Episode 342 Transcript
**As referenced in the episode: Join the “Daily Lift” for $1**
Hello, it is Rachel and welcome to episode 342 of Your Parenting Long Game. Today I’m going to talk about a topic that I love to talk about over and over, and that is why we must, as parents, be imperfect to raise great kids.
Or another way to think about this is: You can mess up and your kids can still turn out great.
And I know this is very different from how many of us feel. Or at least that’s the way it seems, because a lot of parents will come to me and say something like, “My kids didn’t go to bed on time, and I know it’s my fault. I know I should have a better routine. I know I should find time to make a routine.”
Or they’ll see that their child gets really upset when they don’t get the dessert that they want and they say, “Oh my gosh, I know I’m supposed to be teaching them flexible thinking strategies and I haven’t done it yet, and they feel so bad about this!”
Parents who come to me tend to be really, really hard on themselves and, and my guess is that you may also be hard on yourself.
And though there’s certainly a role that we play in our kids’ behaviors and moods and attitudes, we absolutely do not have to be, and should not try to be, perfect all the time.
As I’ve said, I sincerely believe, and I have seen – witnessed myself over and over and over – that we actually need to be imperfect to raise great kids.
But if we’re being honest, it’s hard to believe that we need to be imperfect. And there’s so many reasons it’s hard to believe this.
First of all, we care a lot about our kids. We want them to grow up and thrive and have great lives, and we believe that if we do all of the right things, that we should be able to get them there.
And another thing is, in this day and age, we do receive a lot of messages as parents about what we’re supposed to be doing, what’s good for our kids, what’s bad for our kids, how this needs to be done, and that needs to be done.
Now add to that the fact that most of us have heard our entire lives 100% is best. You get an A+ if you get 100%. If you make a mistake, you’ll get a bad grade, or that if you make mistakes at your job, you won’t do as well as someone else who’s doing it better and making fewer mistakes.
We have learned that there are certain ways to do things, and that if you don’t do them perfectly, your grade is going to be deducted or you won’t be noticed as much as someone else.
There’s a lot of reinforcement for being perfect. And of course we’re seeing this perfection on social media. We see that other families are doing it right or that everybody else is happy.
We’re bombarded with these messages all around us and we can’t really get away from them. As soon as we check our phones, we see these posts.
And even offline, there’s a lot of judgment from others. Others are telling us how to parent. Maybe your parents or your in-laws or your spouse or your friends, they’re giving you advice on what you’re doing wrong or what you should be doing differently.
Deep down, we do believe that if our children are struggling in any way, that it’s a reflection of us because we are getting all this advice. We’re being told what to do. We believe there’s a right way out there.
So if our children aren’t acting the way we think they should or feeling the way we want them to, it’s a reflection on us and we need to be doing better. We assume that it’s because we are messing up. It’s hard to believe that we don’t need to be perfect.
But I’m going to give you reasons why you do need to be imperfect in order to raise great kids, and then I’m going to tell you what to do instead of trying to be perfect.
So I’m going to talk about four reasons you must be imperfect to raise great kids.
The first reason is that being imperfect actually improves your performance.
As a parent, I know this seems illogical. We think that being perfect is the symbol that we’re performing well, but very honestly, if you try to be perfect, and here’s a little spoiler, you can’t actually be perfect… unlike a math test where you can get an A plus, as a parent, you cannot be perfect. As a human you cannot be perfect.
If you try, and if that is your measure of success, then every time you make a mistake, you are going to go into fight or flight. And when you’re in fight or flight, you do not respond to your children as effectively, and you probably aren’t going to make decisions that are as effective.
So let’s say you haven’t put together a bedtime routine yet, and you know that a bedtime routine will help your children. If you haven’t put it together and you say to yourself, “Oh my gosh, I know I need to do this. Why can’t I just get it together and create a routine that’s going to work? Because every night it’s chaotic.”
All that’s going to do is put more pressure on you and you are going to feel more stress. And whenever we try to parent or make decisions from a place of stress, it actually makes it harder to do what we want to do.
When you’re stressed, it’s going to be even harder for you to find the space or energy to do something like create an effective bedtime routine.
Making decisions about what makes sense for your family needs to come, not when you’re in a stressed place, but when you are in a place where you can align with your values and your logic. When you’re stressed, you can’t be logical and see the best solutions.
On the other hand, when you say, “Okay, I’m human. I’m busy right now and that’s why I haven’t made routines.” You are more likely to think clearly and make decisions that allow you to take action. Feeling less overwhelmed because you don’t feel the need to be perfect leads to better solutions.
When you recognize that you’ve been having a hard time, you’re actually more likely to find the time and energy you need to put a routine together.
In addition to knowing that you don’t have to be perfect, but also knowing that your routine doesn’t have to be perfect, that progress is better than perfection, will make it more likely that you’ll start a routine, even if you know it isn’t a perfect one — even if toothbrushing still isn’t happening as perfectly as you’d like.
When you know that you and the routine don’t have to be perfect, at least then you’re going to get started working on getting up the stairs and into pajamas with less resistance.
