I have a little perfectionist. I've had people tell me that perfectionism is a positive trait, one that will serve her well later on in life, and in this case I tend to disagree. For her it's been paralyzing and, whether a result or a cause, is correlated to low self-esteem.
I think she probably has multiple areas where her perfectionism causes her real problems (reading, I believe, is one of them), but the one that I noticed first was art. For a long time I assumed that she just wasn't into coloring, painting or drawing in the same way that many other kids her age are, but in the last couple years it's become obvious to me that she didn't want to make art because she didn't like her own work. Essentially she wanted realism, or at the very least the sophisticated symbolic art of children four, five or six years her senior. Making things worse, she has been slow to develop motor skills, both gross and fine. Nothing abnormal, just not precocious with the pumping action on the swings or the whole fork-to-mouth thing.
Developing our home curriculum, I was tempted to just leave out art and find a way for her to have those experiences elsewhere: at preschool, Sunday school, possibly through some kind of children's art program.
But it struck me that of all the skills I could assist her with, learning to harness the positive aspects of perfectionism, such as the drive to achieve excellence, attention to detail, focus, and persistence, and to manage the negative, were possibly the single most important. What I wanted to work with her on had nothing to do with art, and everything to do with helping her to release the sense of "never good enough" and to experience the kind of genuine growth that can occur in a state of relaxed perseverance. (As a side note, I myself am a perfectionist, which might surprise, uh, everyone. Perfectionism can be paralyzing and is deeply connected with procrastination, lack of motivation and low productivity. I didn't experience the enormous satisfaction of consistent effort over a long period of time until well into adulthood; I don't want my kid to have to wait that long.)
As with many, many other obstacles I've faced with her, I figured that she might respond to a simple explanation.
So I told her that all children draw symbolically, but not all know how to draw realistically, and explained what that meant. We also talked about fine motor development, and how, just like talking or walking or whatever, every person learns a skill at their own pace, in their own time. She knew that nothing was wrong with her baby sister because Baby can't speak in full sentences, and it was an easy jump from there to acknowledging that, perhaps, her development in fine motor control was hers, and nothing to worry about.
My next step has been to actually teach her some pencil control, alongside some ways to "see" and release her negative perfectionistic feelings when they arise. In her math work she's doing some tracing and numeral writing, so that has pushed her a bit. And then we've talked a bit about how to color, using slow, short strokes, focusing and taking your time.
A week ago she was drawing like this:
Now, there is nothing wrong with that drawing. It's totally normal five-year-old drawing. The drawing isn't the point. The point is that on the rare occasions that I could convince her to try using crayons or markers or whatever in any way (I have never in my life criticised a child for scribbling; I'm 100% pro-scribbling), she would do a couple of stick figures and nine times out of ten she would get frustrated and scribble over the top of her work.
It sucked. Really, it just sucks to see your kid feeling like that.
After a few days of working with her feelings a little bit, and her motor control a little bit, she made this:
And with a fair amount of help from me*, these:
I don't think these are very much more sophisticated than what she was doing before, but again, that's not the point. The point is that she is drawing like crazycakes. She figured out that you can make your own paper dolls, and that's what she's been working on for the past few days, for hours at a time.
She's still having moments of self-doubt, and whenever I work with her she either focuses intently on what I'm doing, obviously comparing, or she asks me to do things for her. I'm happy to help in some cases, like the fussy cutting around a paper doll (the clothes do need to fit in order to put them on), but I would love for her to eventually be able to focus on her work. Inspiration and motivation from others is one thing, comparison is another.
I wish I'd learned how to do what she is doing early in life. How to begin at something, to be bad at something, and accept that, and push myself (just the right amount). Instead I simply did the things that came very easily, and quit everything else. Eventually, as you get older, you see that inherent ability, that talent, only means so much. Maybe half. Probably less. What matters, what really counts, is perseverance. And you cannot persevere without knowing how to manage the feelings of frustration that come along with learning and growing.
I'm going to look into some resources on perfectionism, to help us both. And I'm going to teach her how to draw (I bought Drawing with Children and I am CRAZY excited to get started, but it will take a little while for me to be prepared to teach the lessons. The author makes the points that symbolic and realistic drawing are two different skills, that teaching the latter doesn't retard the development and practice of the former, and that the normal symbolic drawing work of childhood is rarely followed by skill in realism without instruction. It makes sense to me).
My hope is that these exercises, in a discipline that she may or may not persue as she grows, and one that I have no ego investment in as a parent, will cut some healthy grooves in the record of her mind:
This is how it goes. This is how I grow. This is how I let go.
Whatever goes on next, we need "multicultural markers" and skin tone pencils tout de suite. She's already super annoyed that her skin tone choices are "orange", "yellow" and "brown". Observant kid, this one.
Might make a good artist.
*For the paper dolls, I drew a very basic human outline. She drew in the hair and faces, and colored them in. For the outfits, she had the body template, I helped her through how to use that to overlay her clothing drawings, and did the fussy cutting. Now she's off like a shot on her own. I can't find the paper doll she did totally independently, but it's hilarious and rad.