Zeno's Bar & Grill

An article in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune (“Free to Be Flawed”, by Rosemary Sullivan) explores something I faced first hand with my oldest daughter—Rampant Unrestrained Perfectionism. I realized we were in trouble when she started avoiding writing practice in Kindergarten for fear of making mistakes.

In some ways, it was no surprise since she comes from a long line of perfectionists. But there’s more to this nature/nurture equation. Sunday’s NY Times had an article on the great lengths and expense to which some parents of gifted children go in the pursuit of the best educational opportunities for their kids. If you’re trying to keep up with these Joneses there could be trouble in Overachievement City. And yesterday’s paper reported on a new magazine called Wondertime that’s aimed at “education-obsessed” parents (is this a good thing?) Apparently, even a trip to the grocery store can be an exercise in learning if you do color identification drills using yogurt cartons. With all these pressures to perform, it’s no wonder parents and kids get all tied up in knots.

Happily, I can say that two years later my daughter has staged a full recovery from Rampant UP. As a happy side effect, my younger two kids have been inoculated against this dread disease, at least so far. What worked for us? Repeating the mantra Nothing’s Perfect, Nobody’s Perfect, Everybody Makes Mistakes. Again and again. And that was the easy part. The hard part is leading by example, but we keep trying…and besides, uh, nobody’s perfect, so I’m not going to beat myself up over that either.

--Melanie