4.2.10 Parenting Perfectionists: Scaffolding Failure and Building a Growth Mindset

Parenting gifted children is intrinsically challenging. Parenting gifted, perfectionistic children requires a good understanding of perfectionism, the difficulties associated with perfectionism, and techniques to promote adaptive perfectionistic behaviours. Perfectionistic children hold themselves to exceptionally high standards that are often rooted in a fear of failure and a sense of self-worth that is conditional on achievement. Perfectionism is different to a motivation of striving for excellence, as perfectionistic children will never feel good enough about their achievements as they strive for goals that are potentially beyond their capacity. Dysfunctional perfectionism is quite prevalent among young gifted people and is associated with heightened suicide risk, depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Additionally, perfectionistic gifted youth are particularly unlikely to seek help, not believing their problems are “bad enough” to burden anybody with. Changing perfectionistic thoughts is not a short-term project, as it requires recognising and substituting negative self-talk for more positive patterns.

As an educator and a mother of three gifted children, multiple approaches have been used with my children to help them overcome their perfectionistic tendencies. All three have scored above the 99th percentile on the SB-5, two of my children are twice exceptional and one has experienced full grade acceleration. This personal experience of perfectionism and a range of abilities, in addition to my Masters of Gifted Education, have provided invaluable experience and knowledge of perfectionism and ways to support the child. Evidence-based approaches to navigate perfectionism will be shared, including personal anecdotes about what has and hasn’t worked in my own experience, and how each child has required a different approach to overcome their perfectionistic tendencies. Parents and teachers are key players in promoting adaptive perfectionistic tendencies, so a good understanding of perfectionism and techniques to navigate perfectionism is critical to helping perfectionistic children identify and combat their perfectionism. This presentation will explore aspects of perfectionism and why it can be problematic for children. It will discuss ways in which parents can support their child through perfectionism. This presentation will examine scaffolding failure within a safe environment as a technique to help build resilience in gifted children. Promotion of growth mindset to help overcome the fear of failure that tends to be at the heart of perfectionism will also be discussed.

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