Being imperfect takes less energy and leads to better solutions and better performance.
Now, the next reason it’s so important to be imperfect to raise great kids, is that when we are imperfect, children actually feel better about themselves. When I was a therapist for adolescents, I worked with a lot of adolescents that had eating disorders, and one of the things I started to notice when I worked with these kids was that they had a tendency for perfectionism.
And I would talk to them about their lives, and one of the most common things that I heard from all these kids was that they thought that either their parents were perfect or that their parents expected them to be perfect – that their parents were judging them when they weren’t doing things the way their parents wanted them to.
They had this belief that perfection was better. This theme of perfection was rampant among kids who are really, really struggling inside.
When they saw that their parents made mistakes, they could reinforce within themselves that it was okay for them to make mistakes.
If our kids don’t see us making mistakes, they think that messing up is unacceptable. And again, as I said before, when they’re actually in school, they’re learning that 100% is best.
We need to teach them that a hundred percent is not always the answer in every area, especially when humans actually can’t be perfect in every area all of the time. We need to teach them that sometimes it’s okay for them to have a bad day, especially if when they have a bad day they say, “Hey, I had a bad day. Here’s what’s going on for me, and this is what I’m going to do differently next time.”
So what’s more important than you being perfect is you making mistakes in front of your children and talking to them about how you’re handling your mistakes. It’s an amazing model for them, not only to know that it’s okay for them to make a mistake, but for them to see how to handle them in their lives because they know that their own mistakes are inevitable.
You will reduce their stress and anxiety tremendously.
And this goes hand in hand with the next reason that it’s important to be imperfect. And that’s because when you are imperfect, you can be a really good model of how to cope.
I want to use as an example of this, a mistake that I made a few years ago. So at this time, I took my daughter to a sleepover camp the day before she was going to be there. So when we arrived, no one was there. The camp was empty, we were all confused, and it was because of a mistake I had made. I had gotten the date wrong.
Now, in that situation, I felt particularly awful because we had packed everything up. I’d gotten my daughter, who tends to be anxious, really revved up through her anxiety and ready to go the day we showed up, which was the wrong day.
We had done a lot of work to be ready that day, and I had messed up.
And I had actually just talked to another parent about the importance of being imperfect, and I’m so glad that I did because my initial instinct in that moment was to beat myself up out loud to say, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I messed this up!” And to apologize profusely as if it wasn’t okay to make a mistake.
Because in my head I was thinking, “We’ve done so much to get ready, both logistically and emotionally. And now look what I did!”
But I had just talked to this parent. So instead of beating myself up in my own head and out loud, I just said, “Oh my goodness, I messed up.” And then I said, “OK, I need to figure out what I did wrong here, but I also need to give myself a break because sometimes this happens. Sometimes we’re going to get the wrong date. Sometimes we’re going to do things that don’t have the outcome we want.”
And I have to tell you that my daughter, who is very anxious, I think she breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I mess up too and knowing what it looks like to not beat yourself up.
So again, we’ve talked about the fact that being imperfect improves your performance. It helps your children feel better about themselves, and it shows them how they can cope with their own inevitable mistakes.
The fourth reason I want to tell you it’s important to be imperfect is because messing up sets realistic expectations about what relationships are like.
You are going to yell at your kids sometimes. Sometimes you’re going to say things that you regret that do hurt their feelings, but honestly, that’s the way relationships are.
Imagine that you never yelled at your kids or you always did the right thing. What happens? What happens is even if it’s only in your kids’ eyes, if you’re doing the right thing all the time, they start to believe that in a relationship. the other person should never get upset. The other person should never do anything wrong.
The reality is relationships happen between humans, and humans make mistakes. We have bad days where we say things we regret, that hurt other people’s feelings. They need to know that this happens.
You’ve probably heard that it’s not actually great for kids when their parents don’t argue or disagree at all, because if they don’t see that their parents argue or disagree, they fear arguments and disagreements.
But when children see parents arguing, especially, and importantly, when those arguments or disagreements are resolved, children know that arguments and disagreements are part of a relationship and that they can have healthy relationships even when one person messes up.
Being perfect would not set our kids up for confidence in the relationships they have in the future.
So hopefully you see the importance of making mistakes and how this actually helps your children do better.
Now, if you were someone like me who says, “OK, but what do I do instead?”
I want to tell you what to do when you inevitably mess up. But if hearing that you don’t need to be perfect and getting similar messages and reminders is helpful, especially when you’re bombarded by messages that you’re not doing things well, I do want to remind you of something that I spoke about in the last episode, something I’ve recently started called The Daily Lift.
The Daily Lift is where I send messages every day that make you feel a little bit lighter. These messages are only one or two sentences long. They take 30 seconds or so to read, but they infuse a little bit of hope. They remind you that you can mess up, that not everything is your responsibility. And they may offset some of the other things that you’re hearing where you’re doing everything wrong.
In addition to these daily messages, once a week, I’m also meeting with all of the parents who are getting those daily lift messages so that we can have real conversations about why we need these Daily Lifts to begin with, because life is hard when you’re raising kids with big emotions, and we need to talk about what it’s really like.
