Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy techniques for overcoming perfectionism?

Hi
So this is going to sounds strange, then maybe not considering the audience. DS 5 has writing issues - but in the past 6 months has improved enormously with a bit of OT, some redirection from pre-k teacher and oodles of encouragement from us. But he still gets upset that he isn't as good at it as his friends or as he thinks he should be. And he still will choose to not do it, or try to weasel out of it by doing the bare minimum.

He seems to think that you either get it or you don't. We try and try to point out, you used to not be able to this and now you can, every time we find an opportunity. But he always has a reason why writing is different and why he doesn't need to do it. He simply refuses to get that practice will make it better. He isn't like this on anything else. He has no problem being corrected in math or asking for definitions and information. We aren't pressuring him in that he "has" to be able to write a certain way by a certain time or anything like that. Its just that he is typically (although not always) resistant to doing things like cutting or coloring at home, and he does the bare minimum required at school. We do keep emphasizing that he needs to try but he just gets mutinous about it.

There is no way he will get better if he refuses to do it - and part of me thinks of just letting it go, letting school deal with so he doesn't feel badly but on the other hand he seems so frustrated.

So how to change the thinking especially when he will litigate every point? He has made so much progress - to me this is so much about attitude - and he just has me stumped. I don't want to do it because I can't do it but I do want to do it but I don't want to attempt it because I might fail at it.

It seems very issue specific but maybe its not, maybe its the seeds of what happens when he meets physical challenges.

Thoughts?

DeHe

We found a board like this tremendously helpful (found it for $5 US at a local drug store, not sure whether it's the same brand or not but they should all be similar; shop around):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002SFLAQ8

I think part of the reason might be that if he made a mistake, it was satisfying to easily erase it and fix the problem, leaving not even a faint erasure mark. I used to write silly sentences on it and have him copy them, etc. His penmanship today is pretty awesome, I'd say at least at a normal third-grade level (he's 5).

We have one of those too and he will do it intermittently but this isn't so much about not practicing the letters for themselves but not doing the other stuff which include writing, like drawing or notes or stuff that he could be doing.and seems to want to do! He has never been that kid to sit down and write. Like earlier he was willing to sit with me and we drew spell bottles and wrote the labels for his crazy magic spells. Interesting side note, he is getting to be a pretty good speller without any formalized emphasis on it or much writing. But I don't know how to encourage him to think to do it Or color independently, he just seems to dismiss it as an avenue of fun for him to do, but loves it when others do it

DeHe

Gotcha. Well, on the coloring I tend to be against it (I was lambasted here a while ago for daring to suggest that it could stunt creativity). So I would tend to be glad for your kid that he doesn't like to do it.

As for spelling, DS5 finds it dull to practice too. He does seem like to whip out words he finds cool and announce that he can spell them, but in terms of structured lessons, he can't stand them. For most words, it has turned out that he can remember the correct spelling from his reading, but he's not perfect.

Our current deal is that every so often I will pull up a word list of 500 or so and we will plow through them to shore up any weak points (we did one just Sunday, actually). Then we don't discuss spelling for quite a while. Maybe you could try speeding through it in a short mega-dose like that and see if your son likes it. Or you could just work on vocabulary and reading comp., and see if he starts naturally remembering correct spellings.

luoconu, you weren't lambasted for suggesting coloring stunts creativity, but for your reaction when people gave it to your son.

You must've missed a good part of that thread. But it's ancient history.

Back to the OP, here, I'm not sure that I have any really awesome input...

but it sounds painfully familiar, at least.

DD (now 11) still hates to write (mostly, anyway), and is only just now really learning to take a lot of joy in drawing.

She has always seen keyboarding and the computer as a way of avoiding that (relative) weakness in her skills. She also used me as a scribe until I started refusing to do it (when she was ~8-9 yo/5th-6th grade).

I am torn regarding whether or not it is good/bad to allow them to avoid it (as we did to some degree), or whether forcing them to develop those skills is best.

I truly don't know. On the one hand, I can see that forcing them to "face their fears" is good. Teaching them to work, etc. has to be positive in some respects, yes?

Except...

I can also remember the tears, etc. when we DID try to force DD to do things "normally" with her hands. I mean, sure, we did the penmanship stuff with her-- she KNOWS how to do all of it "properly" and all. I'm just not sure that it was worth fighting over, years later. After all, she seems to be (finally) developing those skills in her own time after all.

Her computer skills are phenomenal-- she can use Paint and CorelDraw extremely well-- with a mouse, even. Her keyboarding skills are very good as well.

Is it really so wrong to allow kids to use their strengths to shore up their weaknesses like that? Part of me says that it is not; that there is a life lesson to be learned THERE, too, and that maybe it is just as important as the one about persevering.

Sorry. Even though I feel like I should have an answer for this one (after all, we have gone through it with DD), I don't.

HowlerKarma

I think you summed up my dilemma with the except!!! I see both sides, when we have a good time doing something and he is writing and enjoying it, I feel great. Then when he gets upset getting a thank you note entirely written by a peer, and remembering the big fight doing his own thank yous, I feel like there must be someway to make this different. I think I am just frustrated that we can't make him see that if he devoted an iota of the time he puts to the stuff he loves he would be able to put it into service of what he likes to do.

Or I could just go with he's 5 and it will comes eventually. I read so many other threads and I think maybe if get to the perfectionist thing early we could curb it. Or just bang our heads!!!

I don't need him to be an artist, or a novelist at 5, I just want him to feel confident enough to not feel bad for his asynchrony.

But HK I am not surprised that even living through it there are no no easy answers!!

DeHe

It may not be entirely a practice effect (or lack of practice effect) that you are looking at. If fine motor is difficult for him, he may be putting an awful lot of mental or physical effort into the little bit of product that you see, and he just might not be able to sustain that level of effort. Is he still getting OT? Did the OT give you a home program to work on building up strength and stamina in the muscles that are needed for trunk, arm, and hand stability? (A lot of these things are fun "game" type activities, like "wheelbarrow walking", squeezing and building with modeling clay, and drawing on paper hung on the wall, or in shaving cream spread on the shower walls and doors.) They might help a great deal with minimizing the effort he needs to put out and the fatigue he experiences even though it wouldn't seem at first blush that they would have any application to writing. If he can "practice" in ways that he doesn't already identify with writing and therefore with failure and frustration, he may make bigger gains faster, and see more results from the practice that he realizes he is doing, and this might make him more likely to practice actual writing more.