We've been having this A LOT with DD6 lately. Just last night, I wanted to do a little guitar practice with her (I'm teaching myself, too). She LOVES the class, but hates to practice. She played the first two lines of the song she was working on pretty well, but line 3 is tricky, and a few mistakes led to several more, which led to complete meltdown. "I'm so stupid." "I hate my life." Etc. She got so upset she decided to put herself to bed without stories (and bedtime stories are her favorite thing all day).
I stayed in the room with her talking, turning all her arguments upside down on why she's no good at anything, until I think we finally hit on the crux of the problem, when she said, "I can't even make change!" She's in a gifted class for math and language arts, and she's the only first grader, there's just one other second grader, and the rest are all third graders. And contrary to the g/t's statements during her IEP that "we accelerate them one grade level," every single kid in the class is all doing the same work. So recently they were calculating change in monetary transactions, which skipped DD entirely over the concept of borrowing.
I treated her to a rant at that point, about how she's not being taught properly, they skipped a step for her, and it's not her fault they're not teaching her right. She went to bed in a better mood, but we'll see if it has any effect the next time we try to practice guitar.
Hopefully, it helps. Also, she's off school all this week, and we're going to use some of that time to show her how borrowing works.
