Shooting for Perfection

My six-year-old son Reed has his first school presentation today acting as a newsman explaining the concept of day and night. There is an accompanying rubric, which Alexa taught me is a scoring guide 🤷‍♀️, outlining what it takes for a perfect 100: name three items in the day and night sky, a model showing the sunrise, day, sunset and night in chronological order, clear dictation using the words today, tomorrow, among other things.

I’m a part of a mom text thread that has been burning up with questions and pics about the project for weeks, including reports of six-year-old meltdowns and even a few sly digs guised as questions aimed at the moms who gave an extra helping hand.

As each new text dinged in, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “oh, this is how it starts.” Sure, some of us are born with brains wired for worry, but the pesky urge to be perfect and to prove ourselves has been engrained in us our entire lives, likely with the best of intentions.

The perfect stickers on our papers, grades, awards, accolades of the heroes we’re taught to admire the warm feels from the compliments and stings from the critiques – each one fanning the flames of approval seeking, and along the way, dimming the fires that light us up.

A Kobe Bryant tribute on the Today Show made me ugly cry…

but it also made me think about how when someone dies, we laud their wins and gloss over their losses. We see Kobe the champion and doting girl dad, which he was, but by leaving out the darker moments, like his cheating scandal, we ultimately cheat him and ourselves as a society. He was open about his journey as a human and passionate about the idea of living life not worried about other’s opinions. Rather, he focused on the moment, calling it the “mamba mentality.”

As a mom of three who looks for meaning in most things and as a girl who lost her dad at fourteen, I often feel like I’m racing to figure out life’s lessons. I’m racing because I know how short it can be, as my dad died at 43. And I’m trying to figure out the lessons so that I can spare my kids from the tough moments I endured to learn them. But I think Kobe was right.

What if we stay in the moment, together with our kids and each other, getting comfortable with the truth that our children teach us about ourselves, and we teach them by example, working hard to be our best selves focused on growth and not perfection?

What if we recognize that good people make bad choices, and that it’s human and healthy to crave approval from others, but at the end of the day, true peace only comes when we approve of ourselves.

What if we encourage each other to take risks that scare us and excite us at the same time, mindful of life’s fragility and graciously forgiving ourselves and each other when we fall?

So with the mamba mentality, I tempered my deep-seated desire to cut out pictures of owls, moons and clouds for Reed’s model. I shut off the thoughts about what others’ would do and turned on a YouTube video of Al Roker, as I’m pretty sure Reed’s only weatherman reference until then was Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. I handed over the black sharpie and let him take the lead, watching as he confidently drew a bat next to the moon, resisting the urge to correct his backwards ‘b’.

He did a run through last night, and when I asked him this morning if he wanted to practice, he declined, and I said, “that’s fine, I’m confident in your ability to do great.” He looked up at me and asked, “And what if I don’t?”

I paused and told him that it would be ok, and it would give him a chance to learn how to do better next time. My husband then chimed in with an uplifting, “all you can do is your best” spiel.  And with that, I sent him on his way to the bus, poster board in hand, albeit covered safely in a portfolio, not proud of perfection but proud of progress.