Admit it, you know at least one perfectionist. Probably someone in your family.
Is it your mother? Or maybe a sister or brother?
Or maybe it’s you.
Or maybe you work with or for someone who is a perfectionist about some things – or everything.
Now consider if the person you thought of is an only child or a firstborn girl or boy (not the very first child born in the family – but a functional firstborn).
Or maybe it’s the last person of a line of siblings, maybe someone born 7 or 8 years after the next oldest sibling.
Perfectionism for some (most) people is very hard to overcome. Why is that?
Maybe if you’re a perfectionist you just can’t help yourself.
Maybe it’s as if some small voice is always telling you how you should act and is constantly monitoring you so you don’t make a mistake or let someone down.
Your birth order in your family can be a major contributing factor.
See if any of the following quotes about perfectionism and birth order ring true for you or someone you know.
All firstborns are perfectionists. Perfectionism is woven into their very natures, as are the standards they’ve grown up with.
– Dr. Kevin Leman, The Firstborn Advantage, page 84
When a firstborn is born to new parents, there are a lot of “firsts.” There’s a first tooth or the first time they crawl, the first word, the first time they walk. And so everything they do is a Big Deal. They get lots of fanfare.
They also become the standard by which the parents measure the next child who is born. And as the children grow, and sometimes yet more children are born, the firstborn is expected to be the role model.
From very early on, there’s a lot to live up to. A lot of pressure. And so we firstborn internalize this pressure to always live up to those early experiences of success, even when life gets so much more complicated.
Many an eldest daughter will perennially think that whatever she does will never be enough.
– Lisette Schuitemaker & Weis Enthoven, The Eldest Daughter Effect, page 47
Perfectionism tells you that you will never be enough.
Think about it. You’re going along all fine and happy, just you and your parents. You’ve quickly tuned into their likes and dislikes, you get all of their attention and time, when suddenly a new baby appears on the scene.
Now, their attention is on something else. They must like you less. There must be something wrong with you or they wouldn’t have brought this new younger person home.
This is especially true if the new brother or sister is only 1-2 years younger than you. It’s the loss of the undivided attention you once had that is so impactful.
Eldest daughters often have no idea how much of a perfectionist they are.
– Lisette Schuitemaker & Weis Enthoven, The Eldest Daughter Effect, page 86
Firstborns have been thinking this way for so long, they don’t even realize it. It doesn’t even cross their minds that there’s any other way to approach life. Or the things they are trying to accomplish.
This happened to me. My first year as a teacher, which was much more intensely frustrating than anything I’d ever done before, my principal used the word perfectionist in talking about what she thought I was struggling with.
That was the first time anyone had described me that way. But it wasn’t the last.
And here I thought I was just trying to create amazing learning experiences for all the students in my class all the time. (Oh.)
Perfectionism is the major problem for almost all firstborns and only children. At worst, it can be a curse, and at best, a heavy burden.
– Dr. Kevin Leman, The Birth Order Book, page 97
Dr. Leman, a practicing psychologist, goes on to say that most of his clients have been firstborn or only children struggling with perfection. He devotes two chapters of his book just to dealing with perfectionism.
But we all can point to a firstborn – or ourselves – who is always late, or has a messy desk or room or house, or never finishes projects, or some other behavior that looks imperfect.
As Dr. Leman explains, perfectionism doesn’t mean they do things perfectly. He points out that those behaviors are covering up their perfectionism.
The real perfectionism is in what we tell ourselves. That “I count only when I’m perfect.”
Only children are excellent candidates for growing up to be ultra-perfectionists.
– Dr. Kevin Leman, The Birth Order Book, page 138
To understand this, says Dr. Leman, we must understand why a child is an only.
For some, their parents could not have additional children. And so they put all of their attention and energy into their special one and he then carried all of their hopes and dreams.
For others, their parents purposely wanted only one child, in which case they also may have treated their child as a little adult, pressuring him to be grown-up, mature, responsible.
I would add a third type – those, like me, whose parents didn’t really think about what they were doing and seven or eight years later decided, why not have more kids. I never thought to ask my parents why they waited so long.
So only children struggle with the same situation as firstborn. You didn’t have other people your age, or at your skill level around. You only saw big perfect adults around you who did everything, well, perfectly. Or so it seemed.
Not only did the adults around you have high expectations of you, but you had them of yourself.
So perfectionism is a pretty natural consequence for firstborns and only children. That’s not to say that other factors don’t cause perfectionism in other birth orders. But it’s pretty hard to avoid for these two.
I personally find it helpful to realize where my struggles with perfectionism come from. For some reason, it has a way of making it less personal. It’s no longer this unknown force that has sway over me.
I see that I can actually check what I’m telling myself, go easy on myself. Remind myself that I’m no longer a kid surrounded by perfect grown-ups telling me the right way to do things.
I’m a human being interacting with other human beings. And they may also be firstborns or only children with strong perfectionistic tendencies.
Desk clutter by mediamonk from Pixabay/filtered from original
Therapy office by Oliver Kepka from Pixabay/filtered from original
Shoes by sebagee from Pixabay/filtered from original
Hands by RitaE from Pixabay/filtered from original