Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments perfectionism, refusing instruction, & much more!

Hello!

Okay, this is my first post, it may seem more like venting but there are questions at the end, I promise:). In a nutshell, I�m an exhausted homeschooling mother of 2, DD6, DS2. After years of researching various childhood behavioural/developmental disorders I came upon an article that discussed the misdiagnoses of ADD and ODD in gifted children. After reading this, I started reading more and more about giftedness in general and for the first time I started to see that this is where my daughter fits in. She was my first child and I just didn�t see the signs. For some reason it didn�t seem odd that she wanted to me to read adult encyclopedias for hours when she was 2. I thought she just liked the pictures! Family, friends, teachers, etc. have always said that she�s very advanced (academically), but I sincerely thought that they were overreacting. Looking back (esp. because I now have a second child that is �developing as expected�) I can see that her development is not typical in many areas.

We decided to homeschool our kids because we live in a very small town and we were not comfortable with the atmosphere of local school. When my daughter was young, before preschool and kindergarten, she was enthusiastic about learning virtually anything. Now, we are on the edge of grade 1 and it�s a whole new ball game. She has evolved into a perfectionist. She also refuses anything that resembles or requires instruction, which is problematic when you are six. As a result we�ve been attempting to follow/understand/embrace the Montessori approach (which is easier said than done btw). Her refusal to receive instruction combined with her perfectionistic tendencies is significantly affecting her emotional well being and academic development. I�m also not sure how much of this can be attributed to homeschool control issues, because I also know that if a �teacher� assigned something, she would follow instruction, no matter how inane.

I should also mention that I am in contact (by phone) with a child therapist that has worked quite a bit with gifted children. I�ve only had one session but she seems very well informed and she said that it sounds like most of our challenges are stemming from my daughters perfectionism. We would have travel quite far to see her in person, and so phone appointments will have to due for now.

For the summer I�ve decided to try full out Montessori, allowing her to choose her own work entirely. This means that if she decides not to do math for a month, I�m just going to take a deep breath and remember that Maria was a brilliant woman.

My first question is how do you tackle perfectionism? Secondly, how common is it for gifted children to refuse instruction? If you�ve had similar experiences (in homeschool or within a traditional school setting) how have you overcome these challenges?

Thanks so much for reading my very long post. I will appreciate any and all advice!

Annaliisa

Hi annaliisa,

First of all, welcome. I am a fairly new member to this board to and have found it excellent. And congratulations on identifying your daughter.

I only really have a response (wont say answer!) to the perfectionism as dd is only 4.5yo (and not remotely interested in instruction from either, but as she's only 4, we've let that slide for now!).

My dd is very perfectionistic, but we've had some success over the last year by really focusing on how she is using her abilities rather than what the outcome is. Also we have tried to find ways to show her that mistakes can result in fantastic outcomes (there are websites with examples too - my dd was very impressed that chocolate chip cookies were apparently a mistake).

We also don't pretend that something is great if it's not. We got this from The Optimistic Child by Martin E. Seligman, which I think is an excellent book on helping kids develop resilience and reduce perfectionism. For example one issue for us has been dd's drawing and her always becoming enraged because she can't draw as well as me or her dad etc (not that we're great drawers by any stretch). So rather than say 'your dog looks just like dad's', when it clearly doesn't, we might say 'you need to keep in mind that dad's an adult and he's had a lot of practice. As you get bigger you'll get more practice, and you'll get better and better'.

Another thing from that book is not to step in and 'fix' whatever it is that they're struggling with. I.e. sometimes dd gets frustrated with lego because she hasn't quite got the fine motor skills to get the littlest pieces in without really concentrating. At first I would always offer to help, but now I just leave her with it. Often she'll walk away in frustration, but she'll almost always come back to it and finish it off once she's calm.

Oh, and the last thing that we've found really helpful is looking back over old work to show that practice and getting bigger really do make a difference.

Good luck - wish I had something to offer on the instruction thing, will keep an eye on the responses you get to see what we can use too!

Not an answer, but just worked with us... re: perfectionism.

As the adults, we've talked aloud about what we're thinking. So, we basically act-out the situation and verbalize it, so child will have something to see/copy (hopefully).

Eg. Draw, make a mistake. Get a little upset, like "oh no!" Then think aloud the process of accepting. Eg. "I will try again" or "I think if I practice this a few more times, I'll get better at it" or "Hmm, look at my funny drawing, ha ha, it was suppose to be a dog, but I think it looks like a bear now. I think I'll make it into a bear instead and draw a cave over here..."

