One of the great secrets of learning is that we must, either within ourselves or within our children and homes, create an environment where it is OK to fail. Not only is it OK, it is expected, even relished on a daily basis. This seems completely contradictory, but it is not, IF failure is accompanied by feedback and learning, and a re-attempt, and more learning.
This is my problem. I nurtured my girl (3 years 3 months) to be secure and strong. I praise for effort. Other mothers very often say “don’t do this and that”, I say it rather rare. I followed “attachment parenting” approach (sling, cosleeping, positive attitude etc.).
My girl inherited my sensitive temper. Probably, she also coppied comething of my asocial core.
She goes to playgroup and she likes it.
She is very cautious (it is ok).
She do not speak with people unless they are very familiar and close.
Now we go to dance group. Other girls are dancing, my girl stays with me and says “I can not, I do not know”. Of course, she can. The tasks are very simple, we do similar things at home. And she likes dancing very much.
I do not press her; we are sitting and watching children very happily. I try to fix my mind that she is dancing. I say things like “everyone can not, so they learn; others do not look on you, they think aboyt themselves” and similar.
It goes better and better with every lesson. But the problem stays. She is affraid to fail.
How do you help your children to fail?
Practical examples, please.
I will start.
When my girl spills the cup (and she starts to cry; other children do not emote on such non-essentials) I say, for example: “it is non-essential! remember, once I fall down with two plates, and it was non-essential, too”. If other family members are nearby, I ask: “grandmother, have you ever spilled the cup?” and she happily says yes. Etc.
but it does not help enough.
how do i help her to fail? i don’t . i just let her fail.
she is 25 months old now, she still spills when she drinks from a cup , let her spill, wet her shirt and change it. reminded her to be careful and she will spill less, the next time and even lesser the next time.
she drop remote control on the floor, cover open and all. let her put it back on her own.
when she can’t do something like open a drawer, she will turn to me and say ‘mummy help please’.
i never say that she is clever but my mother in law always say ‘clever girl’ which is not a good idea.
the book ‘nurtured shock’ is good.
hmm… not compare her with anyone. if there is no comparison, she wont know whether she is good or not, so maybe that will help a little bit?
I also let her fail and spill, and try
I do not compare and I ask others not to compare.
Somehow she is naturally prone to not-failing.
She started to walk at 14 months, after 7 month crawling. She did it only when she was completely sure that she will not fall. At the same day she stopped crawling, and did not fall at all.
Later, she allways was very cautious. She did not have injuries. At 2.5 years after the minor fall she asked “what is flowing”. That was the first time she saw her blood.
She started to feed herself at 10 months. When she was 1 year old, her eating was so clean that everyone was surprised. (I did not teach it; If I would be concerned on cleanliness I would not let her to feed herself at 10 months.)
Her Dad and Grandmother do not say that she is smart (but we know she is).
I am the weakest piont of this chain.
Earlier I was depressive. I am rather asocial.
I do not like to fail. I do not like to speak about my errors. I shrink if someone sees my mistakes.
Should I start to make mistakes all the time, to spill my cups and to dance on the street?
Living with infant (8 months), there is not very much space to show errors.
My son is also a perfectionist - I am a clutz (put me on a stage and I’ll dance gracefully and beautifully, get me to walk down the street… ) my husband is ultra co-ordinated and never walks into things or drops things like I do. But then he tends to think first which I believe may help. We never make a big deal about spills here, I spill my drinks as often as my toddler, probably more these days, and yet he is so ultra careful and crestfallen if he “fails” and spills some.
At one stage I was sure he was practicing things behind my back when I couldn’t see or hear because he would just suddenly do things perfectly.
We went through a stage recently (from 18 months to 25 months) where he just didn’t want to do things unless he could do it perfectly first go. We realized that he was so intently focused on the end result that he was completely forgetting about the journey.
We had to use several tactics to get through it but it seems to have passed (at least the excessive bit has, he’s still very determined to get things right).
One thing we did was focus on the word “together” when a task was daunting him to the point where he wouldn’t try.
For example he had a cdrom and one game on it simply required more fine motor control with the mouse than he had developed so even though he knew the right icon to choose he kept hitting the wrong one and getting it wrong. He kept making me put it in but then I had to play it while he watched. In the end I got him to give me instructions and I did the mouse work and eventually he would start to move my hand around then one day he just started doing it.
