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How can I help DD to just get things done instead of intentionally failing?
This relates to both the 'lying about homework' and 'apathetic 13yo' recent threads.

I've only just realized that she isn't doing her assignments because she wants certainty about her success/failure, rather than an actual inability to do the work. She seems to have learned the strategy of failing ahead of time. For instance, rather than lose a playdate or other fun activity of her choice if she didn't finish her homework, she made up an optional component to the homework and did that first, then insisted that she was still thinking of answers for the required part. For four hours, on a 20-minute assignment! No playdate, but no anxiety or self-blame for losing out on it either. This was actually very clever: by failing to get it done in time without precisely failing at the work, she was able to do the assignment in minutes as soon as she missed out on her 'incentive'. In the past she's worked on the assignment itself, which attaches anxiety and failure to the assignment, and then she can't get it done at all.

So - she will only do anything if there are no consequences to not doing it. (Informal afterschooling, pretty much.) Middle school is looming next year. There will be consequences to not doing her work! How have you handled this paradox? Have any of your kids conquered this sort of mindset? How do you motivate a student, if having any sort of motivator makes them want to take control of their own failure?

It's really hard.

I'm assuming that this comes as a package with perfectionistic tendencies, yes?

I did a LOT of reading about this two years ago when our then-11yo DD was melting down. It's task-avoidant perfectionism and self-handicapping, if you want to investigate what the research on the subject has to say.

It sounds as though you have the same sort of package deal that we do, though-- that is, a child who is definitively intrinsic in outlook, and yet at the same time, driven to severe anxiety re: perfectionistic tendencies. This means that they both reject and crave external recognition... and that extrinsic motivators (prizes, earned rewards, sticker charts, etc.) are an express route to-- well, somewhere hot and underground.

How has the school environment been for her? Is she anything like appropriately placed in terms of her readiness level?

That's what we attribute this package of problems to, at least in our daughter. She learned the perfectionism (thanks, school. Thanks a LOT. ), and the rest followed naturally given her innate temperment and previous leanings. She has never been particularly willing to be a "trained seal" and perform on command when there isn't anything meaningful (e.g. "intrinsically rewarding") in it for her.

I don't usually say this to anyone about schooling situations... but if your gut tells you that the schooling environment is causing this-- the only way to realistically combat that is going to be to pull the child OUT of school in favor of homeschooling. Truly. There isn't any other way to decouple the performance rewards (grades) from the child's efforts.

My daughter is still like a recovering JUNKIE with those stupid A+ grades in her gradebook. She is obsessive about maintaining 99-100% averages in all of her classes. We are constantly doing remediation on that score. I'd avoid that if you can.

At the same time, of course, you DO want your child to develop a sense of authentic pride in accomplishments... and to do that, the child has to face some of their weaknesses and tolerate real challenge, which is frankly incompatible with this kind of perfectionism. They certainly aren't going to voluntarily place themselves in that situation. We do still force "participation" in some things. The choice to fail or succeed isn't ours, but hers... but we do keep making her do things, and a lot of those things we demand are things that work at broadening that proximal zone (fighting Goldilocks syndrome).

We celebrate openly when our DD tries (really tries, I mean, not just goes through the motions with an eye toward intentional failure) something and does merely "well" or even "mediocre" without melting down.

We encourage her to take intellectual and social risks-- sometimes fairly forcefully, as noted.

We CONSTANTLY are on her about negative self-talk.

We NEVER-EVER-EVER praise "results" anymore... and very definitely NOT 100% results... we praise her personal effort in proportion to that effort, and we praise her committment to personal excellence.

We openly criticize (if you'll pardon the phrase) half-arsed efforts, no matter WHAT those result in, if it's something that is worthy of more respect/care. (But this is nuanced-- not EVERYTHING is worth it, and we all know it.)


We are also not very sympathetic with engineered failure. We either ignore it, call it what it is, or quietly insist on remediation. That way there is no intrinsic reward for that failure, and it COSTS her something to do it. KWIM?

It's a long, slow, and painful road, but maybe it helps to know that you aren't alone. Wish I had better advice.

Interesting. Thanks for the thoughts, and especially for the terminology.

She's perfectionistic, but not in the way you describe, Howler - she doesn't care much about others' judgement, but intensely cares about her own. Which means that no A+ will ever sate that beast.

I think you're right on about school. We had timed math tests starting in 2nd: get 50 problems right in 3 minutes. When you can do this with the +1's, you get a new test with the +2's (self paced and differentiated, see?) She instantly saw that there was no escape, no triumph, and no one actually cared if she knew the material. Statistically she was being asked to answer THE SAME QUESTION four times in three minutes. This bled into other school topics, and her usual slow work became glacial to nonexistent. After a little more than a year we pulled her out. She spent a year recovering at a very free-form school for the gifted as one of the oldest students, doing basically nothing. Ever. Cool engaging projects going on around her; she makes a concept map for her newspaper article but never writes a sentence; she makes her next article a witty, wordless comic strip.

