Help! G and T daughter getting very worked out if she finds things don't live up to her high standards

[doiwant3]

Hi
I am looking for any advice please! DD, aged 7, is a gorgeous girl, sensible (mostly), kind and thoughtful. And very clever, as her teacher says she is "fanastic at everything" and she is in all the top groups, taken out for extra maths etc. The problem is that if she ever finds something difficult, or if she does something (eg in art class) which she doesn't think is up to her high standards, then she cries and goes hysterical (this is even though whatever it is usually is very good!) It seems to be happening more and more in school, and I don't know what to do about it.
Please help if you have any thoughts!

[LilyBolero]

Music is really interesting. Clever children 'tend' (and I use the word advisedly!) to do very well very quickly, and then if they are inherently musical that shows later on, if not they will tend to plateau. But we might be talking Grade 6-8 here. Of my 3 children, as far as I can tell, ds2 is the most 'inherently musical', he is also the one who will possibly struggle most with things to begin with.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I could have written your post word for word. dd is similar - very tearful if she falls even a tiny bit below her impossible standards.

Her teacher this year is absolutely brilliant. I've asked for her help on this and she does lots of chats in a pretty grown up way with dd about emotional perspective. (talking about what really matters in life)

Shes also creating maths tests for the top group designed to make dd get one or two wrong because dd consistently was not getting a single answer wrong and we realised that she just doesnt know how to cope with getting stuff wrong. Its lowering all the top groups scores but shes told them that its fine as its now differentiated work. (hope that makes sense)

Its really slow progress but dd is starting to get it more into perspective. Just wish we could have her teacher next year too!

[roisin]

That sounds fantastic OhYouBadBadKitten, and just what she needs.

ds1's school have just extracted a 'high aptitude' group for Maths (yr7s). They had 3 exam papers last week and ds1 said they were very tough, most of it was things he hasn't covered in school yet. He really enjoyed the challenge, but some of his mates found it quite hard to cope with. They are used to being the brightest of the bright, and certainly in terms of KS2 SATs Maths papers they are used to getting perfect or very nearly perfect scores. In the mental maths test the highest score of any student was 75%. (They haven't had the others back yet.)

Hopefully this setting will enable them to be challenged to the point of failure and get used to being in that environment.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

That does sound ideal Roisin I don't think a lot of people appreciate how important it is for very bright kids to learn how to cope when they get things wrong.

I think that they are a lot less likely to crumple or burn out as they go through the academic world if they can deal with themselves being imperfect. I remember the first time I failed at something I was devastated - it changed my whole view of myself and I could not put it into perspective.

[quint]

Wow this could be DD1 (and me when I was younger)

DD1 has been recognised as YGT (though to be honest we haen't done anything with it as she's only 5) but for along time if she can't do something straight away she refuses to try it and gives up. We've treid praising her for trying to do things, we've spoken about practising and its all about taking part not winning or being the best but she stil gets upset if she doesn;t master somethigbn straight away - maybe that will come with age.

The trouble is I would hate her to turn out like me who was (and if I'm honest with myself and still am littlebit) like this. Therefore it is unusual for me to try new things, though I'm getting better but its taken me nearly 40years!!!! I was in all the top groups, didn't have to try hard, was expected to get excellent grades then I don't know what happened but he work suddenly wasn;t easy, I didn;t know what to do, wasn't able to cope and whilst I didn't flunk at school my grades weren't great.

Anyway, I'll be watching tis thread with interest as to any other suggestions.

[Nightcrawly]

This was me when I was younger, and I still bristle at not getting things 100% right, I think it is part of my personality. My completely non-pushy mum said that the best thing that ever happened to me was failing my driving test, because I was so used to being top at everything it taught me a very valuable lesson.
I'm not saying you should make sure your DD fails at something, but that a holistic approach to her development and education is easy to overlook when she shines academically.

[ian71]

Our son used to go berserk if things didn't go to plan. I remember getting called to school after he flipped out in drama because the teacher said get into pairs and he was left pairless and told to make a 3.

He got over it after a year or so but it took a lot of perseveerance and a supportive school. They run a lunchtime club to help children with low self esteem, he didn;t have that problem but going along helped his social skills no end, as did choir and drumming

[Kammy]

Back to the music point - there was a really interesing article in the Guardian a few months ago. Some researchers looked at what the differences were between 'exceptional' academics and musicians and the ones considered very good. What seperated the exceptional was actually the hours of practice put in - there was the example of the Beatles touring Germany and how may gigs per night and Bill Gates and how many hours he was already putting in as quite a young teenager.

Of course natural talent plays a part, but the bottom line was - natural talent will not lead to 'exceptional' talent without many hous of work.

FWIW, my ds is also a perfectionist and I started piano lessons last year. He is doing great and does find it relatively easy, but has had to work pretty hard and his teacher encourages reflection on things like how he might like a piece to sound (which he finds quite difficult being a very concrete thinker!). It has really helped the perfectionism and I am noticing he is coping better with the odd wrong spelling/maths problem (believe me, a few months ago he wouuld have ruminated on it for weeks).