A child who is afraid to fail

[CrunchyGirl]

I have an almost 5 year old who seems to be terrified of failure. She's currently in an excellent Montessori preschool and will be home this fall for kindergarten. A few months ago her teachers stared having concerns that she was avoiding the more challenging work. Now it's that they don't feel she's retaining.

 

So I've been trying to feel her out and I'm pretty sure she is simply scared to fail or give the wrong answer. She clearly knows the materiel (letter sounds, formation, etc). I'm pretty darn confident there's nothing her teachers are doing that's exasperating this--I think it's her personality (LegoMan wouldn't walk until he could go it perfectly at 15 months).

 

How do I encourage her to try? To not be so afraid of making a mistake or admitting she doesn't know something?

[coastalfam]

Well, I hope you get some great answers, because my youngest is very much like this. My son is very, very sensitive to scrutiny, so not only is he afraid to mess up, but he is terrified to get into trouble--not at home, but with other adults. For homeschool, we started off with a lot of hand-holding. If he said he "couldn't" do any work without me, then I wouldn't make him. We have slowly built up confidence, and he gets excited about finishing a sheet before I can get back to sit down with him. My son also went to a preschool, then we started homeschooling this year for Kindergarten. We have seen a lot of growth in his confidence to try, and a bit of growth in his willingness to not get things perfect, but I really wish he would also tolerate failure. Failure causes quite the meltdown unfortunately.  

[Rosie_0801]

With kids like that I present "trying" as something they haven't thought about being perfectionists at. Once they wrap. their heads around that, sometimes with a little help from the example of someone else they thing they are smarter than who is better at trying, things tend to improve. They don't want to be bad at giving things a go any more than they want to be bad at anything else. Little kids find it easier to think about results than process.

[creekland]

I work with high schoolers (and above), so I'm not sure the reasoning capability is there with younger kids, but... it could be worth a shot.

 

When the brain "messes up," it doesn't like that feeling, therefore, it works hard not to mess up again.  In doing so, it learns MORE by mistakes than by getting something correct - IF kids allow it to happen and pay attention to whether they were correct or incorrect (like getting a test back and looking up what they got wrong).

 

I encourage reasoned guessing - letting kids know if they get something wrong, that's ok.  Their brain will take that info and "fix it."  This reasoning helps the perfectionists in my classes feel more at ease "taking chances."  They like knowing they are working to train their brain "better."  Perhaps it will help at a younger age too?

[EKT]

Let them see you fail! My husband and I both make a point of showing our children our failures. We don't make it an overtly didactic moment, but we both make a point of narrating our mistakes in front of both our girls. For instance, if I'm sewing something and I mess up a seam, I'll call one of them over and say, "Ha! Look! I totally messed up my seam, isn't that silly?! Want to watch how I pick out the stitches with my seam ripper?" And then I let her watch me fix the mistake and move forward so she can see that it's pretty impossible to truly ruin something. Or if my husband is baking and he makes his frosting too runny, he'll make a point to call our kids over and demonstrate how he plans to compensate and solve the problem. So, for us what has really helped is just showing that mistakes are a daily process and even adults make mistakes all the time. A line I often find myself repeating is, "You have to allow yourself to be bad at something in order to become good at it. Remember, every expert was once a beginner!" We also frequently remind our children that Mommy and Daddy have been doing math (or whatever) for over 30 years, so of course we are good at it! You will eventually be this good, too, you're just a beginner, is all.

 

 

Some other thoughts:

 

-It might help to create everyday low-risk opportunities to make mistakes. So, for instance, you can do a make-your-own pizza night where everyone does their pizza differently. She'll have to do hers her own way, but there's no real way to mess up when you're topping a pizza. (Or setting the table, or folding towels, or whatever.) 

 

-I check my reactions to everyday kid mistakes. (When a child accidentally spills her water at the table, do I get all annoyed and angry and huffy, or do I simply say a cheerful "Oops! Let's grab a rag and wipe that up together!"? I'm definitely not perfect at this, but I've found that when I am reliably cheerful and forgiving of little everyday mistakes, my children trust me not to freak out during school mistakes, either. I think creating an "emotionally safe" environment is really important.

 

Hope that helps. If it's about reading and writing, maybe she just needs some private practice that she doesn't have to share. Maybe give her a private journal to scribble her letters in on her own terms. Or, try pairing audiobooks with hard copies. When my younger daughter was learning to read, she loved Mercy Watson. I bought her the books and then I got her the audiobooks on CD from the library. She loved to listen to the audio while reading along in the printed text. This way, she could find out if she was reading correctly without an adult's intervention or correction. And after she read/listened to it a bunch of times, she couldn't wait to read it aloud to me all on her own, knowing she was reading it exactly right. Best of luck; it's likely just a stage!  

 

Edited April 22, 2017 by EKT

[Guest]

Btdt. My advice: Read anything you can get your hands on regarding perfectionism in children. Today. Dont let people tell you she will outgrow it. Don't baby the anxiety of failure.

 

Personally, now having a 14 year old with this issue, I wish we had done several things differently. She was excessively hard on herself and terrified of "messing up" in front of others. We compensated by providing private lessons and tutoring and other things to help grow her confidence. Or so we thought. In hindsight, although I would still have done some private lessons, I would make SURE I did accompanying no pressure group activities. The always private lessons actually only seemed to compound the issue. She only had herself to compare to and she was a harsh judge. Looking back, I would find camps, or non-competitive league sports, or martial arts or anything that would've made her put herself out to see that no one does is perfectly the first time, and life takes work.

 

If you talk to many Jr high teachers, you'll start to hear this is a huge problem. To the point kids don't turn in work to avoid being marked. I am not sure what happened generationally, or all of the factors, but it doesn't improve with time. And it's not uncommon. If anything it's becoming more common.