This year she has a new teacher at the same school. She's still one of the oldest and her MAP shows that she's way ahead of even the other kids in her grade. The classroom is multigrade and expectations are set for each student within the project framework set up for the class. (ie, everyone writes a story on this topic, but the length and complexity and so on are whatever you are ready to produce.) Her teacher is an experienced middle school teacher and we are emphasizing that these study skills are what you will need next year, back in public school. Most kids are not getting homework, but we are purposefully giving her 'homework' of what she doesn't finish in class to let her learn to get it done. Everyone is on board and if we can figure out WHAT to do, I think we can implement it.

DH will be very uneasy with letting her fall on her face, and honestly, I think that's what we tried last year. She seems to be comfortable there. It's kind of a relief to her to know that the worst has happened. If we can get her to the point of hoping and expecting success, the hands-off approach will probably work.

I think all her real learning has come from outside classes. They are enough work to get to that it's a strain on our family and the knee-jerk response is along the lines of: "We are doing this for you, because you asked for it. If you aren't going to even try to do the work that goes with it, we're going to stop taking you and think twice about signing you up for another one!" I have a very bad feeling that this is playing into her scheme and sulking in her room for a year would make her very satisfied. In fact, thinking about it, I think she DID this last year. Should I change my tune? Something more like, "You are going to keep participating for this whole school year whether you like it or not, whether you do any work or not"? Can someone help me find a response in between? I feel like I'm dug into a hole and can't see the obvious way out.

OK, off to look up task-avoidant perfectionism and self-handicapping.

"I'm not inherently playdate worthy, only conditionally IF I do okay on my homework, I guess I don't deserve a playdate"

YES. This is EXACTLY it. Any advice or even things to avoid?

She's always doing weird self-punishment things, like sleeping on the hardwood floor after an argument because she doesn't deserve the comfort of the bed. I think this has been going on at least since she was three.

Yeah-- make no mistake, DD does NOT see 100% as "success."

In her world, there is no "success."

There is only varying modes of failure and... "the avoidance thereof." (Getting that almighty 100%.) No, the 100% doesn't represent a "win" it represents "adequate" since the challenges/barrier to getting it is generally not sufficiently high enough to warrant ACTUAL satisfaction. This transformation seems to come about because of a learned association that "my best is always 100%. But-- far less than my 'best' is also often 100%. Ergo, external indicators are useful ONLY as evidence of failure." From a logical standpoint, that one is pretty darned hard to refute.

In this scenario, the ONLY way to "win" is to refuse to play the game in the first place. Because there IS no "winning," all that doing what you are expected to/supposed to do offers is the risk of failure.

This is what happens when a child who is good at everything they try is not given sufficiently meaningful challenges and forced (encouraged? whatever) to face them head on.

Can you recover from perfectionism? Probably not really. I think it's akin to an addictive state. You can certainly learn more adaptive coping strategies, though. It's taken me years to do that, and I still feel the seductive pull of procrastination once in a while. Why procrastination? Well, because racing the clock allows me to forget about "perfect" in the goal of meeting a time deadline that most people would find impossible. Under THOSE conditions, even a fairly mediocre effort on my part tends to shine better, and I can let go of a lot of my hangups about doing things perfectly if there simply isn't time to worry about them.

You can probably see why grantsmanship and the academic cycle coupled with MASSIVE (self-imposed) grading loads were like powerful drugs for me. I do wonder if some of this isn't genetics. My dad and I both did this, and so does DD. She enjoys setting her OWN goal-- often related to procrastination, which also serves that "avoidant" monster and simultaneously builds in failure as a "likely" outcome... ergo, "not failing" means... bonus! I didn't fail even though I had every reason to! I am a GOD... (And I could have attained perfection if I hadn't self-handicapped... so I can always reassure myself that the flaws weren't "me" at my best... because that would mean that I'm an awful, imperfect person not deserving of water. Or Oxygen. Best not to risk finding that out. Ever.)

Okay, that's some of my own internal dialogue. I'm obviously not a well woman. But you get the idea.

You have to find ways to derail that process. I agree that getting inside the head of a person like this is the ONLY way to really alter the course of things in a substantive way.

