Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Proactively tackling perfectionism in preschoolers

Howler Karma just posted this comment in Magenta's "Is my 15-month old gifted" thread , and I'd be curious to delve into parents' methods of discouraging perfectionism in young children.

We liked the original Rev. Awdry Thomas the Tank Engine stories. The engines are far from perfect - they keep messing up. As long as they try hard Sir Topham Hatt is happy.

Hmm, that's interesting cmguy. Thanks for sharing! I've actually stayed away from the Thomas series because of the colonialist/caste system undertones. It always rubbed me the wrong way how the engines are so desperate to compete with one another to gain the approval of Topham Hatt, and how he pits them against each other and values them only according to their work output.

Maybe I'm just a judgmental fuddy-duddy who needs to revisit the series with a fresh set of eyes. I know the series is popular, and many of the other messages in the series are wholesome. I may well have missed the hard work messages in my fervour.

The original 42 books are the only Thomas I read. That and the one about how Bulgy becomes a vegetable bus. There are lots of good lessons in them and also lots of good vocabulary (some parents shy away b/c of the advance vocab but to me it is a plus).

In the original series the backstory is the decline of the steam age, and Sir Topham Hat's efforts to more or less create a heritage railway to save the steam engines he loves from scrap.

You've piqued my interest. I feel my library card calling from my wallet!

I do know what you mean about pitting them against each other. But they strive to be "useful" and it is clearly acknowledged that the different engines have different skills and areas of expertise. Striving to be acknowledged as a contributing member of your community isn't so bad. Striving to make your boss happy (or parent or teacher) is OK too as long as you are sure that what makes them happy is also morally right.

I took ds7 to ballet when he was 3.5 and becoming reluctant to try new things. It was great because he was the only boy and the girls were more compliant - at gym there were always at least two boys off task or misbehaving.

Other media which is inclusive of that kind of messaging includes Dragon Tales and My Little Pony.

Bibliotherapy selections-- that is what I probably WOULD have tried.

I also would have squashed the very real impulse, as a parent of an emerging HG+ child, to retain my position of perceived omnipotence for a bit longer.

It felt like it was too soon for our DD to be noticing that we weren't all-knowing, all-powerful, or completely competent at everything we encounter. And in addition, there is a dark side to demonstrating that those things are untrue, which is that a child can get the sense that his/her world is a scary place that parents are not entirely empowered to protect him/her from.

But still-- I'd have shared more of my own "growth mindset" internal dialog at the time. I tend to not share those internal dialogs at all, and neither does my DH. We're both quite private when it comes to our metacognitive processing, and the reason probably has to do not with being perfectionistic ourselves (though that is also part of it) but in being so alien relative to so much of the world. DH and I both learned pretty early that "how this works for me" immediately garners one the honorary title of "Mental Freak of the Week" in almost any group of people. We share things with one another, but not with the world at large.

We should have done more sharing with our DD, though.

Sometimes I worry that I won't ever be able to remember the new algorithm correctly! But I know that it will eventually stick, even if I have to look it up step by step the first fourteen times. I have faith that I can learn to work around it, even if I can't memorize it easily.


It has been fun to learn so many new skills that I didn't know. I sure felt awkward when I first showed up to class, though! I feel really proud of my hard work-- I think that my ____ (skills) have come a long way since I started.

Oh, I'll do that-- I mean, I don't know much about _____, but it will be great to have a chance to learn it now!

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It isn't that we didn't do those things-- I think that we just started too late in DD's case. We should have been modeling those growth-mindset statements all along, not just when she was six or seven and had well-entrenched perfectionism.

I think she was BORN with it, truthfully-- but I also think that placed the onus on us as parents to help her develop more robust coping skills at a younger age. We didn't start to FORCE her to undertake higher risks until she was 11 and 12yo, and that was a profound error on our part. We should have really pushed HARDER when she was 3 and 4.

We have a book called "Beautiful Oops", that DD loved (and still loves at 4.3).
She went through a strong perfectionist stint around 2.8 and we struggled with explaining that coloring in the lines and backwards S's weren't a big deal and could be "fixed". After reading the book a few times she started to creatively think about how to make something from her errors and not get so upset about them.

We also started addressing all of our errors with laughter and making fun of ourselves for them (that is not easy for 2 perfectionists) and she started doing the same. At this point we ALL ask each other how we could fix things that aren't 100% what we wanted, and come up with new reasons they are the way they are!

We have found all of our creative problem solving skills have been on the rise & the annoying quest for constant perfection has started to dwindle, replaced by "that's OK" and "how do you think we can take care of this"?

Our son is 3.5 and we have struggled to show that we make mistakes and learn from them. Taking up a new challenging skill as an adult, like guitar, also helps.

While not perfect, my son likes the Tree Fu Tom episode Zigzoo the Zero where a character who is an inventor learns that making mistakes is an important part of learning. Available on Netflix and Google Play.

Our son definitely has perfectionist tendencies, but it is slowly getting better.

Now if I can only teach him to lose better... We are getting there... 3 is challenging...

we also actively discouraged this from the moment we noticed it. Things we did actively included leaving a bit of mess around and cleaning "later"

Acknowledging our own mistakes in a way that led to learning instead of self-depreciation (Oh dear, I made a mistake, I wonder how I can learn to do it? Maybe I need to ask someone for help or practice some more)

Actively asking each other for help often - Dh would ask me to help fix computers, I'd ask for help cutting vegetables or whatever, we would ask Aiden to help us as well with carrying things, spelling words, recognising shapes etc.

Finding things we didn't know and ensuring he heard us wondering out loud how we could learn them. Doing the same process when he didn't know something and helping him ask extended family and friends for information/knowledge/help

Colouring all the spaces outside the line helped him let go of the need to colour in the lines or not at all.

Object lessons suggested by a Gestalt Play therapist:
compare leaves from the same tree
compare a bunch of bananas

they are essentially the same but each is unique.

As he got older we added other strategies: playing games and stopping before there is a clear winner, changing player roles half way through, playing games where the object is not winning/losing - always state the rules up front, and let your child also have a turn to set the parameters of the games.

Verbal Mantras "It's okay to make a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. We learn from our mistakes"

Getting excited when there is a challenge: "YAY! something new to learn! a challenge!" Encouraged activities like Chess, Violin, rollerblading, skateboarding - anything that is new and outside the comfort zone. I also took up the Violin after Aiden and let him teach me some things, and now we often practice together.

Lots of stories and shows about making mistakes, learning new things etc.

Taking a traditionally timed activity and practicing with a different goal - like getting every second one correct (and then joking about the in between ones that are always right and how it messes with the pattern), or the goal being to take AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. other things like that.

The biggest successes have been where we have had fun around the issue that feeds the perfectionism - it seems to help him let go of the inner need to be perfect.