My eldest daughter (Ella) came home from school yesterday very upset.  At first she didn’t want to talk about what was bothering her – she just sat at the kitchen table forlornly.  I gave her some space, not wanting to push her to talk and at the same time remaining close enough to let her know that I was ready to listen if she needed me to.

Eventually she opened up told me what had happened – she’d had a falling out with one of her closest friends.  They’d been playing together at break-time when her friend had told her that she was jealous of her for being so ‘perfect’.  Cue a waterfall of tears and heart-wrenching sobs whilst we had a cuddle and I tried to think of what would be most helpful for Ella to understand in that moment.

In the end I told her “You’re not perfect”.

She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and an expression of confusion displayed on her tear-stained face.

I tried to explain further: “I mean, you’re not perfect because you’re better at some things than you are at others and because you sometimes make mistakes.  And that’s absolutely ok – we all have imperfections.  Mummy has imperfections, Daddy has imperfections, Mimi and Lola have imperfections – they’re just part of who we are.  You are perfect exactly as you are, perfect at being you – you don’t need to be ‘perfect’ to be perfect.”

She nodded cautiously and I could see her trying to process what I’d just said.  I have no idea if I said the right thing or not – she seemed to feel better afterwards and she hasn’t mentioned it so far today.  But equally I could have just caused even more damage to her already fragile sense of self esteem than I’d tried to help her mend.  That’s the hard part about parenting – there is no rule-book and you have to trust that you’re doing ok.

I mulled it over for the whole evening, and woke up this morning still thinking about it, trying to figure out why it was playing on my mind so much.

Then I realised – seeing her hurting so much had brought back a flood of memories from when I was younger, being called ‘boffin’ at school because of the good grades I got.  I couldn’t win – I wanted to do well at the things I was good at, but doing that earned me hurtful words from my peers, which made me feel bad.  But if I didn’t get good grades, I felt bad then too.  Ella is so like me personality-wise that my head is future-pacing like crazy right now, imagining all the ways she could negatively react to this one comment from her friend.  I’m working to keep it under control but it’s not easy.

A lot of my clients struggle with the ‘perfect’ label.  They try so hard to please everyone and make everyone happy, they attempt to do everything perfectly, they work hard to conform to an image that society deems to be ‘perfect’… and they are miserable (because it’s impossible).  Then, as our work together continues and they gradually start to let go of the need to be ‘perfect’ and become more comfortable and accepting of who they are, the eating disorder chastises them for not being perfect at having an eating disorder, because if they did that perfectly then they wouldn’t be getting better, would they?  It’s called the therapeutic paradox – by trying to achieve something, they actually cause the exact opposite reaction to happen.

In striving for perfection, they end up feeling less than perfect.

A lot of the therapy I do with clients centres around helping them let go of this need to be ‘perfect’.  Educating them and helping them come to the realisation that actually, ‘perfect’ doesn’t exist.

I hate that my daughter has already been burdened with this label.  She’s seven years old!  She doesn’t need to be worrying about whether she is perfect or not.  It’s a heavy load to bear and I want her to set it down as quickly as she can.  I’m not quite sure how to help her with that, or even if I can.

Either way, the only thing I can do right now is to continue to do my best to instil in my three amazing daughters the belief that they are ok exactly as they are.

I’d love to get your thoughts on the idea of being labelled as ‘perfect’, whether it’s from your own experiences or a more generalised opinion, so please do leave a comment below.