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dealing with frustration
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I would like to know how other people help their children learn to deal with frustration. My DD7 has been having trouble lately dealing with feelings of frustration when she can’t do something as well or as easily as she thinks she should. Many things come very easy to her. For example, she taught herself to read at age 4, going from knowing only the sounds of the letters to reading books like Charlotte’s Web in about 2 or 3 months. It was just very easy for her, requiring very little effort. She’s always been ‘advanced’ in most academic subjects.
Now, however, she gets very frustrated and upset when everything doesn’t come that easily. We have had minor meltdowns several times this week. As soon as she makes one mistake, she says things like “I’ll never understand math, I just can’t do it, it’s too hard!” It’s true that math isn’t as easy for her as reading, but she is quite capable of doing it, and as soon as we calm the emotions down, she gets back to work and proves herself wrong.
Today, she was very excited to work on a crochet project. She has been making chains for months, but everytime she tries to move onto a second or third row, she gives up. Today, though, we just started making a Barbie house out of an old entertainment centre, and she wants to crochet blankets for the dolls’ new beds. She made it to the third row (short rows!) before I started hearing “I can’t do it. This is stupid. I’ll never learn to crochet!” along with tears and sobs.
A similar thing happened while working on her “Typing Instructor for Kids” game. She is very good at typing, especially for a 7yo, but as soon as she struggled on a level, she started with “I hate this. This game is stupid. I’m never going to learn to type.” etc. Same thing with learning a new song on the violin.
We’ve talked about how everyone has some things that are easy and some things that are hard. I’ve reminded her that everything she is learning in school is ahead of what is expected for a student in grade two, so that of course some things are going to be challenging. We’ve talked about how important it is to just try again, and keep practicing, and how many things take a long time to learn and that it is unreasonable to expect to be perfect at the beginning, or even after days, weeks, months, or years of practice. She’ll usually go back and try again, but then as soon as a stumbling block comes, she’s back to frustration mode.
The thing is, all of these are activities that she has chosen. I deliberately don’t push her, because she is already advanced, and I don’t want to create stress and cause her to lose her love of learning. These are things she WANTS to do, even the math! She asks to do more Life of Fred, even when my plan for the day was just to use card games to practice skills she already knows.
So, do I just keep on encouraging, showing understanding, and reminding that it’s okay and normal for some things to be hard, or are there ideas that I haven’t thought of to help teach this lesson?
Thanks in advance.
Joanne
That sounds exactly like my 11YO DS. He learned to read very early and when he was in PS everything was too easy for him. When we started HS two years ago and I put him at a more appropriate level for his abilities, he got very, very frustrated if he even got one thing wrong (thinking of math, specifically).
I don’t have any answers for you, because we still struggle with it from time to time. He is beginning to mature and have more control over his frustration. It concerns me, though, because I was always the same way growing up…
It sounds like she has a tendency towards perfection.. There is another older topic on here about perfectionism. Something I learned from that was to share that I don’t expect it to be done perfectly the first time and I often say, “Practice makes hard things easier.”
When they start new things to start super easy at a level just below capabilities to build confidence before moving up to more challenging levels.
As part of our memory work they memorize the Try Try Again poem.
As part of Scripture memory, they memorize Psalm 4:4 and other verses. When thay are frustrated and sent to their room, they are to think on the memory verse. Hugs are powerful tools, too.
It sounds like you are already being encouraging and understanding. It might just nred a little more time. We are still working at it , too.
No ideas on the perfectionism. However, our very experienced 4-H knitting/crochet leader ALWAYS does the first 1-2 rows of the first washcloth that the newcomers make. Even the older kids. It’s very difficult to work into a chain because there just isn’t anything to hold on to and it twists so much. By the time they have done a whole square or two in single crochet it is much more doable for them to see the stitches in the chain to make that first row on their own.
Thanks for the tip. I did do the second row for her, but perhaps one more would help. We’ll try that.
Joanne
I struggle with this issue. My oldest gives up very easily because it’s “too hard”…I think for her it’s a laziness issue, but maybe it is perfectionism. She’s struggled with reading and math. Right now it is writing and piano. My DS is definitely a perfectionist and often has meltdowns when things don’t turn out how he wants them to. This has gotten better with age…I think ages 5-7 where the worst with this!
One thing I have done is to show them blogs of what other kids their age are doing. We’d been using the HOD curriculum at the time, and moms post their “week in review”. I showed my DC some of the work other kids had done, and I think it really helped. A lightbulb when off when they saw other DC’s work and they realized that I didn’t expect perfection. They’d previously only had my examples to compare it to (not that it’s anywhere near perfect), as I often did art projects along with them. About that time, I quit doing the projects alongside them. I might show them a technique to use, but I don’t complete an entire project with them. I also try to emphasise that their skills will improve with age…the drawings of a 5yo aren’t going to be the same as the drawings of a 10yo or an adult.
Another idea…does the blanket need to be crocheted? My DC love sewing with felt. It’s very easy to work with…for a blanket, you’d really just need to cut it out. Fleece would work as well.
If the blankets were made with felt or fleece pieces, she could finish them off using the blanket stitch around the sides.
Thanks, Holly, for the hope that she should outgrow this a bit. I don’t know if I would call our challenge either perfectionism or laziness. She just expects that everything will be easy, because it usually is, and so it’s difficult to deal with when things are hard.
Thanks for the ideas about the blanket, both Holly and Sheraz. The issue isn’t so much the crocheting, as dealing with tough emotions, but that gives us more ideas for future handicrafts. She WANTS to learn to crochet, because she has seen me make several blankets, so this was a good project to use that skill. We are also going to be sewing and stuffing mattresses, so she’ll be practicing sewing as well.
I’ll just keep encouraging, and giving her opportunities to try new things that challenge her just a bit, so that she can learn to handle the frustrating emotions that come up. She’s young, so I’m not overly worried.
Thanks again everyone.
Have you read about praising children? There have been many recent studies where if a child is praised a certain way they have the exact problem you’re describing. One book that goes into this is “Nurture Shock” and there are others all about the effects of praise. The problem comes in when the child is either excessively praised or praised for being good at something instead of the effort/perseverance being praised. That may be something worth looking into.
Blessings,
Dana
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