Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments perfectionism, refusing instruction, & much more!

We saw quite a few of the issues you've described. DS7 was an extreme perfectionist and highly competitive to boot, to the point that he wanted to, urb, jump from the apartment when he felt his friend's Lego creation was better than his. He was nearly 5 at the time. Since then, continued overt mistake making on our part in many ways has helped to ease this tendency. The other posters have given very sound advice here.

Up to a few months ago, not taking instruction was a huge deal in our home. Like a lot of you have said, it's also my lack of control in the situation. That's not how I learnt, and maybe also, my need for control is the same as my son's, so we'd lock horns every now and then. But I can see - he's got his own methods of thinking that are truly unique and I want to encourage that. What's helped is computer instruction. He loves math on the computer, so Aleks and now HeyMath is working out very well. He's been very belligerent when the help provided online wasn't sufficient, but even that seems to be ebbing. I make myself scarce so that he has to make the effort to come to me for help, and I turn my help into a funny, lively session so that he feels good about himself afterwards. I usually just show him the construct because it's important to him that he *gets* it himself.

What's also helping is that I found a high school physics teacher to tutor/mentor him.

In both situations, DS is left very much on his own to work with problems, and he is in full control of how he want to think of the solution and to work through experiments with the amount of help that he wants. Possibly, the Montessori method may work for your child since it requires a lot of independence as well.

[So sorry Annaliisa. I missed your replies. It took me over 2 years to evolve to this state of being less hands on. And I can do better yet. When I look back, I wish I realized that changes take place in small steps, and sometimes, just sucking in my breadth and looking the other way is the most effective way of guiding my child.]