I am not going to beat about the bush. I just deleted a long, long introduction, which I decided was just hemming and hawing. Your time is valuable, so I will begin simply by saying that I am a recovering perfectionist, but what I want to encourage you with is not the cure for perfectionism. If I had one, I would take it regularly. I do know, however, that the antidote is absolutely not mediocrity.

A very frequent concern mothers express to me is about their reluctant, or stubborn, or hesitant, or unwilling children. Often they are firstborn, but always these children have the same fear no matter how it reveals itself in their outward behavior. They do not want to fail. They do not want to write, or say, or do, or be the wrong thing. They would rather not perform than perform badly.

Of course we all know where this comes from. These children may not want to attempt a narration or write out a math solution that may be wrong, but one thing they have learned very well from their parents is how not to try. If there is a chance of success, they will wade in, but if failure is possible, they will take no risk.

I get it. I studied well under a mother and father who were both incurable perfectionists. I learned their lessons well.

In a competitive society, I suppose this hang-up of perfectionism is to be expected. The fault is not competition. That is not the evil. Competition is an natural inborn desire. As Miss Mason acknowledges, without it nothing would ever happen. One, by no means only, modern contributing peril is that social media of all kinds feeds our attempts to be better, best, successful, praiseworthy, in showing the world we are something we’re not—or at least more than we actually are. Of course, this is all very subtle and unconsciously done. We are social people and community is a deep human need, so in order not to be left out, or left behind, or left over, we try to stay in the game.

This saturates every aspect of our life. We see, hear, and read what others are doing, usually better (if their words and pictures are to be believed) than we know ourselves to be doing. We strive and study and exert ourselves to do better. Or, like some of our kids, we give up, pretend we do not care. We even boast about our weaknesses and inabilities. Is it possible that all our confessions, like mine above, are simply excuses for not being as competent and “with it” as everyone else seems to be? Or, is announcing our faults and failures just another symptom of deep-seated perfectionism? We are afraid to fail, so like our children, we avoid what will reveal us to be less than we would like to be?

At any rate, this affects our teaching. In order to do our best, which we should desire, we research and plan. Some of us get stuck here, researching and planning till we are buried in resources and materials or hopelessly twisted and turned in all directions till we have lost sight of what it was we needed to know. Or, we don’t read or find out about a subject because we are pretty sure we would not be good at it, could not possibly do it, or have no interest in it. Perfectionism can drive us to the ditch on either side of the road.

When it comes to spreading the feast, we can either drive ourselves to exhaustion in a Herculean effort to do everything and do it perfectly, or make excuses and procrastinate trying anything new for fear of failure. And fear is behind either action. We either fear we will fail our children and they won’t get the perfect education, or we fear they will fail because of our ignorance. Either way, it is pride, however disguised, at the root.

Right now, I am fearing I am waxing too psychological when I truly just want to be practical. At risk of not doing the best job of explaining Miss Mason, or myself, I am just going to suggest two things. Doubtless, there are many more factors I ought to tackle, but if I try to perfect this short note that is meant to encourage you, I may need another week, or year—or maybe never get around to sharing anything.

First, regarding that feast, let us remember it is to be a broad and varied one. Some of us are fabulous cooks, and some of us barely manage the basics to keep our families fed. Either way, the feeding needs to happen. Of course you are not knowledgable or talented enough to be the best at every dish you must present to your children. Instead of focusing on how well you will do in any given lesson, or bunch of lessons, let us consider this child before us. This child deserves the whole feast. Why? Because he is a whole person. Because we do not know the future and which aspects of his education will serve him best. Because we don’t even know what subject or skill is going to kindle on any day with any child.

I know I remind moms of this all too often, and I know it is a convenient argument, but one advantage I have discovered about being blind is that my inability to do so many things in the best way has taught me that my children’s education is not entirely my responsibility. As a matter of fact, they all did learn to write legibly without my encouragement. They all can sew or paint or—for that matter—drive. They do a hundred things every day better than I have ever or could possibly do myself. All the things they needed to learn did not depend upon me. Truly, my inability has often been greatly to their advantage.

The second point I want to make is about how we need to face this perfectionistic tendency head on. Set all the fears right out on the table before you. Is there any one of them that you cannot trust God to handle? There are many fears in life. Fear is not wrong. Don’t feel guilty for being afraid. Know that, fear is not your enemy. All we really should fear is not fearing God enough. If he made us, called us to teach these children in our home, are we truly unbelieving enough to disbelieve He has a way for this to happen, a way He is glad to help us figure out?

Honestly, who do we think we are? We are not the best. He is. We are not all knowing, all wise, and all powerful. He is.

