Supporting Success in Young Children: The relationship between perfectionism, persistence & failure

Children are becoming risk-averse and overly focused on perfection. If they can't do it right the first time, or if it requires some perserverance they are quick to give up. 

Join me in discussion that uncovers how well-meaning intentions might be robbing our kids of their natural tenacity and problem-solving abilities.  As a host deeply invested in fostering resilience, I recount stories from my preschool that champion the philosophy of observing rather than aiding children in their physical explorations, emphasizing the critical life lessons learned through navigating failure and frustration.

This episode is a resource for anyone looking to strike a balance between nurturing enjoyment and teaching the vital coping mechanisms to handle life's challenges. We discuss the nuances of brain development and how we can better equip our children to master tasks at their own pace, stressing the importance of allowing them to face disappointments head-on. By creating opportunities for peer learning and individual problem-solving, we propose practical approaches for building a generation that's capable, confident, and ready to face whatever comes their way. 

___

Get your quick and actionable tips, blog/podcast updates and curated children's book recommendations by joining Tara's Take the Newsletter HERE

You can also submit questions directly to me at info@taragratto.ca or by heading to our website HERE

------
The music for this podcast is written and produced by Jazlyn B with the guidance of Sabine Ndalamba

Note: This podcast is created for educational purposes only. Any references links, resources or content are not intended as a substitute for medical or professional mental health advice.

Transcript

Tara Gratto: 0:48

All right, this is the second conversation I was referring to Perfectionism, or more of. Why aren't kids taking risks? Why aren't they willing to persevere and keep going at things? What is going on? That we have children who won't do things unless it's perfect on the first try. Won't try things because everything seems too hard, too overwhelming too, too, too.

Tara Gratto: 1:19

So I have an idea I want to share with you and I actually talked about it in a podcast quite a long time ago about, you know, the concept of how we say be careful and I recently talked on a podcast with a hezer boyed about this this idea of what's happening with children in the early years, this maybe not setting them up for the kind of success that we were kind of hoping it would. So here's the caveat. You know, I love a good caveat and I love to sort of put things out there so that we can remove some of the layers of guilt and shame and blame that we put upon ourselves. But here's one of the layers that we're going to talk about and that is in our busy lives of parenting. We are one of the most present parents in history, right? So that's why it's sort of given that we are very present with children and there are some amazing things that have come out of that. I also think there are some not so amazing things that have come out of that and one of the not so amazing things is lack of independence, lack of autonomy, lack of self-advocacy. So, interestingly, one of the things we are hoping in our model of parenting is to be like I want kids to be authentic and I want them to be independent and I want to really validate their beliefs and their preferences and their food likes and their clothing choices and all these things.

Tara Gratto: 2:44

But one of the things we're not realizing in that is A their brain development can't often handle the level of adult decision making and they go out of. Adults myself included, find the level of decision making required of us can lead to overwhelm. At times we are in sort of materialism overload. There are so many clothing choices, shoe choices, food choices, the choices, tv choices, man trying to pick a TV show. I don't know about you, but there can be days where I don't watch a lot of TV, to be perfectly honest. But there are a day. Part of the reason is I avoid it because there's so many choices, I can never find a good one, and I feel like most of them are mediocre. Because we have so many choices, we're not doing a good job of creating solid shows. That's sort of my take. But again, there's so many music choices Like, if you think about the number of choices in the world, there are so, so many.

Tara Gratto: 3:40

Anyways, stepping back a little bit to get back to the topic of perfectionism or willingness to take risks, so one of the things that I noticed in the early years is, as a part of our busy, busy lives, we do a lot of things for children that they should or could do for themselves. We do them because we are on a time crunch. We do them because we're not enjoying the big reactions to what's happening, and so we're trying to avoid our threshold. Right, and some people will say you need to pick your battles, and I think that's true, but I think we need to pick our battles more intentionally. So in some cases, we're trying to get kids to do things that in less stressful circumstances they're quite capable of doing putting their shoes on to get out the door or get dressed, or whatever the case may be and so we throw a time crunch on it, we add the layer of stress and suddenly getting out the door has become a layered nightmare, right? So there's that component where kids aren't able to actually use their skill mastery because they aren't able to do the skill under pressure, so they can't do the skill. And then we, as sort of caring adults, are like I know you can do this, what is your issue, right? Well, think about yourself. When you're under stress, be able to perform tasks. The same way. Getting out the door is stress for a child and it's a level of stress that's maybe flipping them to complete dyno brain.

