How to discourage perfectionism?

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Hi

I wonder if anyone else is struggling with this? My 4,5 year old son is seriously perfectionist. While this also has its advantages, the problem with this is that it is difficult to incourage him to try out new things. And it is increasingly hard to get him to try again if the first attempt did not meet his expectations.

Example: He loves words and letters, but will only write on the computer. When we have tried by hand he always ends up erasing the letters, because he is not happy with how they look. He wants a perfect result on the first attempts. This is a pattern that repeats it self on different areas.

Any tips as to how I can motivate him to feel good about all the "nice try"-attempts that are necessary on the way to mastering a new skill?

I have the same perfectionist issues, and unfortunately, it's not going to be easy to encourage him to try new things. The only way I can think of is to try to make things seem easy to not screw up. I don't know what else I could say. The only way to get me to try new things is a guarantee that I can do it easily.

My 6 year old hates writing, and has fine motor delays. He is able to form his letters much better when he is using a smaller writing utensil. Like, a crayon broken in half or a pencil stub. His letters come out much neater because he has more muscle control this way. This, in turn, makes him feel more confident with his writing.

Also, what about tracing letters? This may help your child feel like he will not fail at a attempt. He could trace until he feels more confident.

My son is hyperlexic. Your child might be, too. He loves letters and numbers, logos and symbols and always has. His decoding/fluency is great but he lags on comprehension.

We have also had these perfectionist issues. I am sorry to say that it was a gradual process of his motor skills catching up, while at the same time getting (a little) more tolerant of imperfection. This summer my son returned to his calligraphy interest and he had a melt down about a couple of not-so-great versions of letters.

We reinforced how no one is perfect with social stories and real-life examples of me and my husband messing up, and being Ok with it. It was hard, and still is. I wish I had a silver bullet for you. The other issue to be aware of is that as my son got "used to" being bad at things it was hard to get him to put forth effort b/c he could not see ROI, so to speak. They tend to be all or nothing thinkers. So it either needs to be perfect or they either won't try or will be satisfied with bad output done to satisfy "finishing" something, but not attempting the hard work of improving.

We chip away at it, is the best I can tell you. We reward effort, heavily, much more so than "perfection" and that seems to help.

Perfectionism is really a form of rigidity and black/white thinking: my son had this, too, in preschool - we couldn't get him to draw at all for the longest time and were worried. We did finally make an accommodation for him to use the computer because of holes in the paper - he's grown out of it finally, but just in the last few years.

DS (now 12) also has a history of freaking us out because he JUST WON'T DO whatever and then, right before we were about to panic and call a doctor, he'd do it nearly perfectly (drawing, walking, writing, reading, climbing, bike-riding, shoe-tying...he surprised himself by using chopsticks perfectly just yesterday after years of refusing every time because he "would never be able to learn that.") Some of that is he's wired very differently from other kids: he processes things by observation and thinking about it, where other kids use trial-and-error. So sometimes it's just giving him time and space to do things and nudging rather than "making" him.

So, flexibility is important - it's difficult for an NT 4 year old, so I think mostly you're looking at being patient for a while. Bribery can help, although we learned with DS that if the stakes were too high it made it worse (sometimes bribery for just trying one step, not for success, helps.) Go to the library, look up stories about kids who mess up, start over, and learn from their mistakes. There's a couple of threads here on teaching flexibility if you search around for them.

In our family it is our (more or less ) NT daughter who is the perfectionist and it is a tough one. As the others have said, there doesn't seem to be any short answers, just long and slow chipping away at it. Stories, talk, love and hugs, etc.

Do be mindful of the ways you might inadvertently reinforce it. The example that comes to my mind is how my daughter had straight A's her first year of middle school, so of course we were proud of her. And also started to assume that was par for the course. She felt huge pressure to keep it up, and like she was letting everyone down when she faltered. You end up walking a fine line with their successes, too.

One thought would be if you could show him other children's early attempts at writing letters. Especially if you have stuff saved from yourselves or an older sibling around that age, so you can compare it to how that person writes now. Kind of a visual demonstration that people improve with practice.

If he'll let you, you could also try saving his different attempts at writing, and showing them to him as soon as there's been a noticeable improvement. To give him a clear sign that he's getting better at writing.

We take every opportunity to model that it is OK to mess up. When I make a mistake about something I take the time to point it out to DS. My husband does the same. Especially when it is something funny like when you have one of those brainless moments where you set the milk jug in the sink and put your dirty cup in the refrigerator! I think it helps for him to see that me and DH are not perfect and that we take mistakes in stride.

