Want Your Kid to Be Perfect? It May Be Making Her Sick

I'm as guilty as anyone.

 Not a great student myself, I'm constantly at my son (who is) to be a better one.

 It all started when I learned a friend's son is #2 in the class.

 Kids today are significantly more addicted to perfection and perfectionism than in earlier years, newswise.com reports.

 And it's probably because of parents like us.

 Sadly, this excessive desire to succeed can, as you would imagine, have serious negative consequences.

 Many places have seen an increase in teen suicides and while the rise can't entirely be attributed to this need to be perfect at all things, certainly stress to be just that is putting a terrific strain on our kids.

 My son has always been a good student but as he nears college, I'm suddenly finding myself to be obsessing over PSAT scores (mine were in the low 800s), grades (straight A's on his recent progress report) and where he stands in the class (don't know, don't want to know).

 His social life has taken a huge leap forward and I'm really glad about that (I spent most of Christmas vacation driving him to parties and get-togethers and New Year's Eve), and as a friend pointed out, do I really want him just hitting the books all the time, as he did when he was younger and had a lot fewer friends?

 No, this is high school.  I want him to be having fun.  Life gets serious soon enough.  But in the back of my brain, I keep egging myself on to nag him about homework and tests, even though he does fine (and has brought his first AP class grade up to an A in less than a month).

 This isn't about him.  It's about me.

 But even so, the drive to be perfect in body, mind and career among today’s college students has significantly increased compared with prior generations, which may be taking a toll on young people’s mental health, according to research published by the American Psychological Association and noted by newswise.com.

 Researchers measured college students for three types of perfectionism: self-oriented, or an irrational desire to be perfect; socially prescribed, or perceiving excessive expectations from others; and other-oriented, or placing unrealistic standards on others and found huge jumps.
Between 1989 and 2016, the self-oriented perfectionism score increased by 10 percent, socially prescribed increased by 33 percent and other-oriented increased by 16 percent.
The rise in perfectionism among millennials is being driven by a number of factors, according to researchers. Raw data suggest that social media use pressures young adults to perfect themselves in comparison to others, which makes them dissatisfied with their bodies and increases social isolation. 
The drive to earn money, pressure to get a good education and setting lofty career goals are other areas in which today’s young people exhibit perfectionism, researchers note, representing a rise in meritocracy among millennials and universities encouraging competition among students to move up the social and economic ladder.  
“Meritocracy places a strong need for young people to strive, perform and achieve in modern life,” says lead author Thomas Curran, PhD, of the University of Bath. “Young people are responding by reporting increasingly unrealistic educational and professional expectations for themselves. As a result, perfectionism is rising among millennials.”  
He adds that these findings suggest that recent generations of college students have higher expectations of themselves and others than previous generations. What's wrong with having high expectations?  “Today’s young people are competing with each other in order to meet societal pressures to succeed and they feel that perfectionism is necessary in order to feel safe, socially connected and of worth.”
The increase in perfectionism may in part be affecting the psychological health of students, researchers point out, citing higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts than a decade ago.
So what are parents to do?  Of course we want our children to succeed, but at what price?  I'm letting him run track and not worrying so much about what time he gets home to do homework these days.




 




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