We fear ‘messing up our children’, we worry that they too may one day need therapy due to our parenting fails. But I truly believe this fear, of giving our kids a reason to seek therapy, is harming our parenting.
By the very nature of being a complex human in a complex world, bringing up complex humans in a complex world, we will ‘mess up’ our kids. I’ve spent the majority of my life as a perfectionist. I’ve held the bar of self-expectation high and felt an insatiable desire to be the best at everything, from friendship to running. We can just about scrape by on perfectionist ways in our life pre-kids. After all, perfectionism is praised in our culture, as it produces good work and neat people who 'fall in line'.