I also agree that making a schedule matter-of-fact-- that is, REMOVING all rewards/punishments which relate to performance-- is the only way to manage this. Then, make natural consequences for NOT completing work be the only 'punitive' component. No judgment about performance, per se... just "Gosh, I think you must need more work on this skill. What happened here? What can you tell me about this? What can you learn from this experience?" along with gentle guidance...

so-- when the child says "I'm obviously an awful writer!!" you can steer and say... "I don't think so. Can you think of some more specific reasons why this didn't go well? What was happening while you were working on this?" (In order to get the CHILD to admit that well, maybe writing a complete term paper the NIGHT BEFORE IT IS DUE might not have been a thoughtful or well-considered plan...)

Yes, procrastination until the pressure of an impossible deadline looms can help get over te perfectionist bump. It works for a whole as a "coping" strategy but is extremely toxic in the long run.

I have little help for you. It is a problem I still struggle with. The other option is to stop caring about any goal. I don't recommend it either...

And I have spawned another task avoidant perfectionist although fortunately he doesn't seem to have tied his self value into the mess. Not yet anyway.

Any hints on finding a level of challenge that actually *will* challenge her? Honestly, I thought she was surrounded by her peers in our social group/neighborhood. We're a pretty exceptional bunch. But her MAP scores have me doubting this. She clearly wasn't showing me what she could do.

Can you have a conversation with her about that. What is her judgement about her work? Does she have something that she can point to with pride? What were the circumstances of that in terms of effort, what did she like about it.

This is rough - you see so many adults with perfectionism and self sabotage and it does so much damage. One tool that helps DH is the 80% versus 90% versus 100% good product. The client would rather have 80% great and ontime rather than perfect and weeks late. What is the cost of making it close to perfect, sometimes it's worth it and sometimes its not - but at least it's conscious.

My DS is not a perfectionist per se but he has tendencies but what he really has in spades is the not being bought - there's nothing he wants that.badly enough to be forced to do something - potty training was HORRIBLE!!! On the other hand, you say she willing will spend all day all year in her room. Well obviously her room, her head is much more engaging than what is outside.

No real help here, just some thoughts!

DeHe

Will she work for someone in particular?

My daughter will. If you engage her in a Socratic fashion, she is stunning. Really jaw-dropping. But only if the other participant(s) are worthy of it (or something like that).

With DD, it's very personality driven. We've made it part of our strategy this last two years of high school to get her away from teachers that don't make DD's grade there, because they are (at least when coupled with the curriculum) toxic for her. Rigid, protocol-oriented and seemingly humorless teachers are the worst for her. She's a funny kid and she enjoys being somewhat goofy, which is GOOD FOR HER (particularly in light of her other hangups, obviously). Having a teacher tell her to 'knock it off' all the time really ratchets up her anxiety and triggers the perfectionism.

Also, non-absolute activities. Things which are NOT right/wrong like art classes and literature discussions are great ways for her to show her stuff without comparing contstantly to a measuring stick.

This does mean that as parents, we have to grit our teeth and realize that we're going to be in for a LOT of judgment re: hothousing/Tigerparenting, because you really cannot point to assessments in most instances and measure kids like this if they aren't in the mood. They'll be all over the map depending on their relative motivation to cooperate with the proctor.

My DD has a few teachers that she will do ANYTHING for. This has been a lifesaver for us all-- those teachers know when she's not really trying, and they will ask for "more" in a way that makes it interpersonal for her. That way, she's not trying to beat "the numbers" so much as trying to "do good" in terms of retaining/earning the teacher's respect.

I love those teachers because they are sparing with praise... and cultivate more authentic pride in DD.

I also like the strategy of "good enough" awareness. Very important stuff.

I have a fun version of perfectionism in which I weigh myself and others against my internal perfectionistic scale.

This is why I have been advised that it would not be good for the general human population if I ever joined a cult and bought into certain worldviews.

So I have inward and outward directed perfectionistic tendencies.

Jon, you sound like my DH.
He has a deep need for the approval of others, but his disdain for them is rather off-putting, when you get right down to it... which leads to periods of self-loathing, since obviously nobody likes him... even if they ARE all deeply flawed people, content to wallow in mediocrity and sloth...

Most people don't respond very well to being told that they are flawed but have room for improvement in areas A, B, and C, in accordance with his internal rubric. Surprising, I know.


If this is epigenetic, as I often suspect that it is, then our DD is probably doomed.

My own impulses are almost entirely inwardly directed, but severe, and DH's are about equally inwardly and outwardly directed. I'm neurotic to the point of self-destruction and he comes across as a cold, judgmental jerk. Great combo.

Fortunately for me it comes and goes, so I don't alienate everyone all of the time.

Plus, there are some thoughts that just don't need to be expressed, so as long as my inhibitions are in place, everyone's happy.

