How do you address a 5 year old that has problems accepting corrections?

Question

My 5 year old niece who is 'kind of' smart, (i.e. was playing solitaire online before her 3rd birthday and is now doing 4 digit addition/subtraction and multiplication up to 5's; and reads chapter books,etc.), has problems being corrected. She had a 'meltdown' last week when she got 1 (ONE) problem of 45 wrong (>,<,= worksheet)! She loves to read and is self-motivated to do math, writing, etc. However, she has serious issues whenever she's corrected.

Is there some relationship between 'smart' kids and emotional dysfunction, for want of a much better term?

Help!

Answer 1

Yes, there is a relationship between being very advanced and perfectionism, especially in the first child. she is used to getting everything correct so when she doesn't it is frusterating. What I did with my child is as follows.
I made mistakes (sometimes on purpose) and narrated as I corrected myself and sometimes even laughed at myself ensuring that she understood even mommies make mistakes. I stressed the ones she got right, and told her that she did not have to correct the one she got wrong. I encouraged her to do other things as well (chess is good, as it used the skills she knows but teaches her how to loose). She SHOULD NOT only be doing academics, even if that is what she enjoys. We make fun of her when she is doing way advanced things telling her she knows too much and needs to watch more TV (this only works with a certain type of kid).

Good luck. We were lucky this year to have a teacher that dealt with this very well and has taught her to accept criticism.

Answer 2

Your story reminds me one of typical case with smart kids that you can have with smart kids that are being told they are smart all the time. I don't say it is your case, but this answer may help people in the same situation: kids refuses bad judgement of their performance or become perfectionist (perfectionism can become a pathology).

To illustrate why it is a problem, let's take the opposite: Someone tells his kid all the time he sucks. Even in front of other people. What happens is classic: the kid tend to start to believing it. He really thinks he sucks. This (irrational) feeling will follow him for the rest of their life. He modeled his kid to have very bad self-esteem. This will potentially lead to psychological problems in the future such as depression or anxiety.

Telling your kids all the time he is so smart (or worse, smarter than the others), may lead to the same type of problems: too high self-esteem. This leads to the behavior you describe. The real problem with that, is that your kid is going to face failure. This is where your kid will suffer. A lot.

Another problem you could face is "temporary" smart kids. They are just a bit advanced on their cognitive abilities by having more myelin stealth than average. That stabilizes at age of 12. A kid can be smarter at a certain age, then stabilize at another... biologically.

So what to do? Robin summarize it pretty well in one article on the subject he wrotes.

The key to praise is specificity and encouragement of effort, rather than the token, "Great job, Timmy! You are so smart!". Instead, a teacher may say, "I noticed you really thought about how you were going to construct that paragraph, Timmy," or "Look at the vibrant colors in that picture. I notice how precise your strokes are."

The later examples encourages the child to keep up the effort and work toward their goal rather than stopping the process because their work is already great. What is the motivation for the child to continue a project if an authority figure has already given it the thumbs up?

Answer 3

I have appreciated all of the answers. The only addition I think is important is to look at yourselves. Be gentle. Children with such high expectations for themselves often are like one or both of their parents. If this applies it is useful to acknowledge this and think about what worked for you and what didn't. As the child gets more and more able to deal, let him know what this was like for you growing up. Can you both work on some goals together. There is nothing quite so wonderful than working with a parent on a commonly held problem.

Answer 4

The best thing a parent or teacher can do in this situation is to praise the effort instead of the result, and continue to give her tasks that are just beyond her reach. Just like any other skill, the best way to improve at handling mistakes is to get a lot of practice at it!

Also, there is nothing inherently wrong with striving for perfection. The problem comes when your self esteem is tied up in attaining it, which can lead to working below your potential in order to avoid making mistakes.

Answer 5

Dealing with emotional intensity

'Gifted' children often experience intense emotions

So, the linked article suggests helping the child scale-out their reactions. It says to sit down with the child, and have them write a number from 1 to 10 on things that could happen, with 10 being the worst thing that could ever happen, and 1 being not so bad:

• Losing the 'Tangled' DVD
• Daddy forgetting to water the plants and all the plants dying
• Falling down from your bike and scraping your knee
• Getting a math problem wrong

So it's supposed to help the child scale out their reactions, to be proportional to the thing they are experiencing.

Using tact when correcting

So the other question is how are you correcting her? I think you need to treat her like a Senior Engineer - ie be very tactful if she's overreacting.

Other than that, you actually don't need to correct her. You just need to point out that "you don't think something is right", and suggest which one. Let her find the error. And if she asks "why isn't it right?" you can then respond with ("1234 + 1234 is 2468, I believe.")

Accepting that sometimes you won't get something

While aiming for perfection is great, the reality is you won't hit the ball every time. Sometimes children get discouraged, and I learned the following kind of works:

* (cheerful tone) Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.

Answer 6

There are already some great answers. I would only ADD that with my own (advanced and perfectionistic child - who is also an only child) I constantly discuss how important mistakes are. Without mistakes we wouldn't learn. If we can already answer all the questions or already do everything exactly right, then we already knew it and aren't learning anything at all. Then I make sure to keep value in learning. I use examples from science because many times scientists learn far more from their mistaken hypotheses than their correct hypotheses.

Fun Resources that include this concept:

The song (and scene with said song) "up from the ashes" from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"

"Meet the Robinsons" (the movie) The idea of "keep moving forward" is illucidated in this movie along with "celebration of failure". Everyone cheers when Louis makes a mistake.

I'm sure there others (I will definitely look for them) and thanks for the question because perhaps I'll write an article about it on my blog in the near future - this is quite an inspiration.