After doing that a few times, I would have similar things happen, then I'll ask child "What do you think?" and let child help me accept it.

We also left things open, undone, unfinished -- at the very beginning to gently counter the demanding internal engine that wants everything "just so". But since then, we don't do that anymore.

Of course, none of the above works for us when child is hungry/tired/over-stimulated.

Good luck! Keep at it

annaliisa - welcome.

We have worked on perfectionism. Modeling failure with appropriate behavior has helped. Even Mommy makes mistakes.

I let my kids pour milk/juice from a picture in a size they can handle. This is good for self esteem. Encourage them to give themselves a pat on the back when they do a good job, especially trying something new. It's good that they are pleasing themselves more than Mom. When they make a mistake, we say that's ok you are learning. If they spill the milk, that's ok, you can fix it, and let them help clean it up. Fixing there mistakes is very helpful to children.

My husband has a very hard time not getting upset about the spilled milk so I put out poured milk at diner.

Hope this helps.

There's a lot of good advice here. One thing that has worked for us include praising value where it exists, including in an imperfect product where your child has already noted an imperfection (I don't believe in glossing these over, and am always honest with my son, as I think over-praise is a particularly insulting form of coddling). Another thing is to help the child realize that the way most adults do things isn't perfect either. In a different thread, someone noted that their child was upset that the child's pictures didn't look like the parent's drawings-- but it is important to realize that 1) unless the parents are actual artists (or highly skilled in the particular area at issue), that's a false standard of excellence; and 2) excellence can occur in many forms, so the child may be developing a talent in a different direction, sort of like Jackson Pollock might have been interested in paint smearing at a young age but might not have cared much for representation, which could have easily been misinterpreted as being "less good" by someone. I think the thing is to encourage growth without necessarily channeling it in one specific direction.

I think perfectionism is largely learned by imitation, but the good thing is it can be unlearned too. Like, for instance, the spilled milk story above. Smart people tend to think critically and realize when something is subpar, and our kids pick up on it. Then, when our children are doing something like drawing, etc., they may see objectively that their products aren't as technically perfect as some others they've seen. It's due to an early development of perception that outstrips ability, which I see as similar in causation to the "problems" that happen when intellectual ability outstrips physical and social development, but kids are in with their normally developing age group.

Perhaps a good approach would be to think of activities that encourage prototyping at intermediate stages. You could try waiting until your child finishes something, then praising as appropriate and asking if it can be made even better, more exciting, if a new part could be added on, etc. But if your child is done, of course she's done.

One thing that's been discussed recently is drawing and writing story books, which is a great activity for any kid IMO. You could staple pages together, then have your kid write the loose first draft or outline of a story, then have her specifically arrange the bits of plot to conform to the number of pages, etc.

Any activity like that that takes multiple adjustments, changes, etc. is bound to decrease the bad parts of perfectionism-- but it will actually increase the good parts, since your child will be encouraged to always seek a better result. I encourage things like that with my son, and do my best to adopt a generally encouraging attitude by saying things such as "I like the direction in which you're taking this", etc.

My son did have some issues with perfectionism but I had more experience with the refusing instruction. I have homeschooled my 12 year old son since he finished Kindergarten and we were told we needed to homeschool by the principal and a few teachers.

My son's learning differences required that he learn differently. He is good at finding his own way to learn and not necessarily the way the book shows, especially for math. This was very hard for me, but he has proven many times that he can learn better if I let him learn his way. We are more like co-learners and he often teaches me things about technology that I just don't get automatically like he does.

Wow, you guys are great. This is an amazing forum. I haven�t read The Optomistic Child, but I will. A lot of what has been mentioned we do try. For a while we actually cheered mistakes (give me a M, give me an I.... what does that spell? Mistake! Yah!). As crazy as it seems, it did help. I do still catch myself praising the product rather than the effort. It�s such a hard habit to break, esp. when kids truly surprise you. But I am working on it . Mistakes such as the invention of the chocolate chip and other discoveries would be a really good angle for my DD.

My DD was coddled as a baby. I do freely admit to this mistake, first baby, older mom, and therefore it has taken about a year for a lot of the Montessori inspired changes to start take root. I also think that she was praised way, way too much at preschool because she was so noticeably �different�. They constantly made a big fuss about her abilities.

Sometimes I do step in and try and fix things, if I suspect a crazy emotional response is brewing. If I think that she can handle it, I don�t. It�s such an automatic response, because her frustration can bring the house down. She is extremely sensitive, emotional, and definitely struggles to keep herself in control.

