Dd afraid of making mistakes

[CorrieDale]

My Dd is 6 and hates being wrong about anything. Which is understandable because nobody likes being wrong. But it means that she won't try to do anything she thinks might be hard, or proffer an opinion unless she is absolutely sure she is right. She won't volunteer an answer, or have a guess, or answer a question unless she knows she is right. How can I help her to deal with this?

I guess treat it like any other fear. Practice (trying new things/answering questions) in small, controlled ways with reassurance when she makes mistakes. When she;s comfortable with those situations you can increase the challenge.

Also, try and get her talking about more open-ended subjects where there isn't necessarily a 'right' answer.

My older DD is a bit prone to this too. I have been working hard on role modelling failure. She has watched me rip back weeks of knitting when I realised I made an error. But another time I decided to leave it and we discussed why I was happy to embrace the mistake this time but not the previous time.

She is learning to play an instrument and when she plays a piece and makes a mistake, I say that it gave me pleasure to listen to her rather than let her home in on the error.

YY to the suggestion above about encouraging conversations about grey area rather than right or wrong. Get her to think about the process rather than the outcome.

DD1 also 6 is a it like this too. We engineered a few easy wins in a short spell which really buoyed her up, leaving her open to trying new things.

Yes, DD (7) like this too. Her teacher last year actively encouraged her to be messy in her work, make mistakes and challenged her when she tried to get things perfect. He was brilliant. This year's teacher hasn't recognised the issue (despite us raising it) and that has contributed to a massive escalation in her anxiety levels.

As above, treat it like a fear and expose her to making mistakes in various formats and in varying degrees. Try speaking to her teacher too because a good teacher can make a huge difference.

Thank you for all the suggestions! We have had to spend do much time helping out DS - recently diagnosed as dyspraxic - I think it's dd's turn to get a little attention now!

You need to help her develop a growth mindset.

I would recommend reading this book

I have added it to my basket! Thank you.

My twin sons are like this, they had severe speech delay plus some memory and reasoning issues and it's really impacted on their school work etc.
They would never speak up as they were afraid they wouldn't be understood in the first place, which meant they would never tell the teacher if they needed help. And one of my boys had a horrendous teacher when he was 5, who didn't understand him or his issues and was just horrible.
They are 8 now, and not as bad as they were thanks to some very understanding teachers.
The main thing we did at home though, was to point out everytime Mummy and Daddy made a mistake or got something wrong, to prove to them that even grown ups are not infallible. This has helped them realise that being wrong isn't such a bad thing, and that often you can learn even if you are wrong.

Watching with interest - My 4 year old DS is also a bit like this

An update: I got the Mindset book and it is brilliant. It won't be easy implementing it but it will be worth it!

How does she get on playing guessing games? When I was that age and a bit older I loved playing what my parents used to call "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral". One person thinks of something, and the guessers have to work out what that thing is. The first answer says whether the thing being thought of is an animal, a vegetable (plant) or mineral (object) and then subsequent answers can only be "yes" or "no" until the thing is correctly guessed. There are inevitably a lot of wrong guesses along the way, but if the guesser persists, they will find the right answer in the end. Young children can be permitted a few clues along the way.

Dd1 has always been that way, and she's now 13yo.
Makes a very long art homework. Art homework+not naturally good at art+ perfectionsit tendencies = a very long time and a dissatisfied dd.

What I do do is that I encourage her to have interests that she isn't the best at, and that she has to work on to achieve. She is always happy to work at things to get better, and doing interests for fun rather than to win/be the best gives her a lot of enjoyment now.