Tara Gratto: 5:07

If you know my book, the Avengers, the Team Brain, I teach brain science in a really playful way. But the idea here is that we, what makes us flip our brains, is different for children and for teens, for adults, and so getting out the door, trying to put your shoes on, when you are adamant about your desire to put your shoes on in a stressful circumstance, that skill that you normally would have, maybe you don't have skill mastery to the degree that you can do it under pressure, under a time commitment, right? So there's some different layers that come out that end up everybody ends up being in dyno brain and everybody ends up, you know, yelling, screaming, shutting down, running away and, as a result, we sometimes take over that task. Right, we'll take it over and be like, hey, I just got to get you out the door, so I'm going to do it for you. Right, and one of the things we have to do is step back and say, hey, if I'm doing it, for are they building that skill? Right? And we have.

Tara Gratto: 6:00

If you talk to teachers, a lot of teachers will tell you kids who can't tie their shoes, that skill is much more delayed than it used to be. So many layers there. But it is delayed for most kids right, where they used to be able to do it when they were younger. It's delayed now and that's again because of our busy lifestyles, access to time. It takes time to learn how to tie your shoes. That is a time. It also takes perseverance.

Tara Gratto: 6:25

I'm going to use an example from my preschool and this may sit difficulty difficulty, that's not a word. This may create some difficulty for some people. So one of the things that I had a rule about in my preschool is that I would not help children climb the climber. Now, I had a sort of general rule of thumb that I would be there to what's called spot them. That means if they were to fall while trying to climb the ladder and they were small and that fall could be, you know, problematic, I would spot them to make sure that they wouldn't have a hard fall.

Tara Gratto: 7:02

But generally, here's how this theory works If you're not coordinated, if you don't have your fine water, gross water development skills in line with climbing the climber, you probably can't climb high enough that you could fall and that be dangerous for you, right? So there's a theory in sort of outdoor education BNN stock talks a lot about this this idea that, like, you can't climb a tree higher than you can fall out of a tree. And we there's lots of risks in this, and I know some people right now probably in their blood pressure is like pumping because they're like, well, I don't want my child to fall out of a tree, I don't want them to fall out the climb, I don't want them to break anything. Part of childhood is also getting some bumps and bruises. Like we can't protect kids from everything because there's some consequences to that, and that's what I'm going to talk about today. Here's what I'm getting at.

Tara Gratto: 7:55

So I had that rule because a couple of different things. One, kids need to learn how to do things and persevere at them, and it needs to be age and developmentally appropriate. A climber is a perfect example. If we put a child who can't yet climb themselves onto a climber, we're actually taking away a really valuable life skill from them. We we're not doing it on purpose. We are there to have a good time, we want to have fun, we are being present parents, we're taking them outdoors, we're going to playground, all the things, all the things. But one of the unintentional consequences of over-helping is that they're not learning how to try and fail and get back and try again. Here's the other thing In my preschool for some kids that learning trajectory was short.

Tara Gratto: 8:54

They would figure out, and it had different layers. There was different levels to the climber so they could only get to certain places and it really was in line with when their bodies were ready to do it. I'm very, very cautious about saying there's a certain age or time frame on this. It's not by three, by five, by whatever. It's when you can do it yourself and when you can safely get up and get down without help. There's an interesting component here to them having to work at it. But there's another thing For some kids that would be a quick trajectory and for some kids there would be a slow trajectory, because you have to learn how to master skills on your timeline.

Tara Gratto: 9:38

Life skill is learning that your timeline doesn't look like other people's timelines. That's uncomfortable. That is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable for parents to witness. It's uncomfortable for the child to feel that discomfort is so important, because if we don't learn how to navigate discomfort when we're little, what happens is as we get older, we can't handle it. We can't handle bigger discomforts because we haven't had good practice at the smaller discomforts. One of the things we have to think about when we're parenting and when we're supporting kids with things is how am I letting them sit with frustration, disappointment, guilt, jealousy, those very uncomfortable feelings? Where am I maybe fixing things that would be less helpful to fix, maybe for picking our bottles? Getting out the door requires my assistance, because we legit need to get out the door and I don't have time for this learning trajectory.

