Only children comparing themselves to adults

[Enchanted_Mama]

He's probably a bit of a perfectionist and get frustrated when he can't do something well right away. It really isn't an only child trait.

this.

my older dd (age 7) is like this.

 

[PollyannaMom]

.....
Sorry OP for the hijack, do you recognize any of the stuff we had said here?

Uh, not really. But you're certainly welcome to use the thread!

(Before I logged out this morning, I had 2 honest tips and 10 people telling me I was asking the wrong question, so I wasn't exactly getting much out of it anyway. In fact, I didn't even know how to answer.)

Now that I've come back to the computer, I think it's moving on to deeper issues that may be important to other people, so and feel free to expand it.

P.S. - Thank you, Mystery Machine, for the question idea (post 9); LuvOrlando, for the mess-up-on-purpose idea (post 13); and PeterPan09 for the video game analogy (post 19). Those are exactly the the type of thing I was looking for!

 

[bumbershoot]

We have an only for now, and he compares himself to us, too. It's especially bad b/c we LOVE doing the Animation Academy at DCA, and we had some of our pix on the wall First he needed me to move his pictures away from mine and DH's, and about 6 months later he asked me to move his pictures into his room, entirely away from ours. That way he could enjoy his pictures without looking at ours, and being sad. I was glad he was able to figure out a way to help himself enjoy his pictures.

Anyway, I just think that there are kids who compare themselves to others. And if he's only seeing things made by adults, while ignoring any art he sees made by kids (a problem here, as we homeschool), then that makes it harder, because of course we've had more practice.

A good friend of mine has been teaching piano for over 20 years and this is a persistent issue with her students. The first thing she has to teach them is how to get over making mistakes. Once the kids get past the point where they're no longer progessing rapidly, they get frustrated and want to quit. There's a point in learning most skills where the going gets slower,you have to work harder and you make more mistakes. Getting over that hump is the key to success in anything.

She talked to one student about beating a video game and how many times he "died" before he got to the end. Kids who will spend hours getting clobbered in a video game don't seem to be able to translate that into other things. Once this student got that his piano lessons were made up of levels like his video game, and as you got to the higher levels the "battles" got tougher, he was able to stick with it.

Love it!