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My 5 year old niece who is 'kind of' smart, (i.e. was playing solitaire online before her 3rd birthday and is now doing 4 digit addition/subtraction and multiplication up to 5's; and reads chapter books,etc.), has problems being corrected. She had a 'meltdown' last week when she got 1 (ONE) problem of 45 wrong (>,<,= worksheet)! She loves to read and is self-motivated to do math, writing, etc. However, she has serious issues whenever she's corrected.

Is there some relationship between 'smart' kids and emotional dysfunction, for want of a much better term?

Help!

Marie
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  • Hi Marie, and welcome to the site! This is a good question. I've taken the liberty of changing the title a bit, and adding the primary-schooler and gifted tags. If you disagree with those changes (say, for example, you feel pre-schooler would be more appropriate than primary-schooler), feel free to edit them, or even rollback to your original version. –  Jan 06 '12 at 14:13
  • The 'gifted' thing is a big issue in my family. No one in our family thinks she is gifted, including her mom. We believe that she was taught and she learned. But gifted for us is a 5 year old doing calculus, writing operas or designing robots, which she most certainly isn't doing! She's in Kindergarten, so I guess that classifies her as 'primary-schooler'. Thanks. – Marie Jan 06 '12 at 15:10
  • Many adults have issues with constructive criticism. I can't imagine a 5 year old that WOULDN'T have issues with criticism. This seems perfectly normal for a 5 year old. – DA01 Jan 06 '12 at 15:26
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    "But gifted for us is a 5 year old doing calculus" this is something else you should look into. In the US, gifted is typically defined as a student who falls outside the norms in various areas of knowledge. They can test for this fairly easily. It's not just an opinion. – DA01 Jan 06 '12 at 15:27
  • It's not issues with criticism. She gets upset when she gets a wrong answer (my original post was edited). – Marie Jan 06 '12 at 15:42
  • @Marie I've re-edited... hopefully that is a bit better. Again, if its not clear, you are welcome to change it further :) Regarding the meaning of "gifted", it is commonly accepted that there are different levels of giftedness, and even if she isn't designing robots at age 5 (which would probably qualify as "profoundly gifted"), it is possible that she is somewhere on the "gifted" scale. –  Jan 06 '12 at 15:52
  • She's only 5 so while she may be smart now, there's no way of knowing what will happen 5 years from now. I have her the days when school is closed. I am trying to only do 'fun' stuff, as I realize that academically she's okay. – Marie Jan 06 '12 at 16:48
  • @Marie You're absolutely correct that it is too early to start making assessments about her abilities. I added the [gifted] tag mostly based upon your last question ("Is there some relationship between 'smart' kids and emotional dysfunction, for want of a much better term?"), but it's perfectly fine if you want to remove it from the question if you feel it is distracting from your main intent. –  Jan 06 '12 at 17:13
  • No problem, getting used to the 'gifted' tag here in America. I substitute in the public school (my mom is a retired teacher) and have been a bit surprised at what is classified as 'gifted.' Wish it wasn't thrown around so often. Thanks for all your comments/answers. I picked up some great ideas. – Marie Jan 06 '12 at 17:29
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    marie... 'gifted' is a defined, testable tag used by school districts. It's used to simply offer students that can benefit from it, some additional challenges. Maybe that's not the best term for it, but it's what they use. – DA01 Jan 06 '12 at 22:17

7 Answers7

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Yes, there is a relationship between being very advanced and perfectionism, especially in the first child. she is used to getting everything correct so when she doesn't it is frusterating. What I did with my child is as follows.
I made mistakes (sometimes on purpose) and narrated as I corrected myself and sometimes even laughed at myself ensuring that she understood even mommies make mistakes. I stressed the ones she got right, and told her that she did not have to correct the one she got wrong. I encouraged her to do other things as well (chess is good, as it used the skills she knows but teaches her how to loose). She SHOULD NOT only be doing academics, even if that is what she enjoys. We make fun of her when she is doing way advanced things telling her she knows too much and needs to watch more TV (this only works with a certain type of kid).