If you can bring yourself to do it, join the dancing class - ignore whether or not she joins you she just needs to know that it’s a safe place where you can try new things. Alternatively most dance classes will have set combinations or steps or exercises or stretches that they repeat each lesson - learn them and practise them together at home until she’ll try it in front of the class once she’s in a dance class she will eventually try new things of her own accord as she sees the other children happily trying and failing or succeeding. If the teacher is aware that your daughter needs to be handled gently in this matter she’ll be joining in happily soon enough.
The other thing we did was react equally to success and failure. So if he was pouring and he spilled his drink and he cried our dialogue might be something like “oh you’re so frustrated! you were trying so hard not to spill. I saw how careful you were being and I was impressed, such good concentration, you almost did it too! I’ll bet the next time you spill half as much! Let’s mop this up and we’ll get another one”. At first he would just kind of cry over the top and we’d keep kind saying the same thing till he calmed down but we noticed that very quickly (like in a matter of days) he started calming down as soon as we acknowledged his frustration. If he was to pour the cup successfully we would once again comment on how careful he was, how I noticed he was concentrating and what good persistance he has etc. A few months down the track he’s not really worried. He still tries very hard, sometimes he still gives up but he’ll come back soon after and the excessive perfectionism is gone. He’s quite happily trying things.
We will continue to go to dancing class. I like this event very much because all the tasks are easy and every toddler can do them and at the same time there is large room for improvements. Also the teacher is nice.
TmS,
Thank you for your experience about the reaction to success and failure. You opened a new horizon for me! I will think about it, I will do it
I wouldn’t call it “fail”. I may call it increasing experience.
I think most of toddlers do stuff, or try to do something on the right way FOR THE ONLY reason to PLEASE US! Their love for us make them think that if they do things right we may LOVE THEM MORE! OR we may feel so proud of them.
This is why children feel so sad or frustrated whenever they don’t do things " right".
When my 2.5 years old try to put her shoes all by herself and sometimes she can’t get them on, she feels very frustrated, and start calling for help, I help her and tell her it is not big deal, next time you will do better, the more you practice the better you will do next time.Thanks for trying.
It is hard to explain them that sometimes we won’t get stuff done on the way they want, that is why I called it Increasing experience…The more they live the more experience they will have to understand better this situations and handle those feelings in the positive way.
I also don’t believe there are kids (as such early age) that are “PERFECTIONIST” We may like to think that but this is not true, they don’t know what is being perfectionist yet, they only learn what we teach them, it they can’t zipp their jackets because this zipper is to hard to pull up, they will feel very frustrated because Mommy tought him the zipper need to be pull up! That is it!! It is not because needs to be perfect , they just want to do things on the right way…and not on the “perfect” way .
It would be nice to think that my son doesn’t have perfectionistic traits, to believe that if I stop behaving a certain way it will all go away but I am afraid I can’t take the all the blame on this one.
I have three nephews with the same tendencies, I had them and my two sisters have them. We also have, in varying degrees, over excitabilities and sensitivities - these go hand in hand with the sorts of children who are perfectionists. My son has a very high degree of psyhcomotor over excitability and a bunch of other tendencies towards other over excitabilities and sensitivities.
The child psychologist explained to me that Sabian’s perfectionism has a to do with these and that while it will never go away I can teach him how to use these perfectionist traits in positive ways instead of allowing them to overwhelm him and stop him from moving forward.
My son knows full well that I am pleased with him no matter what he does, it is himself that is not pleased. I have no expectations for him and I certainly put none on him, it would be hard for people to imagine just how carefree and unpressured this household is as it is so unusual but there is no pressure on us or him for anything - we live day by day and accept what comes to us each day.
Unlike many parents I have met over the years, I don’t have an expectation of how my son should be or what he should be able to do, he will do things when he does them. I don’t expect him to behave like a performing seal doing “party tricks” for people when they come over like “tell everyone how old you are” or whatever else parents think should make them proud enough to force their child to show it off to everyone.
Sabian is smart enough to look at the people around him and notice they do things a certain way and try to emulate this without us putting it on him. It has nothing to do with wanting to please but more with wanting to be like us.
Within himself he has a need to do things well, with the strategies we are now employing he will use this trait to succeed in life and always be improving. We will help him to understand that sometimes a mistake can be a wonderful and beautiful thing and that it is a learning experience and part of a journey.
) my husband is ultra co-ordinated and never walks into things or drops things like I do. But then he tends to think first which I believe may help. We never make a big deal about spills here, I spill my drinks as often as my toddler, probably more these days, and yet he is so ultra careful and crestfallen if he “fails” and spills some.