Snickerdoodle Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 How did that play out in the teenage (highschool) years? What did you do that helped? What do you wish you had done prior to adolescence? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kebo Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Well, he's just entering the high school years (almost 15), but I would say he's MUCH improved on all fronts. Those same issues still rear their ugly heads once in a while under duress, but it's so much better than it used to be. What helped, and I wish I had done more of, is under-react. When he was emotional about his schoolwork, and feeling overwhelmed, it helped to say, "yes, I see how you FEEL about it. Let's take a break and come back and THINK about how to solve it." Many time, after a break he was able to approach the same problem intellectually instead of emotionally. Usually I would send him outside for a while and tell him to come back in when he felt ready. My younger son is still struggling with some of the same tendencies. What sometimes helps with him is to engage his body and brain at the same time -- when he is getting emotional about a project, we will sometimes play catch while talking it through. Or he will yo-yo for a while as he thinks about it. A cold drink or a hot snack is good for resetting his emotions. I think a lot of these problems calm down with age -- or at least morph into something easier to deal with. What I wish I had started doing earlier is to not become involved myself emotionally, and have a clear, calm, consistent plan of action. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oneddmanybooks Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 How did that play out in the teenage (highschool) years? What did you do that helped? What do you wish you had done prior to adolescence? Good question; thanks for asking it. I'll be listening! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegasus Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 Ummm. . .yes, we definitely had/have a perfectionist who would get extremely upset at doing anything wrong. I don't know if anything we did actually helped or if it was just a maturing process, but DD15 is much better than she was (still not perfect though ;);)). We emphasized that no one was perfect and that we didn't expect perfection from her. We made it a point to tell/show her when we made mistakes and when other people made mistakes. We downplayed mistakes on her part, not only with schoolwork, but with a spilled drink, for example. Finally, we made sure to challenge her so that she would get practice at NOT being good at something. She was used to things coming easy and would easily get frustrated and upset when it didn't. So, she started playing banjo at age 8. She experienced over and over again that she wasn't good at the new material that the teacher showed her. However, she would work and practice at it and get good at it over time. I tried to give her schoolwork that would provide challenge without being impossibly difficult. Best of luck. Having the parent stay calm and patient is the biggest factor, I believe. Pegasus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 My DD is a perfectionist and was easily frustrated in elementary age. By the time highschool came, this was no longer a big issue. Beyond simple maturity, I think what helped most was to enable her to make the experience that certain things are difficult, impossible to master without practice and persistence: she took piano lessons for six years, and she started riding horses at age 10. Nothing teaches patience and humility to a perfectionist like working with an unpredictable horse. Now as a teenager, she still is a perfectionist, but has a higher frustration tolerance. She has been exposed to challenging work and learned that it is normal and important to make mistakes because this how you learn. She is now also less of a perfectionist, partly through her horseback riding experience, and, I also think, partly through the amount of work expected from her which makes paralyzing perfectionism impossible - some things, at some point, have to be simply good enough. I am a perfectionist myself and know that this is a character trait one does not outgrow; you just learn to live with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ester Maria Posted March 17, 2012 Share Posted March 17, 2012 One of my daughters had a noticeable touch of perfectionism to her. Not a FULL BLOWN perfectionism, with meltdowns and being frustrated all the time, but a visible touch nonetheless and sometimes it would get hard with her because she would take herself, and life, too seriously to be able to simply enjoy the ride to the best of her effort, but without overthinking her shortcomings and walls. Then puberty hit her. And wow, did she change. A LOT. It is almost as though she has grown a different basic personality (of course, not that extreme, the basic traits are still there, but the whole mix has a VERY different flavor now than when she was elementary aged). She has become a lot more open, easy going, a lot less hard on herself, sometimes even to the other extreme (cynical-phlegmatic rather than getting worked up about things; vanitas vanitatis kind of mood rather than taking things so seriously as she used to). In retrospect, what helped, other than crazy hormones: - Working on SKILLS that require sustained effort and TIME to be developed, rather than giving an instant gratification of "getting" it (such as an instrument, learning to draw, a sport, etc.); - Modeling at home "non-catastrophic" thought patterns and behavior when things go wrong or when faced with any kind of problems; - Modeling being able to do things "properly", but without taking them so seriously, knowing that in the grand scheme of things it is not all THAT important and not worth our nerves; - Modeling not taking yourself so seriously and putting our struggles in context; - Cultivating disposition to humor; - Reading Ecclesiastes :lol:; - Simple maturity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snickerdoodle Posted March 18, 2012 Author Share Posted March 18, 2012 It's very interesting to hear that adolescence seems to temper the perfectionist tendencies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gratia271 Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 Intensity and drive run in my family. In the instance of my oldest daughter, she has mellowed tremendously with age. On the other hand, my son's intensity has escalated since his early years, particularly in respect of his frustration threshold. I hope to survive his adolescence. :glare: In terms of me and my siblings, I was rather laid back until early adulthood, and my brother went from somewhat intense to "ultra" intense, again in terms of low frustration threshold. Maybe gender has some influence on this? I'm not sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lolly Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 I definitely had one of those in elementary. The result-I handed it all to her. Her learning was her responsibility. She had to take the classes required for graduation by our cover. I got the books. She was required to take the tests for the classes. Other than that, I stayed out of her way. I passed her (pretty much regardless of her performance). She is now in college and has almost a 4.0 average. Her teachers adore her. She is a diligent student. Her perfectionistic tendencies still cause her to have some meltdowns. I just tell her she will figure it out and back away. She started last night about an essay she is working on; how horrid it was, how unorganized it is. This time, I looked at her and asked what she got on the last essay that was that way (a couple of weeks ago). She sheepishly replied "97" and dropped it. By the time she turns it in, it will be close to perfect. To do it all over-what would I do differently? Have a little more patience. Not sure if I really could or not. I probably wouldn't have thrown that book at her that day... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlet Pimpernel Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 :lurk5: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathy in Richmond Posted March 18, 2012 Share Posted March 18, 2012 (edited) How did that play out in the teenage (highschool) years? What did you do that helped? What do you wish you had done prior to adolescence? My kids aren't perfectionists, but I sure am! What helped me most in adolescence was that my parents weren't very involved in my studies. I think that my personal worry-warting would have escalated had they been anxious about me. The intensity and emotional reactions never really go away altogether, but life experience helps, i.e., surviving failures and seeing that the world doesn't end, and that there are many OK paths in life. Edited March 18, 2012 by Kathy in Richmond Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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