From the desk of Tammy Hayes, Middle School Principal:

Wow, what a title for a middle school blog, right?  Indeed, it is. I am moved for several reasons to write about this phenomenon that I believe has invaded our culture over the past few years and some of the way it plays out at home with your children, particularly as they become teens.  Of course, I am a middle school principal, so I will focus on this age, but I believe perfectionism has the power to discourage intimacy in any relationship where it takes the front seat.

What are we really talking about?

Dictionary.com describes it as a personal standard, attitude, or philosophy that demands perfection and rejects anything less.

There are two words in this definition that stand out to me and deserve attention.

The first one is demands and the second one is rejects.

Let’s start with demands. Strong imperatives come to mind, like must, insistent, and ultimatum. I don’t know about you, but none of these words are very endearing. Instead, they are words used to identify a lack of wiggle room or openness to what might be construed as less than ideal. You might say that you don’t perceive yourself as perfectionistic, believing that you accept less than the absolute best all the time from those around you. However, the mere fact that you perceive that you know what is the absolute best is indicative that you might not realize your position on such things. However, I can assure you, those around you experiencing your tendency toward such an attitude can often feel the downfall of not measuring up in your eyes.  This could show up in a variety of ways, and you may think you are framing your responses to your child in such a way that they don’t feel your frustrations, but when we let someone down, we know it. It is evident in their reactions toward us, their look, and their attitude toward our failure. Sometimes, it is even communicated merely in the way you breathe as you redo it your way.  It primarily shows up in the form of disappointment. And in my opinion, this is the element that most interrupts relationship, especially when it happens repeatedly over time.

If you find yourself, often frustrated because your children aren’t holding to the standard of excellence you expect, following your perfect example, or following your line of thinking or standard of living, be aware that you may be setting yourself up for difficulty later in the relationship expressly because you will find yourself disappointed which will inevitably be translated to your teen without your realizing it is even happening. Typically, when teens repeatedly feel they have let someone down, especially a parent, they withdraw from the task altogether, or try very hard not to engage with their parent unless they have to do so. If you cannot understand why your teenager is avoiding you, it might be worth an inspection of the predominant conversations you find yourself having with him/her. Are your conversations aimed at getting to know what is in the heart of your child, caring about their day, their struggles, or their passions?  Or do most of your talks end up being about why they did or didn’t do what you asked or didn’t do it the way you wanted them to do it? Worthy introspection will allow you to make adjustments in your language, your choice of conversations to have at the dinner table, or your ability to connect with them on a heart level about things that matter.

The second word, rejects is basically the product we get when we repeatedly find ourselves demanding from others what they feel is unattainable, or when we express repeated disappointment for how they have done something we wished they had done “better” when we really should be saying, “differently.”  We receive rejection from our children in a variety of ways, mostly in passive behaviors such as avoidance, half-hearted compliance, ignoring, and/or sometimes for the more vocal child, angry outbursts about not ever making you happy.  Teenagers will often interpret your disappointment in them as rejection, and in turn, reject you as a means of surviving the situation as best they can until the moment has passed. Nevertheless, rejection begets rejection, and this is a formula for killing the relationship, instead of growing it or endearing it toward a positive place. One other note worth bringing up, is that sometimes parents think that they can cloak a disappointment inside a suggestion for how to do something differently next time, or have you ever tried it this way? Just remember, teenagers are smarter than we are! They know all our tricks and catch our deceptive attempts to get them to the place we wish them to be.  Their radar for such conversations is well-tuned, and they will again, reject you most every time.

So what’s a parent to do to teach their teens that real life has a standard, and they will have to meet it or else?

Change the dance you do.  Instead of getting frustrated that it isn’t done to your liking, take time to teach the skill to your teen before inspecting their efforts. For example, you may have a preferred way to fold the towels.  Spend time on the front-end showing them and letting them practice. Explain why you think this is the best way for your family. So, no one is saying that there is only one way to fold a towel, but there may be a way that suits your cabinet best and provides the best amount of room for other items.  Be sure not to major on the minors. IF they get it mostly right, a few seams aren’t lined up but all is in the right place, let it go.  They will get to that when they are older. It is good to remember that developmentally, your teen is in process and will grow in his/her care to be exact. However, if they do a haphazard job, call them back and give them a chance to correct it, re-showing it to them if needed. At the end of the exercise, you are aiming at maintaining a relationship with your teen and encouraging a standard. The most important goal is maintaining relationship, not how the towel is folded.

Perfectionistic tendencies are growing to be sort of a “bragging right” among parents about their teens. I hear them even say their children are perfectionistic like it is a good thing, or something they are proud of. While a teenager showing care for how something is done might be a rare thing, in most situations when teens move into requiring perfection of themselves great stress is created and can lead to emotional difficulty, even in the form of self-harming if taken to an extreme.  Rather than applaud their tendency to over-think something that in the big picture really doesn’t matter to the order of the world, we should encourage our teens to lead balanced lives, to do their best with what they attempt, and to accept that it will not and should not be perfect. This is really best done by example. They are listening hard to how you accept your own efforts to complete a task, or how you feel about what you have or haven’t accomplished.  They take much of their cues from how we handle ourselves and the outside world around us in the day to day.

So what really matters here?

All in all, I really just wanted to raise a flag of awareness to remember that most teens want to please their parents. That is the norm. They want to be thought well of and appreciated for their efforts, even when they aren’t perfect-which if you have been tracking with me, isn’t possible or the goal! And the end-all to what really matters with your teen is that you preserve your influence and your relationship with them during the teen years, so that later on when the decisions of life matter a whole lot more than how to fold a towel, you have their respect, and they know they have your unconditional love.