How can I stop my daughter from giving up all the time.

[teaparty]

Hi, my daughter is nearly 5 and loves pretend play. Especially dressing up and pretending to be different charactors from books/films etc.
She seems to put a lot of effort in to it, but if something goes wrong, she'll just give up. For example, if she can't find her wand then that will be it, she can't be a fairy anymore. I try to explain that you don't need a wand to be a fairy, but she just gets stroppy. She seems to think everything has to be just right, or she'll give up.
I don't know why she has this attitude, I'm hoping it's a phase.
Can you recomend a way of dealing with this? thanks.

will be watching this thread with interest. My 7 yo ds is exactly the same. he'll be making/creating something and if something falls apart or its too hard, he'll just toss it and give up! Its almost a perfectionism thing, and he also cannot lose ANY competition. I try to pretend to fail at something and then just say 'oh well, i'll try again!' to show him that it doesn't always have to be perfect. You could quickly make it into a game by pretending to be a fairy looking for her lost wand. 'oh no, where did it go?? perhaps i can be a fairy with this instead?' etc...

TBH I really wouldn't worry. If something interests them enough they will persevere but if not just don't worry about it. Useful to encourage a bit of perseverance by doing what you're doing - "come on, let's try again" "shall I help you, I'm sure we can get this done as a team" etc - but IME it's nothing to worry about and when something comes along that grabs their interest a dc will stick with it - often to parental amazement if the dc isn't usually like that!

Thank you. I'm glad she's not alone. I'm hoping she'll grow out of it soon enough.