DD 8 thinks that only good grade is perfect grade, meaning A is bad if she missed something, but fine if she got everything right. She sometimes gets this perfect grade she wants but sometimes makes silly mistakes and gets 1-3 points taken. She is a good speller too and does her spelling assignment independently and then I test the words the night before the test. She has never gotten any of her words wrong home, and before this year in school she had always gotten everything right. Last fall she got one word wrong ( wrote it first right and then changed it wrong), two weeks ago she somehow got another word wrong and last week she accidentally left a letter out of an easy word. She is very upset about missing these word, especially back to back. I think her problem is that she intuitively spells the words correctly without studying them and starts doubting herself during the test.
So I'm not sure how to deal with her. Should I help her and figure out how not to make silly mistakes or not? I'm afraid to tell her to doublecheck her answers worried she might think that we think she needs to always get everything right.
She has always been the top student in her class and she likes that and is worried that if she gets anything wrong somebody else will be the top student. She does not get any prices out of being on the top of her class and I do not think the other student even care. How should we discuss this?
This is all new to me as I'm not a perfectionist and while I did well in school I was never perfect nor did I care. Her hobbies are violin and ballet, both requiring "perfection".
