Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Ack! dd4 meltdown over a math problem?!?!?

Ds7 has always been emotional and sensitive. He got upset if he made a mistake, but got over it quickly with some cuddles and something to distract him. Dd4 is proving to be a bit more challenging. We were working on some math problems today, and she was doing really well. But on one particular problem, she got the wrong answer several times in a row. Not a big deal - this happens to everyone. But she started screaming at me and crying hysterically. I tried to calm her down while making sure she understood that screaming at me was not acceptable. It took a few minutes, but she finally looked up through her tears and said, "Mommy, I was trying to be perfect!" I thought I was going to start crying as well. She's talked a lot about trying to be perfect lately, but only as it relates to behavior and attitude. I encouraged her to try, while mentioning that everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I didn't realize she was trying to be perfect in every aspect of her life. It has been two hours now, and while she has calmed down a bit, she is still crying periodically and nothing I've done has helped. Any suggestions?

I would just let her cry it out, and not show any visible emotion except an upbeat attitude. You don't want to encourage the hysterics. She will eventually get the message that it's okay to make mistakes, or even fail, some of the time.

It's not too soon to say explicitly "This is for learning. To learn you have to make mistakes. If you weren't making any mistakes, you wouldn't be learning - it would be a sign that *I'd* made a mistake, the mistake of giving you questions that were too easy for you to learn from them." (You have to be prepared to live by that though!)

Collinsmum, I think this idea is a very, very powerful tool in the struggle against perfectionism. If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't learning anything, and you aren't doing the right work. Very concise statement of an important principle. I have tried to teach this to my kids, because I know that it wasn't until I was much older that I grasped this, and I think my early life would have a been a much more enjoyable place for me to hang out if I had seen it when I was younger.

DS 5 is also sensitive and can sometimes be very emotional. We have found that we need to keep track of how challenged he is in both academics and in sports. If we let him to do things he has master well for a several weeks he begins to have meltdowns in all areas. For example, when he first started school he was challenged and for several weeks he really persevered and was happy. Two months later he had plateaued and we saw the meltdowns and tantrums. We had his teacher reassess him for reading and math. She started giving him more challenges and we had him learn how to ice skate and the behavior went away. Some people think that we keep him challenged because we are pushy parents but really we just give him appropriate work so that he will be happy.

It would be great for your children to see you make mistakes and how you react. Think out loud how you process and feel when you make a mistake. Start now when they're 4-5, as it will go a long way to how they feel about themselves when they're 8-10 and beyond.

Not only are some children wanting to be perfect and showing perfectionism issue, I'm sure you know also, they are "intensely" trying to be perfect too. And can you imagine a 4-5 year old dealing with their intensity/perfectionism -- there is no way they know how to deal with it unless someone teaches them.

I have to add, since I have seen other ppl do, not saying any one here does or doesn't, but telling someone to stop feeling a certain emotion, like "stop being so intense", "don't be so dramatic" or "what is wrong with you" is very damaging to these sensitive souls. I believe in acknowledging that they are just the types of people that feel intensely (and there are a lot of other people like that, maybe mommy is like that too) and this is how we learn to manage it... etc etc.

Learning to make fun of our own mistakes is great too.