I also try to remember to validate his feelings when he is nervous about doing something new and tell him that I often feel the same way. I try to avoid giving him the old, "You can do it" pep talk or saying things like "Its really easy." Those are pointless platitudes and he knows it. Instead we talk about the aspects of a potential new activity that make him nervous or that he thinks he won't like. We talk up new activities for a few days and do what we can to pre-teach or front-load what may be involved. For example, this summer we have had some success with DS taking part in art and cooking classes. Something he has never been able to do before. The first class was going to be at a location he had never been before so we made arrangements to visit the classroom several days ahead of time. In this type of situation, its also good for us if we can meet the teacher before hand too. That small step helped reduce some of his anxiety.

Break down larger tasks into small steps. Reward and praise even small approximations. Use any special interest he might have to help motivate. DS LOVED to write Captain Underpants stories at school. That wasn't exactly the content the teacher wanted to see but she did appreciate that as time went on, he was learning to use correct case, punctuation, spacing...

Our 4.5 year old son is also a perfectionist. His preference is to have a grownup do something while he "supervises" (wish that I had never jokingly used that term in front of him!). What the grownups in his life started doing was to be clearly not up to his standards when he would ask us to do something for him. For example, we'd color outside the lines with crayons or markers, our letters would be uneven, and our playdo creatures were not at all what he was hoping for. It helped him to get a little of the "if I want it done right, I'll have to do it myself" attitude, along with showing him that it's OK to not be perfect. One of the most useful phrases with him is "this is not an easy thing to do, what a great try!". Telling him something was "easy" was not reassuring to him, it just made him feel frustrated that he wasn't getting it right away.

I agree with Bombaloo that cashing in on special interests can help too. My son's special interest is Star Wars, and my husband recent found a website where you can design your own Star Wars comic featuring yourself in the comic. The pages are big black and white outlines that need to be colored in & our son probably did more coloring on that 7 page book than he's done in his entire life up until that point! He loves it because he can read it over & over again & know that HE did it himself!

Oh, yeah, I hate when people tell me something I'm struggling with is 'easy'. I usually react by snapping 'I guess I must be stupid then'.

With a therapist, we came up with "Practice makes improvement," having been scarred pretty badly by the "practice makes perfect" proverb. I do think the above is really important, because DS struggles in ways we can't understand - and, since he got diagnosed late, nobody was very understanding about those struggles when he was little.

We've tried to use logic with our son, indicating regularly that nobody is perfect and that everyone makes mistakes, that is how we are programmed to learn and create. We try to be consistent and patient... Very very patient. He needs to be patient with himself too. There may also be âge-appropriate books that may be helpful. I don't think that perfectionnism can disappear, but it can be identified and managed. Also, we provided him with specific words to describe how he feels. This has been very useful. You're a great Mom to be working on this!

I'm so grateful for all the good advise. I have already written down a page with ideas from your input to discuss with my husband

When I think about it in retrospect we have mainly tried the "You can do it"-cheering so far. It will be good to have some other tools at hand.

Hyperlexia might very well be an issue. He is very much into signs, symbols and mathematics. He could tell the difference between a square, rectangle and rhomboid at three year old, but often struggles with the meaning of common words. Part of the problem is that he doesn't like to admit when there's a word he wonders about. Luckily I have gotten better at reading the signs of that and generally describing things in detail.

Thanks again for all the great advise

It took a long time for my son to be able to admit not knowing things. He does not do it all the time, and also sometimes he surprises me and I will ask him if he knows something that appears out of his knowledge base, and he will give me the right definition. I go around defining certain things without being asked, and luckily he does not take offense at that. if he knows it, anyway, he will just tell me and it is not a big deal.

Some of it is communication where he wants to know but he can't/doesn't want to actually ask. I have a feel for that, to a point, and many times can tell when he wants to ask me about something I have said that confuses him.

I'm 41 and I'm still having a hard time not to be a perfectionist. Lately whenever I draw a picture I get annoyed and frustrated because I can't seem to find the right pen or pencil that is as "perfect" as my drawing (I've been told that I'm very talented at drawing cartoons). I normally use pens for drawing since I don't have to resharpen them but they skip, they blot, the ink smears and since I'm left-handed this is really a problem. I need a pen that has a steady, smooth, fast-drying ink that doesn't put a strain on my hand so I can draw without cramping. There used to be a brand I liked a few years ago so naturally I can't find it any more and the last few pens I bought were awful and a waste of money and the stuff printed on the packages about them are utter lies and I don't want to spend too much money. Any single pen over five dollars is pricey to me.

Maybe they're making pens less good quality since everyone else draws on the computer now. When I try it looks worse than what I drew on paper in First Grade, and people who can't draw stick people are cranking out what looks like works of art, but it's not unless you did it all by hand.

Of course, I seem to be an im-perfectionist at nearly everything else.