<Perhaps he would have found out that learning his job, his success and his joy.>

I'm not sure what that sentence is supposed to say.

<Seems what he's learned from the current system is that ultimately it is your responsibility not his.>

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion without talking with my son. For his attitude to personal responsibility, see below.

<Over the long term how do you see that playing out. Will you be standing over him in middle school, high school, college, on the job? Is he supposed to get the experience again and again that learning is a result of force, but then at some point this morphs into him becoming a self motivated learner and motivated person?>

Short answer to the last question: yes.

Learning how to tackle a difficult task is, for a perfectionist, partly a result of force. Somebody has to make him try. When ds was younger, that somebody was always me.

But because four years ago I found a learning environment for him that challenges him, I have -- thank heavens! -- been able over these past four years to pull back gradually and let him take over the job of approaching difficulties. Now I have a son who is developing an inner strength and an attitude to challenge that I used to despair of seeing in him.

Sorry to disappoint you, but because of the process I started years ago, I don't have to 'stand over him' much at all anymore. In academic areas it hasn't been necessary for two years, because now in 7th grade he's setting his own goals, making a plan to reach them, and implementing it -- pretty much on his own. (I have to say 'pretty much' because he is a typical PG kid -- sometimes has his head in the clouds!)

Now that I think about it, piano is the only thing that still causes minor meltdowns, which I'm guessing is because he's only been at it for about 15 months. But even those are happening less often as he gains confidence in his abilities.

One anecdote, from when he was 5: at the pool one day, standing in the shallow end with him, I made him bend forward and put his face in the water. It probably took ten minutes, and involved (at the end, after reasoning, persuading, promising rewards etc. had failed) my threatening to take away, one by one, all his plastic dinosaurs. Near the end of the process, I was getting fed up and about to give up, when he looked up, in tears, and said, 'Don't stop -- I like it when you make me do things.' I was floored.

Over the next few weeks he became an avid swimmer.

I've noticed in several areas that if he can be gotten over the initial hump, not only do his abilities really take wing, but his emotional well-being just soars.

I have wondered since the pool incident whether he found his perfectionism so frustrating that he actually appreciated having an external force that was greater than it was, so that with the help of that force he could conquer it.

Now that he can in effect get himself over 'humps' caused by fear of failing to live up to his own standards (my mantra at the piano over the last year has been 'You're the only one of us who is disappointed in your playing'), he is no longer at the mercy of that fear.