But I also will have you leave these conversations each week, not with a feeling of hopelessness or why it’s really hard, but with a simple question that will help you get unstuck from the negativity you may have been experiencing. So the Daily Lift and that Weekly “Get Unstuck” Conversation are meant to bring just a little bit more lightness to your life. They don’t require any action. They only require you to have an open mind.
And I have a coupon code that will allow you to try the Daily Lift and the Weekly “Get Unstuck” Conversation for just a dollar. All of that is in the show notes at Rachel-Bailey.com/342.
In the meantime, I do want to give you a couple of tips for what to do when you inevitably make mistakes as a parent.
These strategies are in place to hopefully remind you not only that it’s important to make mistakes, but that you can do something effective when you make a mistake.
The first tip is to learn how to repair. I’ve actually done an episode where I give a specific strategy about how to repair with someone, a child, or anyone after you’ve made a mistake. And this strategy helps you use mistakes to your advantage to teach your children better emotional regulation skills and help them become more confident in their own skills, along with strengthening your relationship.
And I will link to that episode in the show notes at Rachel-Bailey.com/342.
But the second strategy I want to focus on a little bit more is to do something that I call “making deposits.” You’ve probably heard me talk about this concept of withdrawals and deposits before, and the fact that the person who makes deposits for your child is going to have a lot of influence with them.
The reason I love deposits is not just because they increase your influence, which they do…and it’s not just because they make you more of a leader parent, which they do/// but the reason I love them just as much is that deposits offset inevitable withdrawals.
Just like with a bank account, no one ever says, “Oh, I’m going to be rich because I’m never going to make withdrawals from my bank account.” No. We do make withdrawals from our bank account, and as long as we’re making deposits, then we’re fine and we can become wealthy.
It’s the same thing with your relationship with your children. You are going to make mistakes. You’re going to mess up and make inevitable withdrawals. The key is just to make sure you’re also making deposits. And the greatest news about deposits is that many of them take so little time and energy.
For example, one deposit that you can make is just to look up and look in your child’s eyes when they’re talking. So maybe once a day or once every few days when your child is talking and you’re in the middle of doing something, it could be chopping vegetables or folding laundry or doing something else, lust look up from what you’re doing. And look them in the eyes when they are talking.
That is a huge deposit that takes very little time, very little energy, and helps your child feel good about your relationship. It offsets other withdrawals.
Another really simple deposit you can make is to remember one thing that they say. So quite simply all that means is that you notice something that they’re excited about. Maybe they read a book in school that they were telling you about, or it could also be something that they didn’t like. Maybe someone was mean to them at school.
A couple days later, ask them about that thing. So if they loved a book at school, you can say,” Hey, do you remember when you loved that book about dinosaurs? Let’s see if we can look up another book about dinosaurs and read it together.”
Or if they had a friend that was mean to them, you can ask them, “Hey, how was that friend today? Were things a little bit better, or do they still feel kind of yucky?”
Just remembering something that is obviously important to them and following up about it later, it has a big impact. You’ve probably experienced how good it feels when someone follows up with you. Maybe you were sick, not feeling very well one day, and a friend called you a few days later and said, “Hey, how are you feeling?”
It can make a big difference if someone remembers something about you and follows it up with and follows up with you about it later.
Now, my little hack, because I actually have an awful memory and I’m not likely to remember something two or three days later, but I also know the impact of this deposit, is I just email myself really quickly when something happens, I email and schedule that email to myself for a couple of days later to remind me to ask them about it. That’s my little hack that hopefully will make this easier for you as well.
So those are just a couple of very simple deposits you can make. I have many, many more that are this simple, but I just wanted to give you a good place to start because deposits don’t take much time, they don’t take much energy, and yet they have a big impact that can offset inevitable withdrawals that you are going to make.
So remember, it is so important to accept that you’re going to make these withdrawals, that you’re going to make mistakes. But the good news is when you make mistakes, you don’t have to hide them or pretend to be perfect, because if you do hide mistakes or pretend to be perfect, children don’t accept their own imperfections.
They also struggle to know how to handle their own mistakes. What looks like perfection to them is actually going to set them up for disappointment in future relationships.
When you’re imperfect on the other hand, and when you’re talking about your imperfections, they feel better about themselves. They know how to handle inevitable mistakes that they’re going to make, and they know what to expect in the future from other people that they’re in relationships with.
And remember that simple deposits are more effective than trying to be perfect.
These are strategies of leader parents, and this is long game parenting.
Now I want to remind you if messages like this help you feel a little bit lighter, I encourage you to join the Daily Lift and the Weekly “Get Unstuck” conversation. The goal in the Daily Lift is to be a one to two sentence reminder or piece of motivation that makes things just a little bit easier. And there’s a coupon code on the show notes for this episode that allows you to start for just a dollar. Just so you know, after that, the daily lift goes up to $9 a month, but if you don’t like your first month, you can cancel before then.
That resource as well as others that will help you become more of a leader parent as you are raising children with big emotions are on the show notes at Rachel-Bailey.com/342.
Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you again soon.
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