Yesterday, my daughter Cora Jo (age 9) begged to wrap the gift for a birthday party our son Jet (age 6) is attending tomorrow. I relinquished the task to her, and finished washing the dishes. Fifteen minutes later, she announced it was done, proudly grinning as she held the box above her head as if it were a prize. Uneven, lumpy seams overlap on crinkled paper where she didn’t quite get the paper smooth.

I inwardly cringed when I saw it. The crazy critic in my head started, “Um…no. The wrapping is part of the gift, right? It needs to LOOK good! There will be adults at that party and they will…” In a moment of unexplainable triumph, I stopped that critic mid-sentence and told him to zip it and go to time-out.

There was a time I would have rewrapped the gift without any thought for my daughter’s feelings. There was a time when I would have rewrapped it in front of her, as an “instructional exercise.” There was a time when I would have waited until she was asleep, rewrapped it and then sent it to the party in a bag, hoping she wouldn’t notice. Then there is now.

I am a recovering over-achieving perfectionist with people-pleasing tendencies, a condition which looks a lot like success on most days, but please know…it is not success. It is a façade for shame and fear and pride. It causes the sufferer to require impossibly high standards for herself and those around her, which eventually spills into harsh criticism for self and others. Rewrapping a gift isn’t really that big a deal, unless it sends a message to my daughter that she “can’t do it right” or she’s “not good enough.” When our kids were small, I rarely let them “help” with things around the house because I wanted them done “right,” which is really just a euphemism for wanting things done “my way.”

I have had to release the grip I have on things, because I see how insisting on my way causes my kids to shut down, how it sends a message that they can’t do it right, so why try. Whether it is the laundry, handling homework, wrapping a gift, or managing a friendship, my kids need every opportunity to do things imperfectly. So often, imperfect is actually good enough, as evidenced by Cora Jo’s triumphant smile as she held up the wrapped gift. If her results were the product of laziness or indifference, then maybe we would need to address it, but her gift was wrapped the best way she knew, done with love and attention. It’s taken me a long time to be able to see the difference.

This is what motherhood looks like at my house this week—a messy gift. I wouldn’t have it any other way.