Anxiety and perfectionist tendencies

funchicken

Does anyone else have a LO who struggles with this? I feel like this is something that we really need to work on with DD1. She gets really upset if she makes a mistake on something, mostly schoolwork but also drawings that she does at home sometimes. She used to get frustrated easily with tasks that she couldn't do easily on the first or second try (a trait that DH shares), but now I feel like with certain things she can't let it go until they're perfect. How do you work on this with them?

funchicken

Thanks, Auntie.  This is something that I plan to bring up at our next developmental pedi appt and at our school meeting next week.  For DH, it's not that he freaks out about something not being perfect, but sometimes he can take an inordinate amount of time completing a task because he wants it to be perfect (e.g. I asked him to clean and vacuum the inside of my car which probably would have taken me 45 minutes tops.  Three hours later he still wasn't finished.  My car was very clean, but I would have been happy with the 45 minute cleaning, kwim?).  For him it definitely comes out more with work-related things and is a desirable trait with the type of work he does.  I would say DH has OCD tendencies not OCD. 

I see what you're saying about modeling the type of behavior you want.  DH won't have a tantrum, but he does tend to want to do things his way even if he's been asked to do it differently.  FIL is this way to an extreme, and it drives me bonkers. 

I'm reading It's So Much Work to Be Your Friend and some common threads that I notice in DD, DH, and my mom's anxiety is the overgeneralization and minimization/magnification.  If something negative happens, no matter how trivial, they frequently jump to the worst case scenario.  I also never realized that dichotomous thinking was a symptom of anxiety.  My mom has always done that--my brother and I have often commented on it.  It's impossible to have a disagreement with her because she takes it so personally.  In her mind, if you disagree with her that means you dislike her. 

DH is actually planning on looking into an ADHD diagnosis and CBT for his anxiety as soon as he finishes the class he's taking this semester.

CaptainSerious

Yes, J is like this. He's been diagnosed with anxiety disorder and has OCD tendencies. He really has a hard time with homework, because often parts of it are things he's learning and still finds challenging. Thursday night, for example, he through a rare, long tantrum because he had to read me a book for homework, and reading is especially difficult for him.

Treatment under a psychiatrist has been recommended for J, most likely resulting in more/different therapy and possibly medication, but we have decided to hold off until after he has his neuropsychological evaluation and we have a fuller picture of everything affecting him. Once we do, we'll figure out how to best address everything together.

funchicken

CaptainSerious said:

Yes, J is like this. He's been diagnosed with anxiety disorder and has OCD tendencies. He really has a hard time with homework, because often parts of it are things he's learning and still finds challenging. Thursday night, for example, he through a rare, long tantrum because he had to read me a book for homework, and reading is especially difficult for him.

Treatment under a psychiatrist has been recommended for J, most likely resulting in more/different therapy and possibly medication, but we have decided to hold off until after he has his neuropsychological evaluation and we have a fuller picture of everything affecting him. Once we do, we'll figure out how to best address everything together.

Thank you!  If you don't mind telling me, how old is J?  I think we're going to start with modelling behavior and see what help, if any, we can get from the school, and then we'll talk to the developmental pedi more about it when we see her.  I'm not against medication in the future, but since DD is so young, I'd like to exhaust all other possibilities before we go that route.