Perfection

I’ll be honest. I’ve been struggling recently with writing something I felt was worth reading. I start something, get several paragraphs in, and decide it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. I’ll have good ideas floating around in my head, but they never come to fruition. I’ve hit a dry spell, as I’m sure many writers do. I’m not feeling particularly witty or funny, and I don’t really have a profound message. So I want to share a lesson I learned a couple years ago.

My oldest child loves learning and loves school. She’s played school all summer, and was actually upset when we recently went on vacation and told her she needed to put some school work away so we could go play on the beach. She’s smart and creative, a natural leader, strong-willed (according to my mother-in-law. I say “stubborn”) and just a little bit quirky.

A couple years ago, we weren’t far into the school year when my school-loving little girl broke down in tears nearly every day. Every morning on the way to school, and every evening before bed the floodgates were opened.  Of course, this Momma bear immediately went on the defense, talking to her teachers trying to figure out which school kid was giving her a hard time. I never really got a direct answer from her, other than “they are saying mean things to me and bossing me around.”

Let me interject here that I’m kinda old-school in a lot of ways. I don’t think every kid should get a trophy, I don’t think I need to invite the whole school to my kid’s birthday party if he wants to invite one kid from class, I think dodge ball is fun, playing sports means keeping score, and I don’t think being picked last for a game in gym is always a sign of bullying (I get that sometimes it can be, but sometimes, maybe the kid just isn’t a good kickball player.)

When it comes to performance, my kids know what we expect: their best in the classroom and on the field or gymnastics floor. Unfortunately, I think I may have convinced them that their “best” has to be perfection.

When I finally got an answer out of the oldest as to her tears and belly aches for those three weeks, it boiled down to “I don’t feel comfortable taking tests. What if I miss a question?”

I immediately tried to replay previous conversations, and I couldn’t pin down any time I said “You shouldn’t miss any questions.” But, as is the case, nonverbal communication is sometimes louder than the actual words we say.

A sigh when a word is spelled wrong during studying. A frustrated tone when reading aloud takes too long. An irritated look when the paper says “2 + 7 = 10.” Sometimes, just not saying anything isn’t enough.

I fully believe that as parents, we need to be involved in every aspect of our children’s lives. We are responsible for them and their well-being. And whether we believe it or not, they still indicate that we, as parents, are the most influential people in their lives. This means that they take in everything we say AND do. And in this specific case, my daughter was putting more weight on what I doing, opposed to what I was saying.

I know that as parents, after working a full day and being tired and coming home to a pile of laundry and a sink full of dishes, sometimes it’s just too much to struggle through “Green Eggs and Ham.” It is so much easier to just read the word for our learning children, rather than sit through the seemingly endless attempts to sound a word out. But this is so much more than that.

When we tell our children that all we expect is their very best, we need to live that way as well.

We need to make sure that our actions match up with our words. When we say that honesty is important, it means we need to be honest with our children. When we tell them to be kind, it means we need to be kind as well (that even means being kind to them). When we tell them to be generous, then we need to also be generous (that means sharing our time with them even when all we want to do is veg on the couch after a long day). It means we need to make sure they know what we expect, but also make sure they understand that a wrong answer on a test doesn’t negate our love and acceptance.

But perfection isn’t just a standard some of us set for our kids. Sometimes, it’s an unattainable goal we place on ourselves. I have projects I’ve started but never finished because I see the mistakes I’ve already made. It’s also probably why I sometimes struggle to find something to write about. In my mind, why write anything if it isn’t going to be perfect. But if we expect perfection, that means we are done learning, and done growing. And I’m not ready for that. With me or my kids.

I’m still learning. Four kids in and I’m still figuring this parenting thing out. But one thing I have learned in my several years of working with teens is they are smart. They can pick up on things that we don’t even say. And they expect our actions to match our words. We may say that we just want their best, but when we criticize their best, it sounds like we expect perfection. What we say needs to line up with how we say it. I really don’t think it’s too much to ask. Now, if someone could help me figure out how to do this all the time, that’d be great.