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Your post rings a bell with me. My DD is 9 and is a perfectionist. The behavior you describe really didn't come to the light of day for me until about 3rd grade (8 years old). She had an extremely nurturing kindy teacher and looped with the same teacher for 1st/2nd, who never gave her negative feedback (probably, to be honest, because her hands were quite full with kids who had serious behavioral issues).

In 3rd grade, her first parent teacher conference was great. The teacher even commented that if her daughter behaved as well as my DD and was as bright, she would be over the moon.

Then shortly thereafter, I started getting notes about how DD made a friend cry at school (totally out of her nature, she is a very compassionate girl).

How she is unorganized and is going to receive poor scores in that area.

I was so stressed out and confused. I talked to DD and she said the incident when she made a friend cry, they were asked to work in teams of two and come up with an idea for a project and work together on it. My DD wanted one thing, the other girl wanted another thing. Rather then compromise, they argued (as 8 year old girls naturally will do at times) and in the end, the other girl cried and got her idea as a reward for figuring out how to manipulate the system.

I am OK with that, because that is life. My DD has to learn to have better negotiating skills, but what disheartened me was that the teacher blamed my DD for the other girls discontent. And she actually got marked down for "gets along with other team members" on her report card over this one instance.

What all of this negative feedback started doing to my DD (the perfectionist) was stressing her out. This year her goal going into 4th grade was "to be more organized and get a better report card". That broke my heart because her report card (grade wise) could not get any better and the only two areas that indicated she needed improvement were for organizational skills and team work.

I sat down with DD and explained to her the old saying: To whom much has been given, much is expected.

I explained how at times that would be unfair and place her under unnecessary stress, but for her, naturally, the bar is so high that she has no wiggle room.

I decided this fall to lighten up on my own personal expectations of DD, try to let her have some grace on her perfectionism because I am a perfectionist also.

I know how debilitating it can be. I would rather not try something if I feared disappointing anyone, rather then try it and not succeed. I missed out on so much because I was a slave to that feeling and no one understood me.

She got a low mark this past report card for organizational skills (it is ironic that a perfectionist struggles to be organized and I don't understand this entirely, as this was never a problem for me) but I talk to DD about it to try to set a reasonable goal and tell her if she can get the mark up, that is great but not to sweat the small stuff because in the grand scheme of things, based on her overall report card, achievement levels, etc... if that is all they can come up with to challenge her, then she should be very proud.

Now, keep in mind, I know organizational skills are very important and try to subtly help her become better with this, but at the end of the day, that is a hill I am not willing to die on and DD should not feel anxiety over one are of her life that she can't seem to perfect.

Wow, I feel like I did a lot of venting, so I apologize for hijacking but my bottom line comment is that I think your DD might be a perfectionist who set the bar too high at the beginning of the school year and when she starts being less then perfect, she is having anxiety over the constructive (hopefully it has been constructive) criticism she is receiving as feedback.