I just try to keep me on a short leash as best I can.

You guys are not making me feel all warm and fuzzy about the future, just now.

Sheesh.

-mich

Somewhere in here are the makings of a 1950's style filmstrip about the dangers of non-acceleration.

I was accelerated twice. It is not a cure-all by a far cry.

Precisely. DD is a frequent flyer-- 3X, and nowhere near what she apparently "needed" in terms of difficulty bump. My 13yo is taking a full slate of honors and AP classes this year with her junior and senior peers, volunteers, acts as a peer tutor, serves on the boards of a pair of agencies, plays piano, is involved in a high-time commitment extracurricular(1-2 hours a day), and STILL spends upwards of 10-20 hours a week on chatango and palling around with her compadres, who are 2-6 years older than she is. We allow that because... well... it beats the alternative of having an anxious, depressed child who is fixated ONLY on her grades.

She's still pretty fixated on her grades, actually. The B in AP physics is keeping her up at night and definitely making her "avoidant" in that area. (Everything else is double nines and up). Thank heavens she's found a peer group (unofficially it's the HG+ RPG gaming group).



ETA: It occurs to me, though, that being "insanely" (as opposed to 'slightly') overbooked and overscheduled has HELPED this enormously. She's so busy that she quite literally doesn't have a lot of spare minutes to indulge in this particular negative set of thoughts, and therefore (I'm hypothesizing, anyway), not much time to actually get mired in it to start with. Since that short-circuits the entire process, we can nip leanings in the bud pretty easily by just pointing out that she's wasting time that she doesn't have.

Her schedule would seem actually CRAZY to other parents of 13yo kids, though. It's like we've built the procrastination in for her this year or something.
Whatever works, right??

Oh my. I just realized that the impossible challenge of managing her medical issues is her very first ever, quantifiable, objective, non-optional challenge. There is a very direct link between her behavior and the results. She gets approval for decent ones, outright praise and admiration from a host of medical personnel for great ones, and rapid loss of freedom for bad ones (besides feeling physically awful, we have to make sure she is correctly dosing her meds). And everyone who knows anything about her condition is constantly saying it's impossible to be perfect here. There is no 100%, no top score. Nobody with her condition can quite make it, medically speaking, to the level of a normal person.

We will have to watch that this doesn't go from appropriate challenge to obsession.

In a bazillion ways, she's become an easier person to deal with since those first couple hard months of her diagnosis, even compared to a year before it. And here we thought it was just that she was physically in better shape.

Thank you all for such a clear description of my kid. Of all the problems I thought I didn't have to worry about, perfectionism topped the list. I'm getting a new appreciation for the term 'can of worms' but at least the lid is off now.

ljoy, my DD has lived all her life with a similarly-- er-- objective, punitive medical condition that basically REQUIRES perfection (or something close to it) and punishes failure in pretty dramatic fashion.

It's a hard thing to encourage that kind of perfectionism in ONE area, but discourage it in others. Even when it really is necessary in that one area-- obviously control of a chronic/brittle/unforgiving/life-threatening medical condition is something where perfectionism is necessary and pretty much NO amount of obsessive care is truly "excessive" care.

Of course, in my DD's case, her condition is one of pretty binary "not fail" and "epic fail" so that may well contribute to this world view. There is no "reward" for managing well. Other than preventing intubation or worse, I suppose. There are very definitely "punishments" aplenty for NOT doing so. She has experienced some of those punishements, by the way-- and often they aren't related to her efforts but are of the "crap happens" type, mostly. Perfect management doesn't lead to rewards-- just the avoidance of punishment-- and "perfect" here is truly not humanly possible. (Frankly, I've struggled with how not humanly possible it is, too, over the years. I'm good... but not always good ENOUGH, as experience has showed to spectacular effect on occasion.)

Hmm. Actually, this is incredibly helpful. We'd always assumed that the two things were quite distinct from one another and that her academic perfectionism was linked to something else... but maybe not as much as we'd thought. That parallel is fairly striking now that I state it in those terms.

*sympathy-empathy-hugs* So sorry. This one keeps me up nights, too.

People with diabetes are my most popular clients.

But most of them have diabesity.

So... Maybe the trick is to find an external measure of success that the person will accept, that validly measures success as well as failure? Could be grades in a challenging class, my DD's medical issues, or the opinions of a respected teacher/coach/etc. Can NOT be grades in a too-easy class, your DD's condition, the opinions of unqualified persons (like those rigid teachers or easily impressed strangers at the supermarket), or self-talk, which can too easily spiral out of control in either direction.

Maybe the really terrifying part of perfectionism is a belief that only the second category exists, which makes ALL success meaningless and all weakness disastrous failure?