Perfectionist child

My daughter is 6.  This describes her to a tee.  Our year last year sounded just like you.  As you have described, I have helped her some but mostly let it be the best she can do.  And I make sure to point out when something that I do (or daddy or a grandparent) that is not perfect, but is good enough.  And we also talked about “working for the Lord.”  (The scripture reference escapes me at the moment.)  This year is much better.  We are still dealing with perfection issues, but it seems much more manageable now.  I would love to hear other’s perspectives, but in our case it is her personality and the way God made her but we are both learning to deal with it more effectively.

My oldest (almost 10 yo daughter) is very much like this.  She would always be so hard on herself when it wasn’t perfect, or when the picture drawn wasn’t the same as what was in her head, etc.  At this point, we will have discussions on how God has given her wonderful talents of being responsible, orderly, seeing what needs to be done, etc. but with every talent comes a weakness.  In her case the weakness is not being content with her abilities, being overly-controlling, etc.  It is something that we pray about together and discuss and I foresee years of reminders ahead. 

When she was younger, it was very difficult – she has come a long way!  One thing that I did repeatedly (and sometimes still do) is before she started something, let’s say a drawing, I would say something like, “Now remember, we are just learning, so it might not be perfect.  That’s okay.  What’s important is that we do our best and we have a good attitude.  I would rather have imperfect work with a good attitude, than perfect work with a bad one.”  Basically, I would give her permission to “fail” in the task before we even got started so that she could see her abilities within some sort of perspective and understand that her character and growth were more important.

I don’t know if all of that makes sense.  Hope some of it helps,

Tanya

Had similar issues with my son when he was younger – and he seems to have grown out of it.

Advice…

Praise trying – not the results.  ie – “You worked really hard on that picture”, instead of “wow, that is a great picture”.

Show and take your own mistakes well.  “oh look, I made a mistake on my knitting.  I’ll just have to undo it to that point, and try again…” or “I made a mistake here – but it isn’t noticable when you look at the whole sweater…”

When they are saying they can’t do something that you know they can… don’t tell them that they can…  to the perfectionist child that ups the anxiety… makes them feel like you expect them to be able to do it… perfectly!  so with them saying “I can’t play this song” (even though they have before…) – don’t say “Yes you can, you played it before…” or anything like that.  Instead say “Yes, that song can be a little tricky, but all I am asking is that you try”

For learning something, don’t give them a time frame to learn it…  again, they are usually so scared of failure that they won’t try. 

(My son spent a YEAR in suzuki violin lessons, refusing to play the violin with fingers, or try anything new…  it was a long, hard time… and I really had to learn how to deal with the perfectionist child…   but I can’t think of anything that he has done this with for a long time.  So although it was a long, frustrating, difficult year that often had me in tears – it was worth it!)

yes – I said that type of phrase a lot until I learned from someone else not to…

“you CAN, play with fingers… you used fingers at group class…” – never got him to try to play with fingers… would just make him more determined not to.  It wasn’t until it was pointed out that that confirmed that I expected him to be able to play it (properly) and that I’d be disappointed if he didn’t….

the “I know it is trickier [note I don’t say HARD] to play with fingers… I just want you to try”

btw – one of our motto’s in our house (that I made up) is “Practice makes Hard things easy”  – that is my answer to “it is too hard!” and our curren’t violin teacher has an answer for when he (and a few kids in group class) would start saying they are tired…  “First you get tired, then you get strong”…. and sometimes she would answer with “Good, you must be about to get stronger”….

It did take a while for the change in what I said to make a difference – but as I said, now that he is 7 (3 to 4 years later) – this problem really doesn’t seem to happen anymore for us.

There has been a study, which I don’t have any info on (lol) that students that have been praised on working hard, trying hard, etc do better overall than ones that have been praised for results.  They are more willing to try with challenging tests or puzzles.

Hm, that is an interesting question Sonya…

I could see it going either way – and it might depend on the child which way it would go.  I don’t think it is much different to my response to “It is too hard”  (“practice makes hard things easy…”)…

I have a perfectionist child myself and I will use both suggestions and see what happens over time.  The thing is, with my child anyway, is that his tendencies are unpredictable.  He actually makes me crazy, at times:)

I have begun to use the “Yes, that song (or whatever) can be a little tricky, but all I’m asking is that you try,” phrase and that seems to work so far.  My son can not take wordy phrases or cliches…they either don’t make sense to him, literally, or he insists on understanding them and we get into it while I’m trying to explain it.  I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

He plays violin and I’ve been using that phrase and it has helped both of us.   Oh, and during our math lesson today I used it again and it made the event go by much smoother.  I pray alot, too, and that helps.