Perfectionism isn’t healthy for children: Here’s why

Kids who are called over-achievers are often perfectionists. While it’s good for children to have high expectations of themselves, affinity for perfectionism is a serious problem that can greatly affect children’s physical and mental health. Perfectionists tend to hold themselves to unrealistic standards and work with an all-or-nothing mindset. Perfectionism can be classified into three categories: 

• Other-oriented perfectionism: In this case, an individual sets an unrealistic standard of performance for others. 
• Self-oriented perfectionism: This is characterised by the incredibly high expectations of the self. 
• Socially prescribed perfectionism: People in this category operate on the assumption that those around them hold them to unrealistic standards of performance. 

All three of these categories can be quite harmful for children. 

How is perfectionism harmful? 
The enormous pressure that perfectionists put on themselves to produce output that they themselves can be satisfied with can cause quite a few problems for them. 

• Anxiety over mistakes and accidents: Perfectionists tend to develop a fear of failure where even the possibility of making the smallest mistake can cause a lot of anxiety. It hinders them from trying new things or things they aren’t already good at. 

• Emotional repression: The compulsion to appear perfect on the outside causes children to hide away their problems and issues and suffer silently when they are experiencing turmoil. 

• Sensitivity to criticism: Perfectionists put immense effort into everything they take up. Any negative comments about their work can affect them negatively with a much larger intensity than usual. They become unable to take constructive criticism and lash out. 

• Procrastination: Perfectionists often find themselves worrying over not producing the best output on the first go or not being able to maintain their quality of work and engage in avoidance behaviour. This means they tend to put off tasks and have trouble making decisions which leads them into an unending cycle of worry. 

• Stress: The pressure they put on themselves to perform to their highest capacity at all times leads to them being in a constant state of stress. This can have adverse effects on their physical and emotional health. 

• Other mental health issues: Perfectionist tendencies leave children much more vulnerable to mental health issues like depression, anxiety, etc. because of the amount of stress they put themselves under. 

What causes perfectionist tendencies? 
Studies show that there are quite a few factors that can contribute to children developing a perfectionist mindset. Academic pressure from teachers and parents alike makes children obsess over their grades and scores. This leads them to tie their self-worth to their academic performance which eventually lowers their self-esteem. The desire to gain acknowledgement and admiration from peers and adults causes them to indulge in people-pleasing behaviour which also leads to pressurizing themselves to perform better consistently. Superlatives like “smartest kid in class” can put unintentional pressure on children to always perform better than their peers. Some children are genetically pre-disposed to be perfectionists and their parents or relatives often have the same inclinations.