Like CCN, we waited too long and listened to people like the ones talking to our OP here in this thread--
in other words, we let DD stay in her comfort zone for the first seven years of her life without ever "pushing" her (challenging her) appropriately.
We're still reaping that particular whirlwind. My daughter learned precisely what another poster has stated-- that perfection IS the only worthy goal, because it SHOULD always be within reach. The only areas where she's been challenged have been (relative) weaknesses academically, and there aren't very many of them. Written expression is pretty much it, and so she has been held to that area of lowest performance. This strikes educators as crazy-talk, by the way, since my DD is a 14yo HS senior who will graduate very near the top of the class this spring. She believes that she is "okay" at most things, and "bad" at writing. FWIW. The truth is that she is at about the 90th-95th percentile in writing, and is astonishingly good at everything else. Among peers 3y older, I mean. I say that just so that you can get a sense of how WARPED her thinking is, here. She calls her national merit commendation (earned by scoring among the top 50,000 PSATs that year, on a not-very-good day when she was just 13yo) her "Badge of Shame." This is-- A Perfectionist. That starts with P and that rhymes with T, and that stands for Trouble...
Watching her perform academically is a lot like the atmosphere in a dugout during a perfect baseball game... oh sure, it's fun for the first few innings, but then they start THINKING about making a mistake... losing "perfection" which is almost within grasp... soon nobody is talking about the elephant in the room, but everyone is holding their breath with every move... I mean, how hard is PERFECT-- even for professional baseball players? VERY hard, and it's not because they aren't extraordinary and don't have mastery of what they do-- it's because to err is human, right? This is why after the start of the term, I'm okay with 100% up through the first couple of weeks, but after that, it gets too big. I *want* her to make a few mistakes just to get rid of the 100's. Take the pressure off and just let her do what she's going to do and earn her A's. Perfectionists do NOT see things in that light, however. They don't bask in their successes, they wallow in the failure of anything that falls-- even a little bit-- short. This is crippling.
Okay-- so what do I wish that we'd done differently?
A. Throw away all of the parenting advice that applies to merely 'bright' or even 'moderately gifted' children. It doesn't apply to DD.
B. Recognize the danger in "letting her just be" the brightest, etc. all the time-- that is a very different kind of pressure, but it's pressure just the same, and it's pressure that there is really no WAY to continue living up to year after year...
C. Focus on FAILURE-- and what it isn't. That is, it's not the end of the world, mistakes are seldom unrecoverable, they are inevitable, and they say nothing about our worth as people...
D. Get her doing HARD-ENOUGH extracurriculars soon enough. Music or martial arts are VERY good for teaching these skills.
E. Make it a habit to do things that you do NOT want to do, things that all of your efforts make you mediocre at-- but which simply make you HAPPY because you're into the process, not the results.
