
And I walked it right into my parenting.
Just last night I listened to a talk about how parents should shoot for Bs in our parenting, not As, work toward becoming a good parent, not a great one, how the high standards of parenting can affect us and our children and knock us right out of alignment, and I felt the truth freeze my bones.
Because I know how we can expect too much, always-perfect behavior from these little ones trying to find their way in a so-confusing world, and I know how their mistakes can become our failures if we’re not careful, and I know how suddenly we can have a dog in the fight, a mean one that demands and punishes to break and loses sight of the gift hiding in those mistakes-turned-learning-experiences.
We can grip knuckle-white-tight those unreachable standards for our children because everything they do in their lives reflects on our perfection. And perfectionism, the pursuit of it, can start eating away at us, bit by little bit, when he throws that pencil in frustration because it’s cleanup time and he wasn’t finished with his picture yet, and we’ve told him and told him and told him about these laws of anger, how he shouldn’t throw anything or hurt anyone or destroy anything; when he sneaks downstairs to steal an apple, even though it’s bedtime and we’ve told him and told him and told him this is not allowed; when he brings those cars into his bed from the bathtub, hiding them under pillows, even though we’ve told him and told him and told him it’s not time to play, it’s only time to sleep.
It eats away at us until we explode, because all those mistakes are our parenting failures, because we haven’t done enough to train them or we haven’t tried hard enough to change them or we haven’t been enough to show them.
We can put that pressure on ourselves, on our children, until it bends us all clean in two, and who is the winner in this too-high-standards place?
Our children, walking away from every encounter feeling as if there’s something deep-down wrong with them because we are there, standing over them, shaking fingers at them, always needing more and demanding more and taking more than they can give, even though we know, deep down, it’s more than anyone can give.
Who in this world is perfect every hour of every day? And why do we expect it, knowing the answer?
“It’s not wrong to long for perfection,” says Kay Warren. “It’s just wrong to expect it on earth.”
Perfectionism is like a great black smoke-cloud, choking our joy, hiding play, stealing the adventure that is parenthood, because it covers the beauty of those mistakes that become learning opportunities not just for the children, but for us, too, the parents. When I accept my children for who they are and not who I wish they would be, my joy takes wing in a heart that sees it true: how every mistake is but a chance to teach and connect and love more deeply and surely than before.
How do we learn if we never fail?
So maybe we read that note from a teacher, about a little boy who had to sit out a portion of his recess because he didn’t want to give a lunch-duty teacher his book when she told him he needed to eat his lunch before he read, and, while our face flames, we remember how this experience, this mistake, this talk-back and the later talking through will shape who he becomes, and we don’t hold it over his head as a don’t-ever-cross-again bar of perfection. And maybe he spills that second glass of milk this morning, even though we told him not to play at the table while he’s eating, and we hand him that towel to clean it up for the second time, and we ask “What could you have done differently?” instead of pointing anger-words toward a child-heart, because we remember that here is an opportunity to learn from a happened-again whoops. And maybe we see him hit his little brothers because he’s asked them to leave him alone and they don’t understand, just want to play, and we remember this, too, is a step along the road to becoming if we only choose to correct and teach in love.
We find joy in the imperfection, in the mistakes, in the failures, because we know what they hold within them: the potential for who we become.
This essay is an excerpt from March: We Choose Joy. Adventure. Play, Episode 3 of Family on Purpose. For more information about the Family on Purpose project, visit the project landing page.
