You Don't Have to Be a Perfect Parent, and Why That's Actually the Point
Chicago Therapy Corner | Child & Family Therapy | Chicago, IL
If you've ever lain awake wondering whether you said the wrong thing, missed a moment, or somehow let your kid down today this post is for you.
Parenting these days comes with an almost crushing pressure to get everything right. But here's something I share with nearly every parent I work with: the pursuit of perfect parenting may be the very thing getting in the way of good parenting.
The "Good Enough" Parent
Back in the 1950s, British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott coined the phrase, the "good enough" parent.
After working with thousands of families, Winnicott noticed something surprising: children don't need perfectly attuned caregivers. They need caregivers who are warm, consistent, and present enough, and who allow small, ordinary frustrations to happen. Those small frustrations, it turns out, are how children learn to cope, grow a sense of self, and develop resilience.
In other words,your child needs you to get it wrong sometimes. Not badly wrong. Just ordinarily, humanly wrong.
Why Perfection Could Actually Backfire
When a parent tries never to fail–always available, always calm, always knowing the “right” thing to say–a child never gets the chance to practice handling disappointment, waiting, or sitting with a hard feeling. Those experiences, as uncomfortable as they are, are exactly what build emotional strength.
Winnicott described what happens when children don't get that ordinary experience of imperfection as a False Self; a kind of mask they put on to manage an environment that feels too fragile or too demanding. It's a survival strategy, not a thriving one.
A good enough parent creates what he called a holding environment, not perfect, but safe. Not always in tune, but reliably there.
You Have to Be Survivable, Not Perfect
Melanie Klein, another pioneering child psychoanalyst, helped us understand just how big a child's inner emotional world really is. Full of love, rage, fear, and adoration, sometimes all at once and often all directed at you.
What children need from us isn't a parent who never gets it wrong. They need a parent who can be on the receiving end of all of the tantrums, the "I hate you"s, the pushing away, and still be standing there, steady and warm, on the other side.
You don't have to be unshakeable. You just have to come back.
Repair: The Most Important Skill in Parenting
Research on attachment by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, and built on by developmental researchers like Ed Tronick, tells us something quietly radical: even the most sensitive, loving parents are out of sync with their children about 70% of the time.
What makes the difference between secure and insecure attachment isn't the absence of those disconnections. It's what happens next. Repair is the whole game.
When you lose your patience and then come back and say, "I'm sorry, I was harsh" that's not damage control. That's the lesson. You're showing your child that relationships survive rupture, that love doesn't disappear when things get hard, and that repair is always possible.
Perfectionism Is Usually Anxiety Wearing a Parenting Hat
In my work with Chicago families, I see this pattern often: parents who are working incredibly hard to get everything right are often running from a deep fear of failing their child, of repeating their own painful childhood experiences, of being judged.
And here's the painful irony: that anxiety pulls them out of the present moment with their child. The parent who is monitoring their own performance is, in that moment, less connected than the one who simply shows up, imperfect and present.
Selma Fraiberg wrote beautifully about the "ghosts in the nursery," the way our own unresolved histories show up, uninvited, in how we parent. Therapy isn't about banishing those ghosts forever. It's about learning to notice when they've arrived, so you can make a different choice.
What This Looks Like on a Regular Tuesday
You snapped at your kid. You come back, apologize, and reconnect. That's good enough parenting.
You were distracted and missed what they were trying to show you. You put your phone down and say "show me again." That's good enough parenting.
You said no to something they really wanted and held the limit even when they cried. That's good enough parenting.
You had a hard day and weren't your best self. Your child got through it inside a relationship that is, overall, loving and safe. That's good enough parenting.
Getting Support Is Good Enough Parenting Too
Reaching out for support whether that's therapy, a parenting consultation, or just talking to someone who understands isn't a sign that you've failed. It's one of the most genuinely loving things you can do for your family.
At Chicago Therapy Corner, we work with parents and children across Chicago using a relational, psychodynamic approach. We help families understand their patterns, repair their relationships, and find more ease in the everyday work of raising kids.
If you're carrying a lot of parenting anxiety, or if things feel stuck at home, we'd love to talk.
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