Tara Gratto: 10:40

But if we're at the playground, the learning trajectory has no timeline. Yes, a child might get frustrated trying to climb up to the slide. Now here's the thing that's really tricky. We want every outing to be happy and joyful. It's interesting because in the world there's a lot of conversations about how important emotions are and how we really want to empower kids to embrace understanding emotions. We actually prevent them from feeling a lot of the really tricky emotions which they're not getting good at handling. As a result, when they get to places like preschool and school, they don't have a lot of skills for dealing with. They're not as awesome feeling emotions.

Tara Gratto: 11:27

How does this translate to something like trying something new and not being perfect the first time? How does this relate to perfectionism? Well, here's the thing when we remove obstacles from their development, like climbing the to get to the slide and not getting the first time, the second time or even for six months not getting it, that's where the encouragement comes from. That's where it's like didn't get there today, got to try again. We can play in the sandbox. We're going to try. I'm not going to solve this problem for you.

Tara Gratto: 12:05

So you're building in this narrative of support around failure because if you ask any buddy I mean Ed Sheeran's been talking about this a ton, like all the big Serena Williams. They're all talking about how failure is. What they learned the most from failure is actually what was their trajectory to success and what I'm seeing in the early years is we barely let kids fail at anything because we don't like the uncomfortable feelings that come with failure, and we are unintentionally doing things with the goal of fun in mind that are overtaking really important life skills around perseverance, around determination, around trying to figure things out. And again, it's not intentional, it's totally not intentional. But how it's playing out is when we get to kindergarten and beyond, suddenly we don't do it right. The first time. We want an adult to make that right for us, because adults have been making things right for us for quite some time now. When something's a little bit too hard, we want an adult to make that less hard for us, because adults have been making it less hard. And so one of the things that came up with my in my conversation with Heather was okay, how do we know what's developmentally appropriate? How do we know when to fix the too hard thing? So when do we know, as an adult, to step in?

Tara Gratto: 13:32

Here's what I generally say as a rule of thumb when you're thinking about building skills with your child and when you're giving them choices or when you're exposing them to experiences. If you would say no to it, it's probably not a kid choice, it's probably an adult decision, right? So if you're, you know, giving two options from the fridge and they pick option three, that's an example of a choice that they can't handle, right? If it's something that impacts their health while being in safety, right. So again, we're going to use the playground. If we're putting a child on top of the climber and then we're afraid of them falling, they're not ready to be there. That's hard to sit with. That's hard to sit with because we want our kids to grow and develop quickly. But here's the thing when they grow and develop on their timeline, they'll have mastery.

Tara Gratto: 14:25

And one of the things I saw in my preschool some very cool things. One is when kids see each other trying to figure it out. Even very limited verbal kids will help each other, try to figure it out together. So some problem solving that happens, interactive problem solving that happens, which is really, really fascinating. But also you learn to sit with disappointment and failure and get back and persevere because somebody else didn't do it for you. There is not the same level of joy as not seen on a child's phase when you put them up on the slide, versus them getting there by themselves for the first time and you've been sort of encouraging that momentum, those kinds of pride and joy don't look the same at all. They don't look the same at all when a kid gets there and they do it again. And there's also some real learning and doing it once and not be able to replicate it.

Tara Gratto: 15:19

So if we're thinking about some of the trajectories on life, step back and think, hey, we're doing things with the goal of fun in mind. Usually the goal is fun. Again, don't do it on purpose. The goal is fun and connection. That's another conversation we're going to have a conversation That'll be my next topic, I think, is difference between a presence and connection. Those are totally different things. And what fun really means and how. Childhood experience is not every outing, because we have this limited time that we spend with children but we're still very present. We want that time to be fun and engaging, but truly as your child's guide and mentor in life. It has to be a balance. And if one of the things you're finding tricky in your life is that you're navigating a world where you're kind of walking on eggshells, hoping for less reactions, hoping for not as many mouthfuls, not as frustration, not as much, one of the things is? Have I unintentionally set up these situations where life is always fun, and I've avoided not getting skills for the uh feelings?