How to help someone who's being too hard on themselves?

[Chewingbubblegum]

What can I do to help my son?

He is 7 years old and is incredibly hard on himself. Academically he is at the top of his class and he is very good at sports, and amongst the best. Yet he thinks he is rubbish at everything and that he would rather not be alive. He had a small disappointment today and he was angry at himself.

I'm just so so heartbroken to see him like this. I want to help him. I don't want this to be the way he treats himself as he grows older.

Mine is also seven, and a perfectionist. I’ve found it important to let him see me (a comparatively high flier) making mistakes and getting things wrong and not being fazed. I (accidentally) made a very suboptimal cake last weekend, which turned out to be a great learning opportunity — that the cake wasn’t very nice, but that wasn’t something terribly serious, I wasn’t upset, and now I knew how to do it better next time.