School examinations cast a long shadow over the lives of millions of teenagers. Those most thrown into darkness are the very ones who do best — 15-year-old girls from the top social classes. A key reason is perfectionism, but parents will be reassured to hear that not all perfectionism is bad: there are healthy as well as unhealthy kinds.
Healthy perfectionists derive real pleasure from their strivings, which are for the highest standard, but about which they are prepared to be flexible, depending on the situation — they realise that pursuing perfection may carry costs (such as excessive worry or workaholia) that are not worth incurring. They may have such high standards in order to gain others’ approval to some extent, but this is neither their primary goal nor motive, which is the enjoyment of executing a task exactly as they wished. Above all, so long as they feel they have done their best, that is good enough. If they encounter a limit to their capacities after giving their all, they do not repine.
Unhealthy perfectionists are insatiable and compulsive — they feel as if they have no choice about their standards — 99% is failure because it’s imperfect. There is always something that could have been better about their performance. They are usually strongly driven by a fear of parental criticism, and many studies show that they are liable to come from punitive, authoritarian, overcontrolling families. Sometimes these families seem outwardly relaxed, and often the children will say that their parents have never pushed them. The truth is that they were hijacked by impossibly high standards from before they can remember.
Perfectionism is often accompanied by depression, anxiety, eating disorders, alcoholism and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. The single most pathological ingredient is extreme self-criticism — without it, many perfectionists are spared mental illness. The main factor leading to this self-criticism seems to be overcontrol (parents constantly monitoring and analysing the child’s every utterance and action) — just having authoritarian or harshly punitive parents does not necessarily lead to perfectionism.
Healthy or unhealthy, perfectionists tend to do better than non-perfectionists in tests, including ones that are supposed to be unaffected by motivation, such as IQ and aptitude tests. However — and of particular interest to those of us who might like to have a high-achieving child who is also happy — healthy perfectionists consistently outperform unhealthy ones in exams and tests of ability.
Indeed, a recent study showed that unhealthy perfectionist students are more likely to burn out than healthy ones. If you want a nipper who keeps on going at university and beyond after getting those five A-grade A-levels (final year school examinations, taken at 18), make sure you are not overcontrolling, authoritarian or harshly punitive.
To put that the other way around, what really counts is to help your child to engage with what really interests them, known as authoritative parenting. It entails supporting the child from infancy onwards to find out what matters to them; being child-centred, while also setting boundaries through consistent reward and punishment that is not driven by your bad mood or need.
Unfortunately, we live in a society in which being the “best” — richest, most attractive, popular — is at a premium. At school and work, there is constant monitoring of performance and targets. But if you pull it off as a parent, your children will be much better placed to resist these pressures. They will work to please themselves and, because they are absorbed by the fascination of it, not become people-pleasing results-junkies. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009
