3 Ways Perfectionism Makes Parenting Harder
I'm Carrie Smolen, a Los Angeles-based therapist specializing in perfectionism and anxiety. In my California therapy practice, I work with a lot of parents— thoughtful, loving ones who hold themselves to incredibly high standards and then quietly suffer when they can't meet them. If you've ever lost the joy of a parenting moment because your brain was too busy cataloguing everything you're doing wrong, this post is for you.
I’ve only been a parent for three years and change, but in that time I’ve really begun to internalize how impossible it is to do everything perfectly. That’s a hard and painful realization to come to when there is nothing that thoughtful, intentional, loving parents want to do more flawlessly than our parenting. Add in perfectionism and anxiety, and it becomes so much easier to berate ourselves for the things we feel like we’re doing wrong than it is to pat ourselves on the back for the things about which we feel good. We can know all day that there is no such thing as a perfect parent, that we’re all going to mess up along the way, but it is still really hard to let go of standards that we set for ourselves when it comes to being responsible for making and/or raising a wholeass human.
As a mom, as a friend of parents, as a therapist to parent clients and as a recovering perfectionist, I have witnessed and encountered the ways in which trying to do everything just right all the time as a parent can steal the joy from the experience that we want to be having. Don’t get me wrong, wanting to do right by our kids is a lovely and beautiful thing. At the same time, it is impossible to know what will happen, and the cost of striving for perfection is often very mentally and emotionally high.
For that reason, I’ve compiled a short list of common ways in which perfectionism complicates parenting. For each, I include some thoughts on how we might be able to untangle those challenges to hopefully make the experience more of what we’d like it to be.
1) Perfectionism takes us out of the present moment… making it harder to enjoy time both with and away from our kids.
A hard truth about parenting is that there are always so many things to think about at once. From the mundane and repetitive (What are we going to eat this week? Who is going to get them from point A to B?) to the logistical and developmental (Did I respond to that email about such and such activity? How are we handling potty training?) to the big picture and forward-thinking (What are we thinking about school? How do I support them through this big thing that’s coming up?)… there are just SO many questions that all need answers.
For anxious perfectionists, the sensation of things piling up on our proverbial plates can feel beyond overwhelming. It’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, especially if you’re the “default parent” and haven’t quite figured out how to get support around the division of labor. For many parents, this can also lead to a sensation of guilt. How can I be feeling so burnt out by this immense privilege that I feel so lucky to have? How dare I feel “touched out” by this little creature that depends on me and didn’t ask to be here in the first place? Who do I think I am for wanting to rediscover who I am apart from this huge role I’ve taken on?
It’s easy to see how many of us end up stuck in our heads. I don’t know about you, but when I’m lost in thought, it gets a lot harder to be present with or without my kid. I can’t take in how sweet his face looks or how funny whatever he just said was when I am caught up in worrying about all of the things that I need to do to care for him. I also can’t enjoy time I’ve allocated for work or for social time with other adults or for whatever else I need to resource myself if I’m constantly feeling like my attention is supposed to be elsewhere. It’s a real recipe for damned if I do damned if I don’t sensations.
How to stop letting this happen:
This really all boils down to one thing: SLOW DOWN. I know, I know… way easier said that done. Anxious brains, especially those prone to rumination, are speed demons. We get ahead of ourselves. Many of us struggle with grounding practices like journaling and meditation because our brains move so quickly (and have so much to hold at once) that we struggle to keep up with our own thoughts. No wonder we have such a hard time feeling present.
But how can we feel secure enough to allow ourselves to relax and rest when there are so many things to figure out? It may take some trial and error to land on a strategy that supports you. I’ve found that listing out all the stuff that you feel like you have to do can be a great place to start. Maybe it will feel daunting and exacerbate the sensation. Often though, I find that things actually feel a lot more manageable once they’re out of my head and somewhere that I can reference them. Even if that list is still overwhelming, creating a document (even on scratch paper or a notes app) that exists outside your brain can allow you to at least take a moment to step away from it. Without the sensation of having to keep it all at the forefront of your mind so that you’ll remember everything, you can actually resource yourself before returning to trying to tackle it all. Plus, if you make this list with a partner or support person, they might be able to identify things that they can take on or spearhead.
I also want to be clear that I’m not saying don’t multitask. Sometimes the most supportive thing we can do for ourselves is to find compatible activities that can be paired together. Find it easy to make your grocery list or catch up with a long distance pal over text while you’re watching your kid at the playground? Want to listen to that parenting book on the way to a much needed hang out with your childfree friends? Go for it! It’s not about literally always having to have your full attention on one thing, or on one part of your identity. It’s about being intentional, so that your attention feels more accessible when you do want to be able to feel more present, no matter what you’re doing or which hat you’re wearing
2) Perfectionism increases our expectations of ourselves… making self-compassion and gentleness harder to access.
We all have a vision of the kind of parent we want to be. Especially before it actually happens, we have all kinds of ideas about the things we will and won’t do. We tell ourselves we’ll never make our kids their own separate dinners, that we’ll limit their screen time to x minutes per y, that we’ll talk to them in very specific ways that instill everything we want them to learn using all the developmentally appropriate lessons we’ve picked up from parenting books and social media experts. Or insert whatever other “I’m always going to” or “I’m never going to” you’d set out to always or never do.