And how are our children ever to overcome their trepidation to do something new or different or hard if they learn from a mom who is unwilling to take a risk, mess up, unable to laugh at her mistakes? Most of the most important things we learn in life all happen because we have done something wrong. Just think about that. Do you really believe your heavenly Father will not straighten you out when you go wrong, or worse, that He wants you to do badly?

There is a true cure for perfectionism, but, as I said, not a once-and-for-all fix. It is actually something we have to do all the time and cannot stop practicing. It’s like the medicine that if you don’t take it surely will result in your demise. It’s tied to that fear of God. We must stop repeating the lies to ourselves that we can be perfect, should be perfect, ought to be perfect. We also need to stop believing the lie that we will never be good enough and shouldn’t try to do something we don’t understand or don’t want to figure out.

Because there is only One who is perfect. We are not him. Even Jesus said, the perfect Son of God, sinless and spotless one, that only one good is God, the only one righteous. What did he say of himself? “I am gentle and humble.” Repeatedly in the epistles we are reminded that the walk of a believer is a walk of humility. If even Jesus was perfectly humble, surely we have nothing to boast of to a friend or a thousand of them online. We do not need the false modesty of deprecating ourselves either, self-mocking our incompetencies—just another way of focusing on self and being proud. Who are we kidding? Not God. We are to “put on” humility. It is a fruit of the Spirit. No one, least of all God, is measuring your performance.

Except your children. They do not know a lot, so they watch you and learn from you. We need to look to our heavenly Father and learn of him. The only way we’re going to miss the mark is by forgetting who He is and what He can do. Your worth is not based on how you measure up to others, or how you measure up to him. Your worth is like your child’s worth is to you—priceless. Just so, it’s not being good enough that matters. What matters is knowing we belong to him and He has bought us for an incredible price.

Let’s learn these two lessons: fear not. Be humble. Most to the point: let’s teach our children these while we attempt to learn them ourselves, for good or bad, for better or worse, while we get on with spreading the whole feast.

Just as with my writing, there is a day when I have to stop gathering and start producing, so it is with school. As I said last month, time is moving, our children are growing, and today is the day. As with the challenge in writing, so much to say, so much to know, so little time to perfect and polish, so it is with our teaching work. Time and talents run out before we’re ready. If we are a perfectionist, time and talent pressures especially cause anxiety.

I can’t see, so my analogy may be lacking, but perfectionism aside, I will go ahead despite the peril: to see things differently, we need a different perspective. So let’s look at school from our child’s point of view. Miss Mason encouraged sympathy with our child. We must remember what it was to be a child.

Only in retrospect can I look back at the various teachers I had and evaluate them not just by whether I liked them or not, whether they were “good” or not, on more criteria than I had as a child. My perspective after my own education and 35 years of teaching has given me different eyes. I see that some were good because they were patient, understood our frustrations. Others, I’m pretty sure now that I think of them careefully, were not particularly talented at the subject they were teaching. Some who were more proficient were so unpleasant it didn’t matter. Every teacher had areas of expertise and areas of ignorance, strengths and weaknesses.

And so do we. The point to consider is that our children, who have no idea what they are supposed to be learning, do not know this about us at this point. Some day they will say, “Mom, you really weren’t much with geography,” or “aat wasn’t really your thing,” but right now, before they have learned a lot more, they do not know this. The truth is, every student has an interest in knowing, as Miss Mason constantly asserts, but one of the things they don’t know is what they
should know, and whether or not we are perfectly competent to teach them.

Our children are each persons, and so are we. Each of them has aptitudes, natural gifts, individual personalities, and so do we. The atmosphere of our home is unique for these very reasons. Even if we pulled together the perfect curriculum and perfect plan of attack, these factors still make results widely diverse from home to home. Our children will all graduate, some lacking best instruction here, best resources there, but what will bring success in their lives is not dependent on what educational flaws or perfections they had.

In the end, what remains is their desire for knowledge. This brings me, (at long last I am sure you are thinking), to my counsel for you everlastingly planning perfectionists: do all that you can to give them all that you can. You cannot do everything perfectly. You cannot know everything you should. You cannot control the rate your children will comprehend. You do not know which seeds will flourish and which will not.

There is so much to know and there is so little time. We cannot wait till we have it all together to start. We may do handicrafts pathetically, but if we do them (I speak from experience), our children may excel where we do not. We may not be able to sing, but our children may take to music like ducks to water. Our approach to math may be uninspiring, but a child who loves numbers will not be hindered by our ineptitude. Really.

The feast is broad for a purpose. We want our children to be exposed, introduced, acquainted with a wide variety of things.