Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Perfectionism

Thanks everyone. As usual, very insightful and very helpful. I'm so grateful for you all.

Jen

Hello everyone,

I found this forum by accidentally googling "perfectionism meltdowns". And I have tears in my eyes as I'm reading your posts. Tears of relief. I cannot tell you how difficult it has been these past few years. DD is 5 and every day brings meltdowns due to anything and everything that isn't perfect - socks, blankets, the way she spells the letter "e", her chair at the dinner table. And like one of the moms mentioned, when DD is hungry it is 10 times worse, but she'll never ever say she's hungry. So, to JenSMP: thank you so much for mentioning that. I can't tell you how much it helps to hear this about another child.

DD won't even try to do something until she is sure she can do it perfectly. And we want to homeschool - how on earth am I going to handle that?

The good news is that after reading your posts and a few other sites, I now know that perfectionism is hereditary and I now know who is largely to blame - me. I never realized before just how much of a perfectionist I am. I think I've been able to avoid seeing it by pretending that being perfect didn't really matter.

So it looks like this will be a growing process for DD and I. Thank you so much for sharing and I hope you won't mind if I regularly join the discussion. I don't know if my daughter is actually gifted (although she is extremely intelligent and articulate), but you sound like a wonderful group of people whose support and understanding I could really use from time to time. Hopefully, I'll be able to reciprocate as well.

Warmly,
Rhonda

welcome.

Can I recommend Freeing Our Families From Perfectionism by Thomas Greenspon?

http://www.amazon.com/Freeing-Famil...p;s=books&qid=1257971129&sr=1-11

DS7 is perfectionist. His perfectionism peaked when he was in K in Montessori. It was a disaster. I too was worried its role in homeschooling. To my big surprise it got better. As long as he has a challenging material he is fine. For him it's ok to make mistakes when he is learning something new and difficult.

One of the high points of the last year was when he said that getting 90% (or may be even lower) on a difficult test was good!

Rhonda, welcome to the forum. It's been a Godsend for me!

It's interesting that you have come to recognize perfectionism in yourself. The more I learn about it, the more I understand myself as both a child and an adult. Quite an "aha moment" for me! I can't figure out if I've taught him to be a perfectionist, modeled the behavior, or if it's just something that comes with giftedness (ds and I are both gifted-I never really thought about my giftedness as anything special; of course I probably fall more into the mildly gifted range while ds is certainly highly gifted+. He also has some asynchronous development going on, and I probably did too2e). My older step-brother is HG/PG, and according to my step-dad, his childhood behavior, interests, thought processes, perfectionism, etc were identical to what we see in my ds6. So, there's no blood relation there; maybe it's just something that goes along with giftedness.

Another interesting thing I just discovered is that ds and I have the exact same Meyers-Briggs personality profile. I've always heard that the behaviors that bother you the most in other people are the ones you don't like to see in yourself (though on some level you usually know you have them!). Makes sense to me b/c he and I are so much alike. I just don't want him to struggle with the same things I have throughout my life. Not that I've had a terrible life, but I think I can make it harder than it needs to be sometimes.

Not only does he have the perfectionist meltdowns, he also deals with the hypersensitivities that you mentioned (socks don't feel good, tags in shirt "hurt," noises are too loud, in constant motion, food pickiness, the list goes on...). The hypersensitivites/sensory issues have gotten much better with age and continue to do so. The perfectionism, unfortunately, is getting worse, but it's nice to know others are dealing with the same issues. Maybe it's not totally "normal" but it's certainly not "abnormal." (Whatever that is! LOL)

Again, I'm glad you are here. You'll find an amazing support system on this site. I've found it to be such a blessing.

Jen

My DD6 has some issues with perfectionism but it has gotten much better. When she gets her homework back and something is circled wrong she erases it and fixes it.

It's like her wiping up her spilled milk, she fixes it, forgives herself, and feels better. My reaction to this helps too. My DH
had to really work on this.

This is very simplistic. Please don't think I'm belittling your situation. But this has truly helped our family. I think kids pour their own milk in important just for this reason.

I just found an interesting way to encourage. We all want to say "Do your best" For our kids that means perfection, whoa no pressure there. It suggested that we say " do or show your best effort" ultimately that's all we can ask of anyone.

What are some alternative ways to express anger that have worked for your children? And what are some ways that kids can relieve their frustration in a healthy way?

Thanks!

One thing we did with my DD(now)7 was hand her a piece of paper (or several, depending on the intensity) and tell her to tear it up into the smallest pieces she could. It gave the feeling of destroying something which relieved the anger and frustration; it redirected her focus to something other than what she was really mad about; and we were usually able to laugh about it later when we used the confetti for an art project.

Trying to redirect her anger and frustration into something slightly different, but more acceptable usually works well and helped our DD start to figure out her own ways to direct her frustration or anger - rather than suppress it. Screaming is generally not OK, but going to your room and burying your face in your pillow pretty much makes screaming OK and don't we all feel like doing that sometimes? We might redirect stomping feet and huffing into marching or running 5 laps around the house - maybe even timing it to make it a race.

Hope those ideas help at least a little.