I have figured something out about one of our kids just recently. Now, I thought that this was one of her characteristics before but it is becoming very clear to me now that it is who she is going to be. Our eldest daughter, Allison, is becoming more perfectionist all the time. For those of you who know her father, the apple did not fall far from that tree. Yes, I do also have things that I like a certain way, but not sure that I would call myself a perfectionist.There have been clues along the way that have helped me come to this conclusion, like when I send her and her sister up to clean their rooms, Allison CLEANS her room. She picks everything up and puts everything in its place. Her bed is made, she even runs her hand across the comforter to make sure it is smooth. Her dresser is neat and orderly, she has a drawer in her nightstand for books and a drawer in her dresser for all her American girl doll clothes. She even likes to organize her underwear drawer and put them in piles by colors. Rachel on the other hand, likes to clean her room by putting more stuff out on her dresser. When you ask her what she is doing, she will tell you that she is decorating and making it pretty and yes adding more clutter. Which by the way can tend to drive me CRAZY! She is also one who has been known to just shove stuff where it cannot be seen when you walk in, that must make it clean right?
The big clue though for me this year, has been Allison's school work. Almost everyday she comes home with papers they have worked on throughout the day. Some of the papers are ones they have done together in class and other ones are ones they have done on their own throughout the day. If she happens to miss one problem on those papers, it can send her to tears. As I would go through her stuff everyday I would talk to her about the ones she missed, so that I knew she was understanding what she did wrong. As soon as I brought up that she had missed one the tears would start. I have talked and talked to her about how it is okay to miss problems and that no one gets everything right. I have told her that all her dad and I expect out of her is that she does her best and when she gets something wrong that she learns from it. I cannot tell you how many times I had this conversation with her while there were tears flowing down her cheeks.
I will say it has gotten a little better and now when she comes home from school she will tell me right away if she missed any on her papers. I look through them and if I can tell that her teacher has gone over them with her then I just blow it off or I ask her if she understood why she got it wrong. The other thing that really gets her going is tests. She already worries about them the night before and asks us what happens if she gets her answers wrong. We try to reassure her and tell her that she will done fine. All I keep thinking through all of this, is she is in 1st grade! What in the world is going to happen when she is in middle school or high school? To be completely honest it kind of scares me.
As nice as it is to have that really clean room of hers, I sure don't want her living her life worrying about not being perfect! My hope is that Daryl and I can help her strive for excellence but also teach her how to learn from her mistakes and move on.
