Anneliese Toumey wanted to make a milk carton look like artwork by Edward Hopper for a class project at Sycamore School. After her research, she decided to draw pictures on the carton in the famous artist’s style.

But the eighth grader got frustrated when she couldn’t draw the pictures well – even though Hopper is considered one of the best realist artists of the 20th century.

“I did about two pictures, but I knew I couldn’t get them. I wasn’t happy with them and I kept doing them over and over again and trying really hard to fix them,” she said.

“It was the night before it was due, and I was still working on it, and I finally just had to be happy with how it was, and I still got a good grade on it.”

Anneliese is a perfectionist. She believes it can be both positive and negative to be this way. It’s positive because she’s sure to put enough time into every project to make it good, and she gets good grades.

“But it’s a bad thing because I spend a lot of time and waste a lot of time on doing things which aren’t exactly necessary,” she said. “I just think that they should be that way because it needs to be perfect.”

The 14-year-old pointed to band preparation as an example.

“I play the French horn and sometimes when I have a piece that I’m playing, I’ll spend lots of time practicing it until I have it, like, absolutely perfect.”

What’s the difference between somebody who wants to do great work and someone who is a perfectionist?

Thomas S. Greenspon, a psychologist and family therapist, explained it this way:“Perfectionism is about believing that in order to be acceptable as a person, you have to be perfect.” He’s a recovering perfectionist himself, he said, and has worked to be more relaxed and make mistakes and learn from them instead of beating himself up.

He used the Olympics and the “American Idol” TV show as examples of how society today puts a lot of value on perfectionism. Perfectionists are satisfied only with the gold medal or becoming the American Idol.

Another expert on perfectionism is Kristie Speirs Neumeister, an assistant professor of psychology at Ball State University

“When you work hard, you feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in your work, but when you’re a perfectionist, it’s sort of never good enough,” she said.

Neumeister pointed out that there are three different types of perfectionists:

1. Self-oriented perfectionists – They set unrealistic expectations for their performances and aren’t influenced by others’ perceptions.

2. Socially prescribed perfectionists – They are motivated to be perfectionists because they believe others have unrealistic expectations of them.

3. Other-oriented perfectionists – These are people who have unrealistic expectations for everyone else.

Anne Buckwalter is another eighth grader at Sycamore who may be a perfectionist, at least when it comes to academics.

“I think I strive more for excellence than perfectionism,” she said, noting that she enjoys competing to get the highest grade on a test.

Greenspon noted that it’s not perfectionism that leads to achievement.

ldquo;I’ve always said that it’s the person’s talent and their energy and their commitment that makes them successful,” he said, adding that his theory is also backed up by 25 years of research.

“And so if we could wave the magic wand and get rid of their perfectionism, they would be less anxious and less nervous and more successful.”

Neumeister agreed:“It’s very debilitating.It can be hard to overcome, and it gets in the way of your success.”

Perfectionism can often be avoided if kids are challenged in school early, she said. That’s because kids who go through elementary school getting easy A's and never being challenged don’t learn how to accept less than perfect scores in school.

“I just can’t stress enough the need that kids have experiences with failure while they’re young and they’ve got support systems in place to help them figure out what that means and how to overcome it.”

Perfectionism can also get in the way of friendships and family relationships.

Anneliese said her mother has learned to live with all the time her daughter devotes to homework, but her siblings haven’t.

“My sister kind of feels it’s annoying and so do my two brothers. A lot of times when we’re doing something together, I’ll want them to be perfect and they get annoyed.”

Neumeister hasn’t worked with Anneliese or Anne but has begun researching other youth perfectionists and their relationships.

“They have a lot of difficulty with relationships because they think either their friends aren’t good enough or can’t meet their expectations, or they get so hung up on their own performance that they’re sort of self-absorbed,” she said.

Anne said she doesn’t feel isolated in her relationships. Her parents have pushed her to do well, but the 13-year-old pushes herself even more, she said. Plus, Sycamore has a lot of smart, driven students. The private school educates only gifted students.

“What I do there (at school) makes me feel that I should be perfect. I can’t really say there are a lot of other factors in our society that make me feel that way,” Anne said.

Greenspon and Neumeister give this advice to people who want to overcome perfectionism:

-- Surround yourself with people who accept and like you for who you are.

-- After you make a mistake, make a list of 10 bad things that will happen to you as a result of the mistake. Inevitably, you’ll see that the mistake wasn’t that bad.

-- Read biographies or articles that profile people who have made big mistakes, but learned from them and succeeded anyway.

--Talk to friends and relatives who may put pressure on you to be perfect and explain how it hurts you.

“The bottom line is kids need to be in an environment where they feel psychologically safe,” Neumeister stressed.

“This means that they realize they can ask questions and they can explore opportunities and other methods of learning without the fear that people are going to look down on them or people are going to judge them,” she said.“When they do have that fear, this is where we see more of the perfectionist tendencies rise up.”

ASSISTANT EDITOR: Joe Murphy, 14.

REPORTERS: Caroline Payne, 12; Clare Welch, 14.

Copyright 2008 Y-Press  

Are you – or were you -- a teenage perfectionist?

By Arielle Johnson, 13

Take the following lighthearted and definitely unscientific quiz. Choose the answer that best describes you.

1. Your room is…

a. Impeccably neat. You can’t even leave the room knowing that it isn’t spotless.

b. Pretty clean. The bed is made most of the time, and the clothes are put away.

c. Is that a month-old pizza crust under your bed?

2. When you do your homework…

a. You redo it several times, but it’s never right.

b. You finish it and check it.

c. You don’t do it; you feed it to your dog.

3. The worst thing that could happen at school is if…

a. You look or act stupid.

b. The cafeteria serves the “ground meat surprise.”

c. Your math teacher grades the homework.

4. Your friends…

a. Have a lot of flaws.

b. Are always there for you.

c. Are secretly aliens in disguise.

5. You get a B+ on the science test. You decide that…

a. You are really dumb. You should have gotten an A.

b. A B+ is pretty good.

c. Your pencil must be lucky.

6. A group assignment means that…

a. You have to do all the work -- otherwise it might not be perfect.

b. You get to see what other people think about the Scottsboro Trials.

c. You get to slack off, like always.

7. A group of people are talking about your favorite movie. You…

a. Stand off to one side. You don’t want to say something silly.

b. Join in, pointing out: “Wasn’t it so cool when that guy…”

c. Don’t say anything. That information could be used by the enemy.

8. Your science project is due next Tuesday. You…

a. Procrastinate. You can’t get the beginning just right, so you put it off.

b. Decide to spread out the work and do some every day.

c. Won’t need science when you grow up to be a caveman.

If you chose…

Mostly a’s- You could be a perfectionist.

Mostly b’s- You are pretty well-rounded.

Mostly c’s- You tend to be delusional.

* Based on material from “What to Do when Good Isn’t Good Enough,” by Thomas S. Greenspon (Free Spirit Publishing, 2007, $9.95)