 

I would also say don't be afraid to find a psychologist now. If not for the child then for yourself to have someone to bounce things off of. It can spin off into other things regarding self esteem and possibly depression for the child. I'm not trying to sound like Debbie Downer, but I think perfectionism is glossed over as not a "true issue", when in fact it can really pose some challenges and hold kids back later in life.

[idnib]

I don't know if this helps, but...

 

My DS was like this. It took some time but I consistently set the expectation what he was working at the right level if he was getting only about half of the things right. Over time we have had him work at a level where he expects to get things incorrect. Not half anymore, but that was a good place to start. 

 

In a fun way I would ask him to recite the alphabet, and then ask him what he had learned. He would say he didn't learn anything, and I would explain that if you only do what you're sure of you don't learn new things. We still use this as a shorthand to this day. When he says something is too hard or he seems like he's afraid of failure, I remind him we don't want to "recite the alphabet."

 

Your DD is too young for this, but Beast Academy math helped with this too, as they give harder questions based upon what they teach the student and it's just expected that most kids will not get some of the problems because they are not rote and can really stretch the application of the concept. BA really taught him to work with material and struggle to do his best but not expect to always come up with an answer at all, let alone a correct one.

Edited April 22, 2017 by idnib

[LMD]

we talk a lot about wrong answers/mistakes as being clues or directions. I don't generally use the word wrong, I might say something like 'oh, that's a great try, you have more information to help you get to the answer now!'

Saying over and over that I expect them to need help/time/practice to understand it - if they just got everything easily they would never be learning!

And how every mistake grows your brain more than just getting the right answer.

[Farrar]

It's really meant for more like kids age 6 or 7 and up, but What to Do When You Worry Too Much and What to Do When Mistakes Make You Quake are great resources that I think you could probably tweak for a younger child. The strategies in there are as much for you as for the child.

 

This is the one specifically about perfectionism, but the general anxiety one is great too:

https://www.amazon.com/What-When-Mistakes-Quake-What/dp/1433819309/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1492904218&sr=8-3&keywords=what+to+do+when+you+worry+too+much

 

I would also ask... just something about the way the OP was phrased... is this a sudden change? Because sometimes there can be medical issues, such as PANDAS, at play when a child goes from mostly laid back to very anxious.

[MerryAtHope]

Another book to read with her--Beautiful Oops.

[fralala]

Well, I think Carol Dweck's work on mindset (including the book with the same name) can be very useful with all kids, but especially with perfectionists, and I think it should be shared with your daughter's teachers if possible. I sent my oldest daughter to a wonderful, loving preschool where unfortunately the teachers' constant enthusiasm for her advanced abilities reinforced her perfectionism to a great degree. When kids are praised over and over for getting the right answer, and praised in the language of "You are smart!", it's hard to tell whether perfectionism really is a personality trait or an advanced child's natural response to this shaping of their behavior. I think it's one way our culture subtly undermines the success of smart kids, and I use the word "smart" knowing it's not a pro-mindset word!

 

In any case, I'm actually grateful for those teachers and the experience of seeing that daughter begin to sob and shriek, "I'm stupid!" when confronted with the possibility of making a mistake because that whole experience is what led me to homeschooling! If she hadn't been so high-strung, anxious, and obvious about what was happening in her head, I wouldn't have changed a thing. Instead, I spent a lot of time talking to her about how the brain works, and working the idea that making mistakes is part of the path to great discoveries/learning/success into just about everything we read or did for awhile there. And I continually have to strive not to try to make life easy for her or avoid challenges just because I am afraid of her response to them; I have to be strong and keep a positive attitude even when she is weeping and saying "I can't, I'm stupid, It's too hard!" ("You're frustrated, but I'm excited, because I managed to find something challenging enough to help your brain stretch and grow. When you're ready, I can't wait to work through this with you. I love seeing how your brain works." And the good news is that I searched my head and I actually can't remember the last time she wept over seeing something that didn't immediately come easily to her. She might still complain, but I feel like the "I'm stupid" is more a test of how I'll respond than a statement of true inner turmoil.)

[4KookieKids]

We are in the thick of this. A few things seem to be helping, though only time will tell. Those things have mostly already been mentioned: making sure the kiddo knows that his brain will only grow by doing hard/new things (growth mindset stuff / like reciting the alphabet above), making mistakes with my kiddo (when he's upset with piano, I sit down and try to sight read his piece with him and I usually make a few mistakes and we laugh about them together), and we've started reading together at night portions of a book called Mistakes that worked so that we can laugh about how making mistakes is sometimes even useful (beyond just being a normal part of learning something new). But the biggest thing that influences the perfectionism, I think, is my reaction to mistakes outside of academics, like spilling milk and breaking something. When I handle those right, my kiddo tends to handle academic mistakes  and frustrations better.

[suenos]

Got a perfectionist/anxiety prone kiddo here.  Older than your little one - but I've found Tamar Chansky's (sp.?) books - especially Freeing your Child from Negative Thinking - to be really helpful to me to help him change his thinking.  Good explanations for parents (I learned to recognize some of my own negative thinking!) as well as lots of suggestions for games to play and ways to talk to your kiddos to help them. Turned out we could do a lot at home in just daily life to help him change his thinking and start to address the anxiety/perfectionism/frustration/avoidance vicious cycle that was in motion. 

[RenaInTexas]

This is a little unconventional, but this is one of the intangible benefits of sports. You win some lose some. You start out looking pretty bad, but with work you get better. This develops confidence and a work ethic and courage. Could be a team sport like soccer or an individual like dance. Learning an instrument may have a similar result. Not sure about things like chess club? Just a not quite obvious thought to consider.