Good luck. We were lucky this year to have a teacher that dealt with this very well and has taught her to accept criticism.

morah hochman
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  • Her mom did tell her that even she makes mistakes at work. Hopefully that will help. Thanks for the suggestions. Regarding the classroom, she receives nothing that's challenging. For example, homework yesterday was to write the numbers 11-19 and draw objects to show the correct number. (she actually laughed when she showed it to me) ~sigh~ – Marie Jan 06 '12 at 17:22
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    @Marie try making mistakes IN FRONT of her, so you can demonstrate how you deal with it. Also, speak to the teacher about giving differentiated homework, so she will be challenged, if she is not challenged the problem will continue as she will continue to always be right. – morah hochman Jan 06 '12 at 17:31
  • The teacher promised to do so last term, but didn't. My sister is afraid of being the annoying parent so she hasn't said anything. I told her not to worry, as it's not as if my niece is lagging. – Marie Jan 06 '12 at 17:56
  • @Marie Worry, teaching bad school habits at a young age can be difficult to overcome and the teacher is doing that. Either insist the teacher does it or go to admin. This is very important no matter how advanced the child it. – morah hochman Jan 06 '12 at 17:58
  • +1 -- Having her see others make mistakes and recover from them is important, particularly people that she looks up to as being "smarter than her." – afrazier Jan 06 '12 at 18:04
  • I like this answer. If she sees you taking it well, she should learn to, too. – bobobobo Jan 08 '12 at 00:30
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Your story reminds me one of typical case with smart kids that you can have with smart kids that are being told they are smart all the time. I don't say it is your case, but this answer may help people in the same situation: kids refuses bad judgement of their performance or become perfectionist (perfectionism can become a pathology).

To illustrate why it is a problem, let's take the opposite: Someone tells his kid all the time he sucks. Even in front of other people. What happens is classic: the kid tend to start to believing it. He really thinks he sucks. This (irrational) feeling will follow him for the rest of their life. He modeled his kid to have very bad self-esteem. This will potentially lead to psychological problems in the future such as depression or anxiety.

Telling your kids all the time he is so smart (or worse, smarter than the others), may lead to the same type of problems: too high self-esteem. This leads to the behavior you describe. The real problem with that, is that your kid is going to face failure. This is where your kid will suffer. A lot.

Another problem you could face is "temporary" smart kids. They are just a bit advanced on their cognitive abilities by having more myelin stealth than average. That stabilizes at age of 12. A kid can be smarter at a certain age, then stabilize at another... biologically.

So what to do? Robin summarize it pretty well in one article on the subject he wrotes.

The key to praise is specificity and encouragement of effort, rather than the token, "Great job, Timmy! You are so smart!". Instead, a teacher may say, "I noticed you really thought about how you were going to construct that paragraph, Timmy," or "Look at the vibrant colors in that picture. I notice how precise your strokes are."

The later examples encourages the child to keep up the effort and work toward their goal rather than stopping the process because their work is already great. What is the motivation for the child to continue a project if an authority figure has already given it the thumbs up?

Community
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Dealing with emotional intensity

'Gifted' children often experience intense emotions

So, the linked article suggests helping the child scale-out their reactions. It says to sit down with the child, and have them write a number from 1 to 10 on things that could happen, with 10 being the worst thing that could ever happen, and 1 being not so bad:

  • Losing the 'Tangled' DVD
  • Daddy forgetting to water the plants and all the plants dying
  • Falling down from your bike and scraping your knee
  • Getting a math problem wrong

So it's supposed to help the child scale out their reactions, to be proportional to the thing they are experiencing.

Using tact when correcting

So the other question is how are you correcting her? I think you need to treat her like a Senior Engineer - ie be very tactful if she's overreacting.

Other than that, you actually don't need to correct her. You just need to point out that "you don't think something is right", and suggest which one. Let her find the error. And if she asks "why isn't it right?" you can then respond with ("1234 + 1234 is 2468, I believe.")

Accepting that sometimes you won't get something

While aiming for perfection is great, the reality is you won't hit the ball every time. Sometimes children get discouraged, and I learned the following kind of works:

* (cheerful tone) Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.
bobobobo
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