I'm embarassed to say that I know we made things worse re: DS's perfectionism last year. Everything was so easy for DS bthat he didn't take care with his work and made a lot of careless mistakes. DH and I (unfortunately for our kids, we're both perfectionists, too -- albeit of different types) thought his "sloppy" work was unacceptable. We told DS that we expected him to do his best. If he understood the content, his work needed to be neat, complete and correct -- in other words, perfect. ACK!!!!
Thankfully, we've realized the error of our ways. Schoolwork is a hard thing for which to praise DS's efforts because it's not challenging for him. He generally does it on the bus so that he has more free time when he gets home. It's not always particularly neat, but he's working on checking it over to avoid "careless" errors, so I try to focus on that effort.
DH and I are both working on changing our mindsets from praising the results to the efforts. We have always tried to find something specific about work to praise, so that it wasn't a general "good job" comment, but it WAS generally about the end product. It's a real challenge to make the shift, but we're consciously trying.
If only I could show DS how many parenting mistakes I've made (and I haven't given up on the effort yet). He'd surely see how perfect I am not!