Jesse and onthegomom, I do agree that modeling is a good approach. I try very hard to point out my own mistakes (luckily I have plenty of opportunities to do this). I�ve never thought to �stage� a mistake though. This way I could focus on situations that are consistently difficult for my DD.

Iucounu, I very much agree with what you have said, however, I do find it so hard to put into practice. Since I�ve started homeschooling, I feel like I�ve had to change my parenting style, my views and approach to learning and attempt to change major parts my personality (although, I�m not sure how successful this part of the experiment will be...). Thanks so much for your input.

And..... Lori, this is my experience too and it is hard. My daughter is extremely kinesthetic and almost everything has to include some form of movement. For example, she often jumps on the bed when we work on spelling, 1 jump for each letter. About 2 weeks ago my DD announced that she would never use a workbook again because they are meaningless to her. We really do have to be open and inventive!!!!

Your responses have been so helpful. Thanks so much.

Annaliisa

kcab,

I have am in the process of giving up control. It's not an easy thing to do. In the areas where my DD is above grade level, that's fine, but in areas where she is at or close to grade level, that's the hard part. We've ended school for the year early because I need some major time to regroup, rethink. For the summer my daughter will choose her work without specific direction from me. When left to her own devices she generally chooses great activities for herself. My hope is that we can continue this way indefinitely. I also leave material lying around, another approach that works is if I read the book or work with materials myself without saying anything and without asking her to participate. Academically my DD is all over the map. In certain areas she is very advanced but in others she is at grade level. However, you very well may be right that I am underestimating her abilities. With that said, her perfectionism really gets in the way of her learning. If she makes even a small mistake she will not pick up the work for days or weeks. I have learned that she does eventually come back though. It just requires extreme patience on my part. I know that giving up control is my only option. It is hard to leave educational decisions in the hands of a six year old, but she's a good kid. If I am equally stubborn she will lose all enthusiasm for learning which undoubtedly is a far worse fate. Thanks so much for your post, this is all really helping me to work this through.

Annaliisa

We saw quite a few of the issues you've described. DS7 was an extreme perfectionist and highly competitive to boot, to the point that he wanted to, urb, jump from the apartment when he felt his friend's Lego creation was better than his. He was nearly 5 at the time. Since then, continued overt mistake making on our part in many ways has helped to ease this tendency. The other posters have given very sound advice here.

Up to a few months ago, not taking instruction was a huge deal in our home. Like a lot of you have said, it's also my lack of control in the situation. That's not how I learnt, and maybe also, my need for control is the same as my son's, so we'd lock horns every now and then. But I can see - he's got his own methods of thinking that are truly unique and I want to encourage that. What's helped is computer instruction. He loves math on the computer, so Aleks and now HeyMath is working out very well. He's been very belligerent when the help provided online wasn't sufficient, but even that seems to be ebbing. I make myself scarce so that he has to make the effort to come to me for help, and I turn my help into a funny, lively session so that he feels good about himself afterwards. I usually just show him the construct because it's important to him that he *gets* it himself.

What's also helping is that I found a high school physics teacher to tutor/mentor him.

In both situations, DS is left very much on his own to work with problems, and he is in full control of how he want to think of the solution and to work through experiments with the amount of help that he wants. Possibly, the Montessori method may work for your child since it requires a lot of independence as well.

[So sorry Annaliisa. I missed your replies. It took me over 2 years to evolve to this state of being less hands on. And I can do better yet. When I look back, I wish I realized that changes take place in small steps, and sometimes, just sucking in my breadth and looking the other way is the most effective way of guiding my child.]

blob,

My DD is competitive also, over everything. Over time she has learned not to participate if she thinks that she can't handle it. Recently we were at a birthday party and they were going to play musical chairs. She immediately became upset, didn't want to play. The birthday boy's mom, noticed what was going on and said, 'don't worry, we play cooperative musical chairs. Each time the music stops and we remove a chair, we all help each other and sit on each others laps.' They had a great time, it was so so lovely. I wish the whole world worked like this. We don't do any win/lose, right/wrong, around here. No marks at homeschool. We try to focus on effort. Thanks so much for your reply. I'm going to look into more computer based learning. She often does much better on the computer. I haven't been promoting computer learning because it typically doesn't fit well with Montessori, however, our approach is ultimately eclectic, and at the end of the day I will do what works best for DD.

Annaliisa