He’s so excited to be learning piano. Just getting a tiny taste of it at school, when he realized that he could practice at home on our hand-me-down keyboard, he lit up and much to my delight kept on playing and playing and playing the little 60 second ditty he learned at school.
At dinner he looks up at me.
“Mommy, does practice make perfect?”.
I froze. “Uhhhhh, well son…,” I stammered. “Why would you want to be perfect? Sometimes practice is the reward in and of itself.” Seriously? I just dropped, “…in and of itself” on my six-year old?
I’ve spent my entire life trying to be perfect, reconciling not being perfect, letting go of, yet still striving for it… and I just would love to save him from this self-imposed trap. A standard of “perfection” is elusive, insidious and harmful, and only now as an adult do I realize the extent my obsession with it. As much as it has driven me, it’s also contributed to trauma as well. What if he didn’t have to go through that, and from this young age was able to accept and love himself unconditionally?
He looks at me quizzically, trying to process the adult gibberish that has just escaped his mother’s mouth. And then the light bulb goes off: “So perfect practice makes perfect?” He beams.
Yes, dear. Okay. Perfect practice makes perfect. Even better. YES, let’s instill the pressure to be perfect even in your piano PRACTICE. Parenting fail.
If I had a parental rewind button, for a do-over, like when you think of the most brilliant comeback 10 minutes AFTER you are bullied…I would have come up with something insightful, succinct and in my best Jedi-like Obi-Wan Kenobi voice, I’d say:
“Practice makes Progress my dear little Paduan.” And he would have smiled, absorbing this dewdrop of parental wisdom, fully grasping that it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. He’ll understand how he can be kind to himself and allow himself the freedom to experiment and fail and find out what he really loves to do in this life. Party on, Jedi master Mommy. But I didn’t.
I got his bath ready and listened to him playing the piano tune over and over and over. Smiling that for now, in this moment, he believes in perfect, and that he can attain it.
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