Kids Pushing Too Hard for Perfection

Sept. 20, 2002 -- The world applauds perfection. Everywhere we look, we're told perfection's the goal. But can't you have too much of a good thing?

Carly Minder is an example of the pitfalls of perfectionism. She is driven to be perfect.

"You have to look perfect, you have to be thin. … You have to write perfect, you have to do everything perfect. Everything neat, everything nice."

Carly's perfectionism seemed to work for her — for a while. She did so well in school that after kindergarten, she was moved into a program for gifted kids.

Now, 10-year-old Carly reads and writes at a 14-year-old's level. Good for her. But lately, Carly's perfectionism has come to hurt her.

At home, her room no longer looks like a little girl's room. "Why I have nothing on my walls or shelves is because that I cannot handle the imperfection of everyday life," she explained. She took out everything that made it "messy" and put it in a storage closet. Yet she's still not satisfied with her room.

"There's scratches on my stuff. There's dust that I can never seem to get away. My cat — I love Juliet to death but she sheds, and [fur] gets on my clothes and I can't stand it," Carly said.

Needing everything to be perfect means Carly is tough on people around her. She's lost most of her friends.

"I think that they were too imperfect," said Carly.

She was pretty tough on me, too. I asked her to tell me what's imperfect about me. "Just the way your, your hair is and your eyebrows," she said. So am I annoying to be with? I asked. Carly said, "It annoys me."

Kids Fearing Failure

I first reported on perfectionism 10 years ago, when 20/20 asked psychologist Sylvia Rimm, who works with gifted kids, to show us tests she uses to identify unhealthy perfectionism.

In one of those tests, Rimm asked the kids to complete a puzzle that was missing a piece. Some kids just kept trying to complete it. Others got frustrated, angry and then gave up. Rimm said that's unhealthy perfectionism.

Likewise, when Rimm asked them to draw something, some of the gifted kids were so self-critical that they erased more than they drew. One gifted little boy, Caleb, didn't like his picture. "It makes me feel really weird if I don't have it done exactly right," he said.

Expecting perfection is not a good thing, says Rimm, because it can inhibit performance by making kids so afraid to fail, they won't even try.

"They don't hand in assignments, they don't take pride in their work, they forget their homework, they make excuses," Rimm said.

In her books on women who've achieved, See Jane Win and How Jane Won, Rimm writes that many successful women said they had to overcome perfectionism before they could succeed.

"Perfection means there are no mistakes, and I think that kids have to learn how to make mistakes," Rimm said.

Battling 'Mr. P.'

Carly hasn't learned that yet. She's having trouble in school. She doesn't hand in her work, because it's never perfect enough. Her mom, Karen Minder, said she doesn't know what to do.

"It's been devastating for us. It's gone from making her and forcing her to do things and punishing her. We had to take all the erasers off of the pencils," Minder said. "Nothing worked." Karen said.

Eventually, Carly started calling her perfectionism "Mr. P." Her mother said she'd "get in her face and say, knock it off, you know, it's enough already with Mr. P. Put him to sleep, you know, euthanize him."

A few years ago, Carly was very much like another perfectionist child we met — 13-year-old Courtney Moran. Like Carly, Courtney also cannot stand a messy room and has even put up police hazard tape to separate her side of her bedroom from her sister's.

Of course there are upsides to the desire for perfection. Courtney's perfectionism has helped her become a champion swimmer. She gets A's in school, and her parents love her self-discipline.

"I think it's great. She really kind of drives herself, almost parents herself. She comes home right from school, and does her homework, I can't remember the last time I've had to say, 'Do your homework,'" Courtney's mom, Susan, said.

However, Susan Moran said she sometimes worries that Courtney will go too far.

Carly was once a champion swimmer, too. Now, she says she grieves for her old life.

"I made top 10, I was doing everything," Carly said. But she gave it up, she said, because, "I couldn't swim perfectly, I couldn't do my flip turns perfectly, I couldn't score the perfect time."

Carly said she feels she missing out on what happy girls have in their life. "I'm not happy anymore. Perfectionism has basically taken over my life," she said.

At our request, Rimm gave both Carly and Courtney a simple questionnaire asking about things like school and friends. Rimm asked the girls to finish a series of sentences anyway they liked. Both girls wrote answers, but Carly kept erasing hers — again and again. After 10 minutes, she'd hardly written anything.

"I know I can never be perfect but my perfectionism is telling me 'Carly can be perfect, Carly can be perfect,'" she said.

Again, when the girls were asked to draw a picture of New York, Courtney drew one, but Carly couldn't finish.

Carly tried to draw a street curb, but she couldn't finish it. "It's not perfect, I could just go on and on," Carly said. "There's wrinkles in the paper. I can't look at it. It's really hard to look at."

Take ‘Perfect’ Out of Your Vocabulary

So what's a parent to do? We asked Rimm to talk to Carly's and Courtney's parents. Of course, Courtney's parents like their daughter's high standards, but Rimm says they should be alert to signs of it getting our of control.

"If she pushes herself too much, then it can be serious. There can be physical problems, health problems," Rimm said.

Adults should make it clear to kids that we don't expect perfection, according to Rimm. In fact, Rimm said, "I would suggest you take 'perfect' out of your vocabulary."

Rimm also recommends against that we avoid using a lot of superlatives when we praise our kids. Words like 'brilliant,' and 'genius' are the kinds of things that are really problematic, according to Rimm.

Rimm said, "You want to say 'you're a kind kid,' 'you're a sensitive kid,' 'you're a strong kid,' 'you're a smart kid,' 'you're a good thinker,' 'you have good ideas.' You're avoiding the kinds of words that put them under pressure to feel like they have to be perfect people."

Personal Best vs. ‘The Best’

When we spoke to Caleb back in 1993 and asked him whether his drive for perfection was helpful or hurtful, he said, "It probably excels me sometimes in doing a better job, but sometimes it'll make me resist from doing something that I'm not sure I can do well at."

Dr. Rimm had advised Caleb's parents to get him involved in things he WOULDN'T be the "The Best" at. So, they pushed piano lessons and sports. It seemed to help him shift his perspective a bit. "I didn't excel at sports, but I really enjoyed playing sports and that really helped me to learn that doing your personal best doesn't necessarily mean being the best around," he said.

Today, Caleb says he's benefited from being a perfectionist. He's now a student at the University of Wisconsin, where he's studying to be a doctor. His grade-point average is nearly perfect and he has a good outlook on life.

"I feel really good about myself pretty much all the time," he said.

Maybe some day, Carly will feel that way. For now, her problem has moved beyond perfection, and beyond what parents can really affect, to something doctors call obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's a chemical imbalance of the brain.

Doctors treat that with drugs, but Carly complains the doctors aren't perfect enough either. "They jump the gun, put you on all these different medications," Carly said. She says the medications make her moody, and hyper. "They don't do anything to help you," she said.

Carly's parents say the drugs have made things better, so has Carly's trying to fight her obsession. Carly sums it up this way, "I have to basically tell my perfectionism to back off [in] some areas. Through everything, I've always kept my love for animals. … I mean my perfection has constantly tried to get in the way of that and I won't let it. … I want to be a normal 10-year-old little girl. That's all I want."