Q. I'm a perfectionist mom with four children. My 15-year-old stepdaughter and my 11-year-old stepson do not live with us but visit regularly. My other two children are girls, and they live with us. One is 5, and the other just turned 1. I try not to let my quirks spill onto my children, but they invariably do. My daughter's kindergarten teacher said my daughter is very hard on herself and is very detail-oriented. Her first question to us at our parent-teacher conference was, "Who is the perfectionist in the family?"

I want more for my daughter than to have to deal with the things I have dealt with my entire life, such as the compulsions for everything to be orderly and neat, constantly worrying, and everything else that goes along with perfectionism. Do you have a book or any advice on how to teach my children to be different from me? I know they learn from example, but it is hard to teach them when I don't know how to teach myself.

A. Perfectionists not only make the world more difficult for themselves but also often make those around them feel "never quite good enough" about themselves. The good news is that you can change, and you don't even have to change extremely. You can continue to do excellent work and keep things relatively neat as long as you learn to accept mistakes in yourself and others. You also will want to force yourself to leave chores undone occasionally. You can learn to say, preferably in front of your children, things such as: "Oh, well. I messed up on that, but I guess I learned something from it." Or: "I guess I was wrong. It's not so bad being wrong once in a while." You can leave a bed unmade from time to time because you're in a hurry to do some fun activity with your children, and explain to your children that family time is more important than a once-in-a-while unmade bed.

I can suggest some books for you to read. One is "See Jane Win for Girls," and you could share parts of it with your daughter. The other is "Perfectionism," by Miriam Adderholdt and Jan Goldberg. Both will be helpful for you personally, as well as for your family. If you find yourself unable to change away from perfectionism even after reading this material, a counselor should be able to help you. Consider that excellence and reasonable order (rather than perfect order) are only small steps down from your perfectionist self-expectations, but they are large steps toward being mentally healthy and enjoying life.

For free newsletters about perfectionism or about "See Jane Win for Girls," send a large self-addressed, stamped envelope to P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094, or read "What's Wrong With Perfect?" at www.sylviarimm.com.

Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or [email protected]. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.