Though we have a little perfectionist on our hands, we have not witnessed any negativity beyond the "I am no good at piano" crying fits and the occasional throwing of music books. So, your son's feelings are not normal (at least from what I have witnessed raising my one child) and you are wise to look into the root cause of it.
As for piano - I first try to react calmly to the perfectionist meltdowns (took me a while to learn that!). I ask my son to stop what he is doing and take an immediate break. Then, I ask him to show me where the problems are. I then act as a coach and walk him through the difficult part step by step. This involves reading the notes aloud, checking the finger numbers, clapping the rhythm, playing only the right hand part of the difficult measures until it sounds right and then helping to put both hand parts together. It takes a while, but when I am done, he has usually mastered the difficult part and is happily playing the piece again. The problem with my DS is that he thinks that he is very good at what he is doing and he is used to everything coming easily to him that it is a shock and a major frustration when things don't click into place on the first attempt. I try to teach him to play slowly at first and then pick up speed and he knows the process of working through the difficult parts, but his brain refuses to think logically when he is having the meltdowns and he needs patient reminders every single time.
Good luck and hope you get a handle on the perfectionist meltdowns.
Thanks Ashely, these steps are great! This is what I usually do with him and on a good day it works, but lately it hasn't. Like I mentioned above, he wants so desperately to achieve the feat by himself. I think he is angry that he isn't able to output what
he thinks that he should be totally capable of.
We've talked numerous times about how he is not expected to master each piece the first or second time, rather that should be a goal for him to reach during the week of pratice, and whilst he agrees with me, I think he sets different goals for himself in his head. The perfectionism fits of anger usually occur on the first day after lessons or while he is learning a difficult recital piece.
He started piano 14 months ago starting with the piano adventures primer level and he will be starting level 3 very soon. Somehow I have got to get him to see that he will not be on the same rate of learning as he progresses through the more difficult books and focus on technique and expression. I have talked to the piano teacher about this and she was understanding and concerned. However, DS admitted to me that he told the teacher he didn't get frustrated or cry.
