Task-avoidant perfectionism. We now live with this and it is beastly. Nothing less than an easy 100% will do, and because it is a "given" that everything should be 100%... all there is is the avoidance of 'failure' (failure being something less than 100%). If failure seems possible, it is best to avoid that task/environment/activity entirely. Yes, the ultimate synthesis of those two factors is that there is no sense of 'success' at any time-- only the AVOIDANCE of failure. My DD is a textbook example of this phenomenon. She experiences no pride or sense of accomplishment from her (stunning) academic successes... only relief when she earns (yet another) A/A+ mark. She avoids assignments which intimidate her, and requires push-parenting to tackle challenges.
Oh yes. This feeling. I know this feeling. I am a former GT student who chose oft-relocating wife and parent duties for awhile after college. And I'm now trying to do grad school full-time and manage all the balls in the air. Point: I was *thisclose* to dropping a class last night because I didn't know how to do the first problem on the homework assignment. School is actually hard this time, because my brain has rotted or something, and I'm not good
at all at managing potential failure.
I'm not sure how not helping when you're stuck in a regular classroom setting (or even in a differentiated setting, which I often did) helps that though? In fact, I absolutely agree with accelerated learning and differentiated classrooms. But also teaching children to exercise their soft skills when they're in settings where they need to. School is for learning both, neglecting neither.
It's relevant that in
my house the kiddos are autistic, and school is about social skills because they need to be able to live independently one day. And that forces me to have a much broader perspective on the skills learned in school.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that those soft skills aren't important, and that students shouldn't learn them. Far from it. Just that learned, inwardly directed perfectionism should be part of the risk-benefit analysis here.
Fair enough.
