Perfectionism can prevent children from taking risks but parents can help relieve the pressure, says Australian parenting expert Justin Coulson.

Perfectionism can prevent children from taking risks but parents can help relieve the pressure, says Justin Coulson.

"We become more perfect through our failures," the Australian parenting expert tells Kathryn Ryan.

Listen to the full conversation

What is perfectionism?

Perfectionism is a combination of two things, Dr Coulson says - excessively high personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations.

"If I was to summarise it in a really simple sentence, it would be a perfectionist says 'I must be the best, but I never am'."

The trait can manifest in two ways - as both perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns.

"Somebody who has perfectionistic strivings is somebody who is really seeking high performance at the very, very greatest level.

" perfectionistic concerns mean that we become hyper-vigilant to mistakes, we doubt everything about our actions, and we become fearful of negative social evaluation. In other words, we feel like our identity is at risk if we do not measure up."

While perfectionistic concerns are identity-oriented, Dr Coulson says, perfectionistic strivings correspond to our personal standards.

These can both be unhealthy.

"If I've got extremely heightened anxiety, feeling that I might fail, the likelihood is I probably won't try. And one of the big challenges we have with perfectionism, we see it all the time in students, anyone who's lectured at university and dealt with perfectionistic students or a high school teacher, even sometimes, looking after the little ones at primary school will see a really high avoidance orientation for any task in which a student is concerned that they might not do well."

Most adults come to understand that failure is part of the learning process, he says.

"Whenever you try anything new, you're likely to fail, you're probably going to do quite poorly. It's true some people have a natural proclivity to some things every now and again, you might fluke it, as well.

"But usually, when you try to do something that's complex, difficult, hard, any kind of challenge like that will lead to failure."

Somebody with a perfectionistic bent will say to themselves 'I'm going to fail, this is going to look bad, therefore I won't try', Dr Coulson says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details