My daughter is a perfectionist. My daughter is impatient. She wants things done exactly the way she wants them done, and she wants them done yesterday. This is a flammable combination.
Since reading Carol Dweck’s landmark book Mindset, I’ve become more away of how my daughter uses “fixed mindset” language. She says she will “never” get better at something. She’s “not good” at some skill. She’s “terrible.” Things are “awful.” It’s unrelenting.
I’m not certain where my daughter gets it. I don’t talk that way, and, in general, I try to admit when I’m wrong and or don’t get something right and try again.
But here’s my five-year-old daughter with massive expectations for herself (and for us too, btw) expecting perfection the first time around. It’s not good. I see it with her art (piano and drawing) and with lots of other things too (sports, for instance).
I have tried to internalize Dweck’s advice not to complement identity traits about my daughter. I praise her effort, not her intelligence. I take care to compliment when she works through an error and perseveres.
But I have not actively prayed about this problem, and I’m sure there are ways that I am subtly encouraging my daughter to be so absolutist about her skills. She could be fishing for compliments. She could authentically mean what she’s saying. I’m not sure, but I know I don’t want her pronouncing those kind of fixed statements about who she is and what she can do at the age of five.
I will be monitoring this.
Learning Together 