Raising Girls: Self Esteem and the Curse of Perfectionism 

Sitting down to write this article about girls and the curse of perfectionism, it dawned on me that I'm still battling my own perfectionist tendencies. I hesitated to get started because I was worried that I wouldn't get it just right. I became frustrated and cross with myself for obsessing over each sentence. I checked my phone countless times as that seemed easier than writing. Before I knew it, hours had passed as I stressed about how I was ever going to get it done and then whether it was even going to be any good!

The pressures for girls to be perfect permeate every aspect of their lives. Whether it's how they look online, their witty, artistic or clever presence on social media or gaining a string of A*’s, making the A team (and looking good doing it) or winning an arts scholarship - the pressure is ubiquitous and unrelenting. It's exhausting, and it's a HUGE issue.

Perfectionist tendencies are well-documented to be more prevalent in girls than in boys, and ther start early. Research by Girlguiding UK found that a quarter of seven-to 10-year-old girls felt the need to be perfect . It's also clear that the pressures continue in their later lives, as an internal survey of women working at Hewlett-Packard found women applied for a promotion only when they met 100% of the qualifications. Men applied when they met just 50% .

Perfectionist pressure, seeing anything other than perfection as failure, results in girls playing it safe, and it crushes risk-taking, creativity and ambition. The loss of self-belief that comes from falling short of unrealistic expectations can push girls into a vicious cycle where the anxiety around perfection hinders their willingness to try, to take risks or make decisions, then performance suffers and stress increases.

Rachel Simmons’ book The Curse of the Good Girl argues that in raising the ‘Good Girl ‘and urging her to be perfect we teach girls to embrace a compromised version of themselves. “Good girls who are expected to follow rules and appear perfect are taught to make little room for risk… They end up playing it safe, and it becomes a self-reinforcing habit: the more comfortable girls become with taking the easy road, the more terrifying failure will become…”

These girls who are afraid to take risks for fear of failure are, at a minimum, selling themselves short and in the extreme, are at risk of severe anxiety that can lead to mental health problems. Our aim should be to raise girls to be the most courageous, confident and authentic versions of themselves. So how can we help?

To accept less than perfection, these girls need to change their mindset. Instead of focusing on and worrying about the outcome, they need to relish the process and enjoy the journey, while accepting and embracing failure and recognizing that real learning comes from the struggle. Perhaps most importantly, they need the self-esteem to be able to tell themselves that less than perfect is ok, that they have done or are being their best.

The good news is that there is a growing focus on busting the myth of perfectionism. Educators in particular are increasingly vocal and point out that  “striving” to be good erodes self-esteem or, at worst, self-respect is disproportionately dependent on striving and achievement.

As Tom Nehmy of The Healthy Minds Institute puts it: “We need to teach ourgirls the distinction between a healthy striving to achieve and an unhealthy perfectionism which is usually a self-imposed pursuit of unrealistic high standards”. Brave and resilient but not perfect.

Being brave means operating outside your comfort zone and being able to let go of perfection. “We want to teach our girls to be comfortable with imperfection” says Rashma Soujani, who set up the highly effective “Girls Who Code” programme in the US and is a champion of crushing the perfectionist myth. She argues that in teaching girls to code she has ‘socialised them to be brave’. Coding is an endless process of trial and error – it requires perseverance and imperfection. The girls gain competence and confidence, which in turn boosts their self-esteem.

Here are five ways we can help our girls :

 1.  Be a great listener: Help girls to unburden their fears, worries,s thoughts and ideas. Research confirms that naming and sharing emotions helps lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone in our system. Naming the tough feeling is shown to be the first step in addressing the emotion and gaining some perspective. When we empathise without judgment or criticism, without trying to fix the problem, we create a safe place for our daughters to share. Show your daughter that they are loved and accepted for who they are right here and now. We can also help them work on their self-talk. Challenge their assumptions and teach them that they can retrain their thoughts to look at situations from a more realistic and helpful perspective.

 2.  Help girls learn to problem solve: Once we have listened with empathy, we can help them problem solve. First break goals down –when faced with a task that appears overwhelming, such as a pile of homework or joining a new activity, work with them to break it down into small manageable steps. Approaching challenges one step at a time builds confidence and helps them feel competent. Remind them that ajourney of 1000 miles starts with the first step. Slowly building competencies and feeling in control and successful is key to reducing anxiety and stress and builds self-esteem.

Problem-solving skills also teach resilience. Rather than offering solutions and fixing problems for them, we need to help our girls articulate and define the problem and then explore possible solutions. Feeling ownership of the solution is empowering. Over time, this problem-solving approach helps girls learn flexibility and builds resilience to the challenges that they encounter. They will have the bravery to take risks and try and fail if they feel competent in their ability to problem solve.

 3.  Make your family a shame-free zone. How we react to our children’s mistakes and struggles can contribute to how they feel about themselves. Are we unwittingly contributing to the embarrassment or shame the self-critical can feel over the smallestmistakes? Are we overinvesting in our children's success? Children take on our values when they see themin action. We can model learning from our mistakes.  Walk the talk by showing them that what they put in is more important than the outcome. I am taking up French again, and it gives me ample opportunity to make mistakes and show the frustrations that come with improving or learning a new skill.  I am also always 'misplacing' my car keys. Talk about your mistakes, how you coped and focus on the positive: there is always a silver lining. Importantly, show how you moved on and don’t revisit or dwell onthe mistake or failure. This teaches girls that they are not defined by their mistakes, and it is liberating.

 4.  Help them develop a Growth Mindset and see themselves as a work in progress. We can help them focus on the attitude, the effort, and the striving to do their best, rather than focusing on the achievement or outcome or indeed the performance of others. This is a growth mindset approach as developed by Carol Dweck of Stanford University. In Dweck’s studies, students are taught that the brain is a muscle that strengthens with use and that mistakes are a vital part of the learning process. Dweck found that trying to be perfect stops us from reaching our potential. How are they going to enjoy the struggle that is a key part of learning if they are not willing to be brave and take the risk? If we communicate and positively reinforce this growth mind-set skill by noticing and mentioning the struggle, the input and the effort, we can help reinforce this approach.

 5.  Help them understand the impact of social media. Girls are increasingly influenced by a bombardment of images and messages on social media - and the influence, amongst many other things,  is to be perfect. We need to get involved in the conversation and work with our daughters to limit the time they spend on social media, keep an eye on what they are experiencing on-line and coach them to understand that what people do and say on line can be very false: it is a manifestation of what they think the world wants of them, what they want to portray which is often very different from reality.   We should teach them how social media works - it is not a weakness on their part that they feel distracted or, in extreme cases, addicted to social media, but rather it is the design of the apps, the algorithms and the nature of the interaction that pulls them in and keeps them there.  Awareness, limits and communication are the key. For much more on the mental health impact of screens, read this article on The Anxious Generation - and how to reclaim childhood.

The perfectionist is chasing the mirage – a far-off thing of beauty and of nourishment that, despite one’sefforts to reach it, remains elusive.  Understanding the agony of perfectionism– striving for the perfect life, the perfect marks, the perfect relationships and looks helps us appreciate the importance of helping our daughters to develop a healthy mindset around their own self-worth and endeavour. We are not suggesting our girls shouldn’t strive to achieve their realistic goals. However, we want them to do so, believing that they are capable and good enough and that they should not define themselves by what they achieve but rather how they travel along the road to self-satisfaction, all the while knowing that they are loved and accepted for being brave, courageous, who they are and not perfect.

If you would like help your children avoid unhealthy perfectionism, 

get in touch to work with me. 

Here is my FREE download on Helping Families Thrive: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Perfectionism