Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Perfectionism??

So, we've been homeschooling for two months now. It's going well for the most part but I'd love your advice on how to handle one recurring issue. Major tears...at least three times a week.

DS wants to arrive at the answer the easiest way possible with little or no effort. He skips steps in math problems, gets the problems wrong and then melts down when we have to revisit the work to correct it. He hates getting things wrong and often tries to negotiate with me about how his way or strategy is right...but it's not.

He even does this with spelling words. Just today he misspelled multiple words the first time. He asked if he got them right, I said no and he spelled them differently and said, "Good, I got them all right."

(Confusing tidbit-he doesn't do this with Beast Academy. He thinks it's hard and he enjoys the process of working it out. He'll even say that he likes it because it is hard.)

What is this? Public school was so easy for him that I'm afraid he doesn't know how to be wrong or that it's not okay to be wrong.

Do any of you have experience with this? How did you undo this? I don't want to give in to the tears but it's so hard to continue working when he is so, very upset. It can sometimes take him an hour to move on and that's with a break to play outside or whatever to help him.

Thanks for your help. I'm struggling to put this puzzle together

*He's got dysgraphia but I really don't think that's at play here. I don't think.

Both DS9 and DD7 are perfectionists, although in different ways for different subjects. For math, what sometimes works for DS is I will work through a math problem from the book, but purposely get a wrong answer.


I then let him correct me, and we laugh about it. Sometimes I pretend to be Joe (a not-so-bright character from Life of Fred). If I get the correct answer, I'll get free pizza for life, or some such silliness. The goal is to let him see that making a mistake isn't the end of the world, and model gracefully recovering from a mistake by brushing it off, figuring out the right answer, and moving on.

NikiHarp,

I unfortunately don't have time to give a thoughtful response at the moment with actual advice, but fwiw, what you wrote sounds so much like my dysgraphic ds at your ds' age. And like you, I thought it was perfectionism at first. Hindsight proved it to be issues related to dysgraphia.

My quick advice for right now is to think through - how would you approach this if it is dysgraphia and try it from that perspective.

I'll try to stop back later with some actual advice!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you, KnittngMama. This very same advice was given to me years ago. Grateful for the reminder. In the moment, it is so frustrating! I need to remember this before the meltdown-his and mine

polarbear, I look forward to hearing from you. He does this with typing also. He plays a game and, if he doesn't meet the goal, he cries and stops trying.

I haven't totally removed the pencil from his school work, but I have significantly reduced the amount of time he does written work. I was hoping this would reduce the frustration but it hasn't and that's left me confused and thinking perfectionism.

As always, I appreciate your input.

I don't know how old your son is but my DS5 loves the book The Fantastic Elastic Brain. It explains how brains work and emphasizes that doing something difficult makes the brain grow and that making mistakes makes the brain grow, too. This really resonated with my son. Now when he makes mistakes, he laughs and says "I can feel my brain growing!" In addition to that book, we read lots of biographies of scientists, inventors and mathematicians that include descriptions of their failed experiments.

I second this recommendation! DS3 absolutely loves the book and refers to stretching his amygdala whenever he does anything challenging.