Why is my child such a perfectionist?

If none of that is where the answer is, looking still cost nothing. What follows assumes you have looked.

The work is good, and it is never done. A drawing is redone four times. An essay is due tomorrow and still on the first line.

Praise slides off. You say it is great, and they point at the one thing wrong with it. A friend does better at one thing, and the rest of their week turns sour.

So you start to tiptoe around grades. You check the work for them. You stay up late beside them. And the next page goes the same way.

Unfinished work cannot be judged. While it is still being fixed, nobody can say it is not good enough. Handing it in turns it into a fact.

So a standard that never rests can be doing a job. It can keep away a feared moment: being wrong in front of others, losing a place, letting someone down.

You cannot tell from the hall which moment your child is guarding against, and this page cannot either. That is a question for a calm day, not for the night before a test.

The bar is not set too high. It moves every time they reach it.

It does not have to be perfect. You are enough as you are. Both are true and both are kind. Both can still land as one more thing to get right.

Praise of a result can do the same. A top grade proves the bar can be met, and then the bar moves. The good news turns into the next test.

So notice what you praise. If every compliment is about a score, the score is what counts in your house. Try naming the handing in instead: you finished it and it went in.

Watch what happens in you when the fourth draft gets torn up. A tight chest. A rush of heat. A strong pull to fix it for them.

This method names three moves. They are for your pattern, not your child's. You cannot run them for anybody else.

One short sentence you can use: "It is done enough to hand in. I am not checking it again tonight." Then do exactly that.

A child in your care lives in a house you run. A lot of what keeps the bar moving happens in that house.

You can agree what done looks like before the work starts. A page, a time, a number of tries. When it is reached, the work goes in the bag.

You can make your own mistakes out loud. "I got that wrong, and that is all right." A child who hears that learns something no speech teaches.

You can ask later. On a calm day, ask one plain question: what would happen if it was not perfect? Then listen, and do not argue with the answer.

You can write down when it flares for two weeks. Before a test, after practice, after a message from a friend. Look for what comes before, not who is to blame.

And one thing is not in your control: how fast it changes. No page can give you a timeline, and anybody who does is guessing.

Talk to their doctor if it is growing, or if sleep, eating or school change with it. Talk to them if your child stops handing work in, or if you simply cannot settle about it.

You do not need to be sure something is wrong to ask. A doctor hearing "my child cannot bear a mistake and I do not know why" is hearing an ordinary sentence.

Any question about what is going on inside your child belongs with that doctor. This page does not answer it, and no page about patterns should.

There is a file in this archive about the person whose work is never quite finished. It is written about the reader, not the child.

Do you redo things too, or check work three times before it goes out? Then that file may be yours. It is the one pattern in this house you can work on directly.