My DD6 actually brough home a math worksheet from school, where she had gotten many wrong answers! It's about darn time!
She smiled at me when she told me that it was hard
and then she dared me to give her a few more of those problems so she could show me that she's got it figured out now.
OK so in the real world, we might be little strange, but wrong answers make us happy

Yes, it is healthy to learn to get things wrong! DH and I believe that our DS's need to learn that not everything in life is easy and that they must learn to get things wrong and not give up when they do - this is why I believe that challenging work is so important. Too many wrong answers though can be disheartening, as with everything in life it is about balance

Good to hear that your DD is so determined

That's great! I love that she smiled when she said it was hard. But then it sounds like she figured it out, so you're back to the drawing board again so quickly to find another challenge!

totally awesome...i heard once that self esteem is only developed through overcoming difficult challenges. thats the core of my fears for my DS12 if nothing is a real challenge then no self esteem. If the challenges are only tiny then only tiny amounts of self esteem. So that smile was golden. More than just happiness...peace!

I don't like to see DS getting 100% on a test. I know it sounds weird to many people with normal kids. 100 % to me means the teacher did not provide enough challenge in school. There is nothing better than the sense of achievement you feel after you have done a challenging question right. Like Tiz said, it's healthy to learn to get things wrong.

Yup! DS7's motto--that he came up with only after he was being provided with sufficient challenge--is "Hard is good." Now he gets excited when something stretches him.

That's not to say we don't still have moments of perfectionism, but I definitely think we have less of that now than we would have if he had perfect papers all the time.

Celebrate those mistakes, for sure!

I wish that was all there was to it but my DS almost never gets 100% even when it wasn't enywhere near challenging. I guess Id wish for some hundreds and some grades in the ninties. I guess im thinking that the classwork has to be challenging first and then the test can measure something.

How funny, I would be excited about that as well. This morning on the way to drop him off my DS4 was dividing numbers into quarters and other fractions (like 2/5 of 100,etc). He apparently figured it out in his head during our car ride and was excited about it. I have realized for some time that he needs some more challenges in Math because of how quickly he gets things. On the way out of the car I mention to him that I ordered him some workbooks so he can do some math. He said "that's great, but I already know all the math there is" I say "well you know a lot of math, but not all the math there is." He says "yes I do mom, I even know about decimals and fractions and all that stuff." So yes, I hear you that I am looking forward to challenges and some mistakes. He is starting 1st grade in September, and hopefully they will accelerate him with Math (and reading) or else he really will think that he knows it all.

p.s. and we are working on humility, but they don't have workbooks for that. : )

LOL - but I hope you aren't working on 'false humility' - perhaps this is more a sign of needing to work on 'estimating' than a humility problem.

BTW - You might want to get 'A brief history of time' by Stephen Hawking and leave it lying around the house. There are some great pictures, and it might help with DS's 'estimating' problem.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

I am not a fan of 'false humility'...it is quite annoying to me. Not sure I know exactly what you mean about estimating though. For DS it isn't a true humility problem, he is just a kid with a healthy self esteem at this point. It's difficult, because I want him to be proud of who he is and his accomplishments (and don't want him to hide or be ashamed of his abilities) but I don't want him to think he is the best thing in the world and better than others. There is a difficult balance between a healthy self esteem and arrogance...and finding that balance with a 4yo isn't going to happen just yet, but we have many more years to figure it out.

A while back he was doing math with someone and he was telling them how great he was with math. They jokingly said "that's great, and how are you with humility?" So later he wanted to ask me about that and what it was. When we talked about he didn't seem to get why he couldn't say "I am great at Math" because he is. DH said to him "well you could say I really like Math" but DS was like "but I am really good at it...why can't I say that?" He has a point. Just because he is great at it, doesn't mean he is implying that others aren't.

We've explicitly told DS5 that it's a social convention that you don't usually tell people you're good at something. We've told him it's fine to tell us he's great at something, and fine to tell other people he really enjoys it, and (harder for him to grasp) that a good response to someone saying "wow, you're really great at X!" is "well, thank you, I do really enjoy X". He's pretty comfortable with the idea that social conventions don't always have to make sense :-) Actually, though, although we've made a point of discussing it, I think he'd basically picked this up already.

That's good. DS4 has made progress in that when someone says he is good at something or he is smart, usually he will say thank you. For a while there he would say "yeah, I know" really enthusiastically. It's funny, he is not at all intending to brag...just things he is stating a fact. But we still work on social conventions thing in that area. It will be interesting to see how things differ when he starts school in the fall and is in first grade.