Perfection

Let’s be honest, most of us are really wishing for perfect children, whether we admit it or not.  Kids who make us look good.  Rock the Nice List.   Obey their teachers.  Get good grades.  Make the team.  Have solos in the concert.  In reality though we may spend hours in homework assistance, helping the child who doesn’t learn as quickly as his sister, disciplining the child who struggles to comprehend what self-control is, re-directing the child with ADHD, or consoling the child who did not make the team.  Wouldn’t it be nice if they were just all good at everything?

As a mother of six, very, very different children, I would like to propose that it would not be better.  I see my children, I think, similarly to the way God sees them; full of potential but not perfect.  They each have such different natural gifts.  One is smart, learning has always come very easy to her (Guess I gave away who that is).  One is kind-hearted, compassionate and thoughtful.  He makes me look like I’m doing a great job training him; but in all honesty, it’s just the way God made him.  One is super athletic.  He has been an all-star on every team he has played on.  They all have completely different gifts.  The one who is kind-hearted does not always make the team.  The one who is athletic does not always get A’s.  The one who is smart is not always compassionate.  They have gifts and they have weaknesses and none of them are perfect, because they are human.

Somehow though, down deep, we have this desire for them to be perfect.  We want to see their names on the wall at school for getting on the honor roll.  I realize now that I am a parent that that goal is simply impossible for certain children, without accommodations to inflate their grade to something that they didn’t actually achieve.   Why should all A’s or A’s and B’s be a goal for every child? How can the standard be the same when the abilities are completely different?  The standard should be excellence for each child, not perfection.  Excellence for each child will not look the same.  My children’s IQ scores are over 40 points apart.  How can these children be held to the same standard?  Why, as parents, would we ever expect this?  Why should the children who happen to already be naturally gifted see their name on the wall year after year, and the children who were not given such gifts, never get that privilege?

My daughter is naturally quite smart and she does usually do her best at school.  One marking period she got an 80 on a Bible test, that quite frankly, I’m not sure that I would have done any better on.  That was the only test given that quarter and despite not getting below a 95 on anything else; she ended up with a B+ for the quarter grade.  When she saw her report card of all A’s and one B+, she said these words, “I’m so ashamed” and burst into tears.  There has not been another moment in my parenting when I was so angry, frustrated, and sad.  How could this child, who did her absolute BEST that marking period, feel shame over THAT report card?

The next year she got on the principal’s roll (An average of 95% or higher) every marking period and at the end of the year she received an award.  At that award ceremony she noted that award was given to students who made the principal’s roll every marking period throughout middle school and that became her goal.

I said to her, “The best thing that can happen to you is for you to NOT make the principal’s roll one quarter.  You will have all that pressure of that stupid award removed from your life and you will realize that you are just as special, important, and valued because of who you are, not the grades you achieve.”  (I was still slightly fuming from the “I’m so ashamed” comment the year before).

She said to me, “You are a strange mom.  Most of my friend’s moms are always trying to get them to do better and you want me to do worse.”

She is right, I guess, I am strange.  I just want my children to see the bigger picture.  That these grades, awards, sport’s teams, don’t define them.  Yes, I want my kids to do their best and use the gifts that God has given them but I do not want them to find their value in those things.  They are valued in who they are, not what they achieve.  If we find our value in our achievements then when we don’t make the team or the grade, we struggle with self-worth.

Sadly, countless young, beautiful, talented, smart kids take their own lives every year because of this type of thinking.  They put so much pressure on themselves to be perfect that when they can’t attain it they feel that life is not worth living.  There is nothing sadder that; Kids who feel they have to have every aspect of their life at perfection in order to be considered valuable.

At Stanford they have named this, the Duck Syndrome. A duck appears to glide calmly across the water, while beneath the surface it frantically, relentlessly paddles.  A counselor at Penn University, commented, “Getting a B can cause some students to fall apart, she said. “What you and I would call disappointments in life, to them, feel like big failures.” (“Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection” – New York Times).

That is not the kind of pressure I want my children to feel.  It is my and my husband’s job as their parents to instill the kind of value and worth that we know they have, regardless of their achievements.  We still acknowledge their gifts and appreciate them, but we point them back to the fact that God made them that way, and He creates us exactly as He wants us. 

Even our weaknesses make us who we are.  I think it is important to help our children reach their potential and overcome some of their weaknesses, by setting reasonable goals.  When perfection is the standard, the only result can be failure.  No one can be perfect at everything.  Our children must be extended the grace to fail.  How else will they learn?

One of my children was rewarded for bringing up a D to a C, while clearly that standard would not be high enough for another.  One child was provided with an incentive for getting through the whole week without getting a check at school for discipline.  This child struggles with self-control, especially when it comes to talking. Sitting quietly all day long and not being able to communicate his wonderful, world changing thoughts is literally torture for him, so for him to work extra hard at self-control, we “bribed” him with a drink from the vending machine on Friday.

Another child complained, “I never get checks.  Why don’t I get a drink on Friday?”  I explained that this is much harder for his sibling than it is for him and we reward the hard work that we see each child doing in areas that are weaknesses.

I never want my children to think that the way they are made isn’t good enough.  Even the lack of self-control, is in some regards, a gift.  This child is not afraid to speak his mind.  He will tell it like it is and then end by saying, “just saying.”

“Mom, your veins stick out, just saying.”

He is not afraid to go against the flow.  He has a highly rational mind that will not stop arguing until he feels he has won you over to his side or worn you down in shear exhaustion (He gets this from his father, just saying).  He is not the easiest to parent or teach, but his mind is a gift from God.  He is named after a world-renown apologist Ravi Zacharias (I guess I gave this kid’s identity away too), who speaks boldly to thousands of atheists, explaining rationally why he believes in God.  He is intelligent and bold.  So is my boy.  He just needs some refining.   My prayer for my son is that he would be able to use his gifts to honor God.

We must nurture our children to be uniquely them, not part of a mold.  We should view our children’s mistakes as opportunities to teach and ways for them to learn.  We must help them learn to problem solve through their mistakes and always remind them of grace.  It’s my job to equip them to live in a way that reflects the strengths of their gifts but with enough humility to see their weaknesses.    It is futile to try to change the inborn qualities of my child’s temperament.  The best I can do is to understand them, accept them and gently guide them into the unique, wonderful person they can are.  Even the most difficult temperaments reflect a valuable set of qualities.  God made them that way.  It is not for us to change or diminish or devalue.  Their name on an award is not the final goal.

I pray that my children will see themselves the way God created them, with immeasurable value and immense beauty.  I pray that they will have the confidence to be themselves, to use their gifts to impact a hurting world, and to never feel the pressure of perfection; because perfection is overrated.  Plus, it makes for entertaining stories.  No one is interested in stories of perfection.   Flawed makes us who we are, and to me, there is no other way I would want them to be.  Let’s leave perfection for Jesus, and remind our children (and ourselves) that He was perfect so that we don’t have to be.

Here is to being perfectly flawed!