I really need help unravelling this idea of mastery rather than perfection, especially how to explain it a six year old who already has perfectionism issues (for stuff she cares about) that cause literal emotional explosions (it's so exhausting). This is the same six year old I wrote about a few weeks ago who hates Kindergarten.
My six year old loves to sew. She does this completely independently. I taught her, and for a while still had to thread her needle and knot the thread, and then just knot it, and now she's off and running. She's making simple, sweet little angels with stuffed and sewn wings to give her grandmothers for Christmas. Her idea, her design, her execution. All I have done is admire (and we work hard to give specific praise for work and effort and not results...we rarely say "good job!"). But, if she is sewing (or drawing, or painting) something and it isn't coming out EXACTLY like the picture in her head, she absolutely loses it. Throws down her work, screams, cries, throws a legitimate temper tantrum. If she gets one flashcard wrong in a stack she insists on doing the entire stack again till she gets them all right (if they are new flashcards). So, obviously some perfectionist issues that we hope don't end her up with the anorexia and anxiety that my perfectionist issues did.
Interestingly, she often complains that things are boring. Phonics. Math. Gymnastics. "It's not challenging. We do nothing new," she said after gymnastics today. I had a sudden flash of insight. She thinks that new=challenging. The idea of mastery, of doing it again and again and again until it's perfect, is not something she gets. She detests review. "I already know all this." And sure, she can remember after a few seconds that 3 + 2 = 5, but she doesn't KNOW it.
So how do I help her understand mastery, and the point of it all, without tipping her into the perfectionist side of things?
My six year old loves to sew. She does this completely independently. I taught her, and for a while still had to thread her needle and knot the thread, and then just knot it, and now she's off and running. She's making simple, sweet little angels with stuffed and sewn wings to give her grandmothers for Christmas. Her idea, her design, her execution. All I have done is admire (and we work hard to give specific praise for work and effort and not results...we rarely say "good job!"). But, if she is sewing (or drawing, or painting) something and it isn't coming out EXACTLY like the picture in her head, she absolutely loses it. Throws down her work, screams, cries, throws a legitimate temper tantrum. If she gets one flashcard wrong in a stack she insists on doing the entire stack again till she gets them all right (if they are new flashcards). So, obviously some perfectionist issues that we hope don't end her up with the anorexia and anxiety that my perfectionist issues did.
Interestingly, she often complains that things are boring. Phonics. Math. Gymnastics. "It's not challenging. We do nothing new," she said after gymnastics today. I had a sudden flash of insight. She thinks that new=challenging. The idea of mastery, of doing it again and again and again until it's perfect, is not something she gets. She detests review. "I already know all this." And sure, she can remember after a few seconds that 3 + 2 = 5, but she doesn't KNOW it.
So how do I help her understand mastery, and the point of it all, without tipping her into the perfectionist side of things?
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