1. DS 3.3 is an EXTREME perfectionist. He is very reluctant to answer any questions when he doesn't absolutely know the answer. He will whisper it if he says anything at all. I am thinking this might be due to his older brothers constant criticism of him not knowing what he "should" know. (his brother, who is a crazy workaholic at age of 5 will say "You play too much, you need to work more") The other day he was writing and made an A that he didn't like. He freaked out crying trying to erase what he had written. It as written with a marker so that didn't work. He begged me to rip the A out of the book. DS5 was nice and said that "Your A is nicer than mine" trying to calm him down.
Any suggestions how to deal with this and make him relax a bit?
At 3... I don't know. (This was my DD). I didn't figure it out until she was older: she needed to be pushed out of the "perfection is possible" zone so that she would just learn to "suck it up and deal with it."
At the moment she's the weakest student in an advanced skating class, populated with older kids who get more ice time every week. It's AWESOME for her. In the beginning there were tears (she's 10, btw) and talk about how awful she thinks she is. I told her this set of lessons is not about skating skills, it's about bravery skills. Now that the set is almost over, she's a lot more relaxed. She's still the weakest skater, but now she's openly saying that she enjoys it "because it's hard."
I'm not sure if I could have put her in that situation at 3, though, without her traumatizing everyone involved with the intensity of her meltdowns...
