121: How To Support Your Perfectionist Child

Parents often reach out to me to ask how they can support their perfectionist children, who can't seem to cope with failure. I've been on the lookout for someone to talk with us for a while, but just as with our episode on anxiety, it took quite some searching to find an expert who doesn't take a behaviorist-based approach - meaning that if the behavior is fixed, the problem is fixed too. I was really glad to find today's guest, Dr. Paul Hewitt, who is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Hewitt has spent decades researching perfectionism and recently received the Donald O. Hebb award for his distinguished contributions to psychology as a science by the Canadian Psychological Association. He is currently doing research on the treatment of perfectionism, and trains clinicians in the treatments of perfectionistic behavior. In this interview, he tells us what we know about perfectionism, what we still don't know, and how to help our children who have perfectionist tendencies.   Books mentioned in the episode:

Perfectionism: A Relational Approach to Conceptualization, Assessment, and Treatment 

Perfectionism in Childhood and Adolescence: A Developmental Approach (Affiliate links).

  [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:03 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a FREE Guide to 7 Parenting Myths That We Can Safely Leave Behind, seven fewer things to worry about. Subscribe to the show at YourParentingMojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen 01:01 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to look at a topic that bubbles up fairly often in online parenting groups, and that's related to perfectionism. The typical post goes something like this, my child starts an activity but as soon as something doesn't go exactly the way they hope to maybe a crayon wasn't the color they wanted, or they extended a mark too far on the paper. Or they got an answer wrong on a quiz for school. They screw up the paper in a ball and throw it away. And when this happens on a regular basis, it just seems debilitating. How can I help my child to overcome this now while they're still young, so it doesn't have a big impact on their life?   Jen 01:39 And I was actually in the library a while ago looking for books on another topic for another podcast episode and right next to the one I was there to get was an edited volume on perfectionism. And inside was an essay by our guest today Dr. Paul Hewitt. And when I read that essay, and I delved into his body of work, I knew he was exactly the right guest to speak with us.   Jen 01:59 Dr. Hewitt works mostly with adults. But just as we learned when we covered anxiety a few months ago, it can be really difficult to find someone to interview who doesn't just focus on treating the symptoms of the problem, and instead goes beneath the symptoms to understand the real causes, which is what Dr. Hewitt's work does so effectively. Dr. Hewitt is a professor of psychology, and a registered clinical psychologist who has conducted extensive research on the construct of perfectionism, which is the idea of what perfectionism actually is, and whether it's harmful to people. He's currently doing research on the treatment of perfectionism and trains clinicians in the treatment of perfectionistic behavior. Dr. Hewitt received his BA from the University of Manitoba, his M.A., and his PhD from the University of Saskatchewan, and he currently leads the Perfectionism and Psychopathology Lab at the University of British Columbia. In 2019, Dr. Hewitt received the Donald O. Hebb Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology as a Science for his work on perfectionism.   Jen 02:56 Welcome, Dr. Hewitt.   Dr. Hewitt 02:58 Thank you very much.   Jen 02:59 All right. So let's start with definitions because it seems as though this should be kind of an easy thing to do, right to define what perfectionism is, but the more you start poking at it, the more you realize it's a pretty nebulous concept. So, can you please tell us how you define perfectionism?   Dr. Hewitt 03:15 You're right it on first blush, it feels like something that should be fairly straightforward. And indeed, a lot of people in the literature, treat it as something that's very simple, straightforward - cognitions, or thoughts or attitudes - in reality, I've spent about 35 years doing research and clinical work with people with problems with perfectionism, and my definition has evolved over the decades. At this point, I couldn't really think of perfectionism as a really complex, sort of multi-dimensional, multi layered personality style. So, it's like a character style that people have that really serves a fundamental purpose for individuals.   Dr. Hewitt 04:00 So, it's, again, it's an ingrained, stable kind of personality style that people have. So, it's very generally, you know, we got, we got very specific in terms of what that might entail, and maybe I can work my way through that.   Jen 04:16 That would be great. Thank you.   Dr. Hewitt 04:18 One of the ways to think about perfectionism is that people - children, adults, adolescents, seniors - will have a requirement of perfection that is, some will need themselves, they'll require themselves to be perfect, or they will require other people to be perfect, or both. And when we talk about what we've talked about the need to be perfect, we talk really about perfectionism traits.   Dr. Hewitt 04:49 Actually, before I go any further, let me let me state this. The conceptualization that I've put together with my colleagues over the years has not come just from research or from reading in the literature. It's come from working with patients and it's come from working with people and my patients over the years have taught me what perfectionism is. So, this whole aspect of my work has really fueled everything that I do from the models we've created to the treatment that we've developed to the understandings.   Dr. Hewitt 05:23 So, we can go back to this need to be perfect. We talk about perfectionism traits, and traits are personality characteristics that we have that are stable, they are long standing, they've been there for a long time, often, most of our lives. They don't change very easily. And we've talked about perfectionism traits. And these traits, these perfectionism traits, drive and energies, perfectionistic behavior.   Dr. Hewitt 05:55 So, it's these traits that drive first off the need to be perfect. And there's three ways that we've talked about people needing to be perfect. The first, we've just called self-oriented perfectionism, meaning, I need me to be perfect, I have the requirement that I have to attain perfection. And so that's one element. It's kind of what everybody thinks about when we talk about perfectionism. There's another element whereby individuals don't, I don't necessarily need me to be perfect, I need you to be perfect, or my children, or the other drivers on the road, or my wife, or my students or the world, in general, I need everybody else to be perfect. And I will be harsh and critical of those people when they're not perfect. In the same way, that when I have a requirement for myself to be perfect, I will be harsh and critical of myself.   Dr. Hewitt 06:53 There's a third element. And this one really came from my clinical work, where it became clear that there were people who needed to be perfect, but it wasn't arising from themselves, it wasn't this intrinsic kind of need. It was more that other people require me to be perfect. And it's the perception that other people require me to be perfect. Now that can be absolutely true. Or it can simply be a perception that's not objectively accurate. But nevertheless, the person has that experience of their world where I am expected to be perfect. And that can come again, from spouses from your boss...