By the very nature of being a complex human in a complex world, bringing up complex humans in a complex world, we will ‘mess up’ our kids. I’ve spent the majority of my life as a perfectionist. I’ve held the bar of self-expectation high and felt an insatiable desire to be the best at everything, from friendship to running.
We can just about scrape by on perfectionist ways in our life pre-kids. After all, perfectionism is praised in our culture, as it produces good work and neat people who 'fall in line'. However, in the most humbling, messy way, I have learnt that perfectionism categorically does not translate to parenting.
As a Psychotherapist to parents and a mother to three, I’ve also learnt that ironically, perfectionism in parenting hampers the ability to bring up healthy, happy children. In this article I am going to talk you through four things; Parents in my clinic bring to me two main reasons; and . .
A explored the impact of the overwhelming amount of parenting advice we have available. It concluded that those who feel worried about their parenting are more likely to search for answers online, yet those who spend a lot of time researching parenting advice, don’t actually report an increase in parenting confidence. You see, in many ways we live in a privileged digital age where we have access to a never-ending amount of information on how to ‘do’ parenting right.
We are told the ‘correct’ way to respond in each scenario, given scripts to repeat in.
