Welcome back to The Messy Middle! Where the team from Belay Guidance grapples with all the messy moments where real parenting happens.
This post: how thirty-five years of research offers sweet relief
Research that reminds us
I read something recently from Adam Grant that stopped me. He wrote about a study that followed 83,000 students over 35 years and the factor doing the damage to kids’ mental health wasn’t the one we all assume.
It wasn’t social media.
It wasn’t smartphones.
It was perfectionism.
And it’s been climbing for a full generation longer than screens have even been around.
Which means the thing we’re all half-convinced is ruining our kids might have less to do with their phones and more to do with the pressure to be flawless.
Pressure that, if we’re honest, we might be modeling every day without meaning to.
“It turns out that perfectionism has been accelerating over time. Young adults feel growing pressure to be flawless and it started a generation before smartphones and social media”
Permission to be truly human
For me, the research and Grant’s post offer refreshing hope:
No one needs perfect
– And research suggests that embracing our imperfections may be a gift to our kids.
No one believes perfect
– And now we know, perfect could be the problem.
Permission granted (pun intended)
– To be real, slightly messy, uniquely fabulous.
Let’s be clear this isn’t actually easy
Here’s the crazy thing about becoming a parent: one day you’re handed this actual human being, given about 48 hours to find your feet, and then sent home to raise them.
Your imperfections feel like injustices. Surely this precious little one needs your shiny best. So you set standards, goals.
Of course, you set impossible standards.
Some of them are leftover from your own childhood. Some come from strangers on a screen who sound like they’ve figured it out. Some are just the shape of your own hopes for this kid.
And somewhere along the way you realize nothing prepared you for just how hard — and how incredibly good — this was actually going to be.
Because a piece of your heart is walking around outside your body now. And of course you want to give them your very best.
So you strive for some version of perfect.
But here’s the question that’s been sitting with me: what if part of giving them your best is showing them your imperfection?
That time you lost your cool and snapped. What did they learn from the apology that came after?
That afternoon you forgot the carpool pickup time and they sat there waiting. Did they learn a little patience? Maybe made a new friend in the meantime?
That work lunch where you silenced an unknown number five times in a row, only to find out later it was the school nurse calling about a broken arm on the monkey bars at recess. (Wait, I’m not sure what either one of us learned from that one….)
If perfectionism really is doing this much damage, maybe the gift isn’t shielding our kids from our flaws. Maybe it’s letting them watch how we handle them.
The apology.
The laugh at our own mistake.
The lesson we actually learned from it.
The hard thing we worked through instead of hiding from.
A friend once said to me, years ago: “You know you’re not perfect, right? And that you never will be?” It stung at the time. Both from embarrassment that she saw right through me, and the fact that she said it out loud.
Looking back, it might be one of the best things anyone’s ever handed me. Permission to stop attempting the impossible and just be the best actual version of myself, flaws included.
We can give our kids that same permission. Starting with the model they’re watching every day in us.
One Small Shift
What I’ve learned from the Belay experts? You don’t have to overhaul everything. Next time you snap, forget something, or drop the ball, think of it as an opportunity to name it and repair out loud.
“I got frustrated and raised my voice. That wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.”
That sentence is may be doing more than a hundred perfectly calm responses ever could.
Door to The Belay Library
If any of this is landing, our Belay experts have been saying versions of it for a while. Hear it directly from them in our other posts and expert video chats.
On letting go of the pressure to be flawless yourself: Why Kids Don’t Need a Flawless Parent and Finding Freedom in Imperfection
On not treating every parenting moment like it’s permanent: The Case for Less Serious Parenting
On what this same permission looks like for your kids, not just you:
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