But then it actually happens, and we’re thrown into a new existence that, even with everything everyone told us, we could not possibly prepare ourselves for. As much as one can intellectually understand what a fundamental shift becoming a parent is, it’s a cliché for a reason: there is not one thing that can actually prepare us for how cataclysmic that shift feels. For perfectionists, this realization can be incredibly destabilizing. We set these expectations for ourselves, and the idea of not meeting them can feel terrifying. Sometimes, we even meet those ideals for a while, and then something happens that changes our context and we are no longer able to adhere to that standard, either temporarily or indefinitely. It’s so easy in those moments to feel like a failure.
How to stop letting this happen:
It’s annoyingly reductive, but truly, we HAVE to work on being nicer to ourselves. In my work as a therapist with perfectionists, this can be an excruciatingly hard thing for my clients to do. All the time, I hear versions of: How can I possibly be gentle with myself when I want to be doing so much better? What will happen to my kid if I don’t follow the evidence-based advice I’ve been given? How can I live in alignment with my values if I cut myself slack? Especially for those of us that found safety in excellence, self-compassion feels like complacency.
We cannot show up for our kids in the ways we want to, as our best selves, without first feeling resourced. I get that it can take a lot to become able to ask for help, to accept support when it’s offered, to get your mind to a place where it can actually let go of all the to-dos and recharge. That’s a lot of what I work with clients on every day, and it would be pretty unreasonable to expect those sort of shifts to happen overnight. Not to mention that we are all dealing with this added layer of trying to do this when the world is feeling increasingly heavy and horrifying.
So in the meantime, what if you could just start with recognizing that you are one human person? You can’t just Mrs. Doubtfire your way through parenting trying to be in two places at once. You can’t make your kid that nutrient-dense home cooked meal and participate in fully engaged pretend play at the same time. So sometimes it’s going to have to be whatever’s in the freezer or hitting up your favorite take out spot so that you can spend that time being a knight or a monster or a kangaroo. And others, it might be popping a show that you feel good about on the TV so that you can finish making that beautiful dinner, especially if cooking is something you enjoy. Sometimes you can “have it all” and keep your kid occupied with an activity that allows you to get all the things done too, but from experience I can say that it has felt very freeing to recognize that it’s okay when I can’t. Plus, that sort of flexibility is something I’d like to model for my kid. Two birds, one stone.
3) Perfectionism creates division and impedes connection… making the “village” harder to form.
There are so many choices that come along with parenting, and so much goes into that decision-making. Especially as anxious over-thinkers, we research and deliberate endlessly to try to come to conclusions that help us feel a sense of safety. And it starts immediately. How can I increase my kid’s odds of thriving with the choices I make while they’re in utero? Should they be breast or bottle fed? How will we deal with sleep challenges? What about childcare options? Not to mention the series of things we have to figure out oncethey’re born as our kids grow and evolve. And, as I was recently reminded in my local parent group WhatsApp, these choices can quickly become divisive.
We all want to feel like we’re making the “right” choice so that we can feel as though we are doing “right” by our kids. For many of us, perfectionism lends itself to putting down others’ decisions if they make us question our own. We’ve spent so much time and energy and stress figuring out what we want to do, so of course it can feel unbelievably threatening to genuinely listen with curiosity to someone making a different (and what often feels like opposite) choice. Perfectionism and anxiety make us agonize over these dilemmas, so when we land somewhere that feels at least somewhat comfortable to settle, anything that could potentially unground us and send us back into undecided limbo feels extremely scary.
This makes it really hard to create community, because it limits the potential pool of other parents with whom you could connect to only those with whom you feel completely aligned. It’s easier to become isolated when it feels like you can’t find your “people” because you have to overlap in a whole list of ways in order to feel safe opening up to someone. No wonder it all can feel so lonely.
How to stop letting this happen:
First, it’s important to recognize that we are all just humans trying to figure out how to do a really hard thing where you only get one shot. That’s inherently stressful! We really are all just doing our best with the knowledge and circumstances we have. Yes, you’ve poured resources into making whatever choice you’ve made, but you have no idea how another parent came to the conclusion that they did about whatever they’ve decided to do. Judgement feels like a really natural place to go when we feel like all that work we’ve done is being called into question. Instead though, see if you can ground yourself in your choice while also making room for curiosity about someone else’s.
We don’t all decide things based on what we would ideally like to do in a vacuum. Maybe we would have liked to do one thing, but some circumstance (our careers, financial situations, proximities to family, partners’ opinions, kids’ temperaments, our own bodies’ needs, etc.) made another choice a better fit. I’m not saying that you have to be best friends with someone whose values completely differ from yours, but perfectionism can lead to all-or-nothing thinking in a way that makes that line really hard to draw. It could be worth asking yourself where there might be some wiggle room in your perspective. Maybe that community is more accessible than you realized.
If your perfectionism is getting in the way of enjoying parenthood — or just your life in general — that's exactly the kind of thing I work on with clients across California. Book a free consultation and let's talk about what getting out of your own way could look like.
VIRTUAL THERAPIST • LOS ANGELES
Hi, I’m Carrie (she/her).
A therapist for thoughtful, overwhelmed humans trying to be good people in a complicated world.
As a therapist for folks all over California, most of my work centers on helping clients with issues related to perfectionism and body struggles.
I love to come along for the ride as people get clearer on who they are, what they need, and how to move through life with more ease, self-trust, and permission to be unapologetically imperfect.