The pressures of being perfect

My son likes to talk through his reading homework with me. Each week he has to choose a book, choose four questions from a list and answer questions about the book. (It used to be way more involved than that, but I think there were parental complaints, so the teacher scaled it back a little.) As an adult, I fully understand what the homework is trying to do, and it does accomplish a lot: Children have to read and comprehend the story, they have to find questions that fit that particular story, they have to borrow words from the questions in order to write full sentences, and they have to check that the answers make sense to someone who hasn't read the story.

There's a lot going on in that single assignment.

So, my son prefers to talk about his answers with me before writing them down. And this is my fault. When he first started doing these, I would read them afterward and point out the places where he didn't write full sentences or didn't answer the full question. And that made him so frustrated. 

Having to redo homework = nuclear meltdown.

He still makes mistakes on things like spelling and capitalization. But I've altered my approach to them. I don't want to give him a hard time about those details and nitpick about them at this age, because that isn't the focus of the assignment. So, I'm now saying general things to him like, "Make sure to check punctuation and capitals when you are done," or "let me know if you need me to help you spell a word."

The point is, I am accepting imperfections elsewhere so that he can stay focused on the goal of the assignment. And this is not for his benefit; it is for mine. I want to train myself to be comfortable with imperfection. After I read this article about the goal of being perfect is putting too much pressure on our teens, I realized that I need to learn how to back off now.

I was always hard on myself as a teen and as a kid. As an an adult, I've learned to forgive myself more than I used to. I need to ensure that I don't revert to my bad habits when it comes to my son.

Are you a perfectionist? How did you learn to ease off that ideal for your child? Tell me in the comments.