Striving for Perfection

At what age do we start becoming dissatisfied with being imperfect?

I think I may be ruining the blissful childhood of my oldest son because he is no longer happy with giving his best efforts. He wants to be perfect.

Today when he came home from school I asked him to bring me his homework folder so I could see the papers he was bringing home. He brought me 2 crumpled up papers. I looked at the papers and at then at his face and he looked very sad and disappointed. Upon closer inspection of the papers i realized that they were a math test and a spelling test. The math test had a large 91% written on it and the spelling test had 90%. I was so excited for him but when I told him how proud I was of him he said "No mom, I didn't get 100 and so I just want to throw them away."

I tried to talk to him about the scores and that we don't always get 100% but we always have to do our best and try our hardest. He listened, and nodded when appropriate but at the end of our conversation he asked if he could crumple them back up and throw them in the garbage.

At first I was entertained by his attitude. I thought it was kind of cute that it was such a big deal to him to get 100%. But after thinking about it, I'm more concerned. I don't want him to spend his entire young life worried about being perfect. I want him to always strive to do his best, and work hard at learning, but I don't want it to affect his self esteem if he isn't perfect.

I realize now how much of my attitude Dyson is putting into himself. I struggle with lesson myself and so I don't know how to help or teach Dyson to not be this way. Sigh.

I guess we will both have to work on this and maybe in the process of helping Dyson become confident in who he is and his ability to be successful without having to be perfect all the time I can learn it myself.

I don't want Dyson to stop trying to get 100% in school though, so we both agreed that we are going to make sure Dyson is super prepared for his spelling tests and that he knows if the math problem is addition or subtraction.

He is super smart and I am going to help him reach his goals of getting 100% on his next tests. Wish us luck!