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.
