Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Where does perfectionism come from?

Recently I have been reading a lot about perfectionism in children. Most of what I've read calls perfectionism a learned behaviour and lays the 'blame' for this firmly at the feet of the parents.

Our four year old is perfectionistic and although I am perfectionistic myself - as in being the world's best procrastinator in certain circumstances - I know I haven't displayed this to my son. I am also quite sure I haven't made a big deal about 'doing your best' or producing a fantastic product. In fact we make a big deal about 'having a go' and not being concerned about mistakes.

The only thing I can think of is that perfectionism in young gifted children is something to do with asynchronous development and the children having a sense of how they would like things to turn out. Any ideas?

I think that's right. Gifted young ones may think of themselves as on par with adults, but they see obvious differences between what adults can do and their own products. Besides, they may have an easy time early on and then be unable to cope with micro-failures when they start happening, be too eager to please adults and thus dwell too much on imperfections, etc.

I think there is a huge difference between frustration and disappointment that you don't have the motor skills, experience, and/or stamina to manifest the product that you see in your mind's eye, which I think is common among young gifted children and absolutely not a learned behavior, and the kind of perfectionism where a child is reluctant to even share their thoughts about a question because they might be wrong, or reluctant to try something new because they don't know how to do it yet, which is very often a learned behavior, generally due to the child being praised for being right, for demonstrating mastery, and for being smart, rather than for working hard and being willing to try new things.

I have one child who generally is not a perfectionist and one who is suddenly showing signs of becoming one. Interesting, the perfectionist one is the much easier child in virtually all other ways and up to this point had displayed far fewer of the stereotypical "gifted" personality traits. I'm a little mystified as to where it comes from and doesn't come from right now.

I agree with what's been said about young children getting frustrated that their products don't match adults' (and btw, it's not only gifties who display this kind of perfectionism, although perhaps gifties may tend to get it worse) but I think the other major source of perfectionism is lack of challenge. I think I turned into a perfectionist around the age of 12, in self-defence, because aiming for perfection was the only means available to me of getting any kind of challenge. At any rate I'm better now :-) I would not suspect that of being the reason for perfectionism in preschoolers because the general environment is what provides challenges at that age, but if someone has an older child stuck in a bad school situation, I'd suggest suspecting that.

My son isn't so much as afraid to try type of perfectionist (that would be me)...he is more put his all into it and melt down when the grade or evaluation isn't deemed 100% perfect. He isn't afraid to fail or that he won't be perfect...he just doesn't like it when he isn't.

Don't even get me started on perfect attendance at school.

I wonder about this all of the time because I can see a lot of things about my environment as a child that could be responsible for my own perfectionism (lack of challenge, constant undeserved praise from parents and teachers, etc.), and yet even without those things in his environment, my son is a perfectionist as well.

Lately, I've been wondering if it isn't a fundamental difference in the way gifted people see the world that makes so many of them perfectionists. I suspect that they're often comparing the real, material world to some abstract, ideal parallel reality--something along the lines of Plato's Forms or ideal states (Plato must have been the ultimate perfectionist!). I think heightened awareness of and preoccupation with how reality diverges from some abstract ideal manifests itself as perfectionism and also drives a lot of gifted people towards public interest work and truth and justice causes.

I'm not sure, I think perfectionism is partly innate.



I think you're onto something there. I read a really good article about that somewhere and loved it, basically talking about the different types of perfectionism. I wish I could remember where I found it.

Even at a very young age, my first born DD found it impossible to admit fault or to say, "I'm sorry". It was surprising to me how readily my second will say sorry and move on. DD#1 seems to believe that doing something wrong makes her worthless. So either things are never her fault, or we deal with an hour long meltdown of "everybody hates me, I'm so stupid", etc. It can be very frustrating. I believe it to be an innate part of her personality. I see the same traits in myself, where I have to consciously remind myself that every mistake I make can be turned into a constructive learning opportunity. Whether it is innate or learned, it helps me to believe that it is innate because I can better deal with her meltdowns without losing my cool.

Maybe too much praise creates some perfectionists, but I think the literature I have read too readily dismisses the possibility of it being an innate personality trait.