Helping My Perfectionistic Child By Working On My Comfort Not Knowing the Answer

As my oldest child has grown, his perfectionist tendencies have grown stronger and stronger. This has been a source of frustration for me for a few reasons, one of which is that I have worked so hard to let him know that I love him unconditionally and to raise him with a growth mindset.

“How do I shake this?,” I ask myself on the regular. I’ve read countless book chapters and articles about helping your perfectionistic child and am convinced that I must be missing something each time one of his teachers asks me, “what works at home?” Because nothing works at home.

Understanding My Own Perfectionistic Tendencies and Anxiety

I haven’t identified as a perfectionist in many years. Not just because I understand I am not perfect, but because I don’t actually hold myself to that impossible standard. I usually notice when I am being unrealistic. I usually rest when I am tired. And when I “mess up” I offer myself grace.

But just because I recognize that perfection is unattainable, that doesn’t mean that I don’t really want to be right. Or at least long for a way to make sure that others are unaware of my mistakes. And I absolutely cannot seem to shake the idea that there must be an answer to every question or that I should be able to find it.

So I search and search, becoming more and more anxious as I fail to find an answer. I grip harder to the thought that there must be an answer out there, seemingly unable to embrace the idea that there might not be. And as I become anxious, the energy in my body increases and I fall deeper and deeper into a sympathetic state.

Why the heck would getting comfortable with not knowing the answer help my child?

I recently listened to You’re Not a Sh*tty Parent by Carla Naumberg. It’s one of my favorite resources on self-compassion to date and one thing that she talks about is raising our children to be “native speakers” of self-compassion. But rather than doing this by talking to our kids about the virtues of self-compassion (as many of us seem to want to do) or even trying to force them to practice self-compassion as I see some responsive parenting content encourage, she suggests that we raise native speakers simply through modeling, by letting them see us have compassion for ourselves.

Listening to the book, I remembered that a lack of self-compassion (even if, like me, you thought you’d slayed that dragon) underlies a lot of perfectionistic behavior. So if I want to help my child to stop throwing himself on the floor when a new piano piece is hard, I need to make him more of a native speaker of self-compassion. Not by “letting him” watch me do my lovingkindness meditation or telling myself that I am worthy and lovable (something that has always felt awkward and somewhat laughable to me even after I finally started believing the message) but by letting him experience me as comfortable with the uncomfortable. Not anxious. And not looking for answers.

As I type that, I am reminded of Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s concept of “being the answer” for our child. He suggests that we not let our children know that we read parenting books, go to parenting classes, and that we send them the message, loud and clear, that *we* can and do take care of them, even when we have to rely on professionals such as occupational or play therapists. For Dr. Neufeld, being the answer is what allows our child to feel safe so that they can rest in our care.

This, in turn, takes us right back to polyvagal theory. When we are anxious, our nervous system is in sympathetic and, due to neuroception, our child’s likely will be as well. In contrast, when we feel safe and secure, our nervous system is in ventral, and our child’s likely will be as well. So the more time we spend in ventral, the more time our child is likely to spend there. And on and on.

Three Ways to Get Comfortable With Not Knowing The Answer

1. Practice R.A.I.N. Meditation.

I think that several meditation practices will help with this—including “basic” mindfulness meditation and lovingkindness meditation—by increasing awareness and compassion, but R.A.I.N. meditation allows me to target my experiences of not knowing the answer and my feelings around that in a way that the other practices do not. This is why I recommend it to parents so often.

2. Learn a New Skill.

My son recently started violin lessons with a teacher who requires parents to learn along with their kids. Her reason is that it helps the parent to help their child during practice because it deepens the parent’s understanding of the child’s task. And it definitely does that. But I think the biggest benefit might be that it is hard. Just as my son has to get used to not doing everything perfectly the morning after his lesson, I have to get used to not doing things perfectly either. And I have to get used to not being able to figure something out day after day and waiting a week until our next lesson to get the answer. (At this stage, it’s safe to say that there is in fact an answer to all my questions surrounding playing the violin, but at least I have to wait to get them answered.)

3. Make a Note of All You’ve Done To Try To Find An Apparently Unknowable Answer.

Part of getting comfortable not knowing the answer to something is accepting that there might not be an answer. And one of the best ways to accept that possibility is to show your system how that has happened in the past.

An example from my life comes—unsurprisingly—from parenting books. Not just books on the topic of perfectionism that I opened with, but in general. Even before I started this work (which gives me the excuse to just keep reading 😂) I had read or listened to several dozen parenting books. And I learned that once you found a good one (like Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids) the ROI of additional books is minimal. It wasn’t uncommon for me to get one nugget of new-ish information or to copy one beautifully written sentence.

The reason? There often isn’t one single answer to our parenting questions. Sometimes it’s because the research hasn’t been done yet, sometimes it is because the research is very clear, and sometimes it’s because there are so many ways to get to the same outcome.

Regardless of why, what really matters here is that you can see how you’ve done all that is reasonable to find the answer, and now all that is left is to accept that the answer just isn’t there. (I suppose you could conduct your own research study, but for most parents that isn’t reasonable.) While there are multiple ways to get to acceptance, one of the easiest in my experience is this list making. It (hopefully) satisfies the rational mind that you’ve done your part, while providing evidence to your subconscious mind of the same. You can then call up that evidence each time you need to remind yourself that sometimes there is no answer and that doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong.

Now it’s your turn. Are you raising a perfectionistic child? How are you helping him or her?