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MrsKey
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| Posted: Aug 30 2007 at 11:03am | IP Logged
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My daughter is driving me nuts. She takes every single correction as a personal affront. Her dad does this, too (I guess he leads by example).
If I correct her or try to lead her to realize that she's made an error and where so that she can learn from it she gets pouty or teary. I honestly cannot stand either reaction. I have neither the time nor the inclination to hold her hand and pat her shoulder every single time I have to correct her.
College professors and bosses certainly won't.
So far our entire day is shot because when she did the math problem 7/8 - 2/8 and came up with the answer 9/8 I said, "Really? Are you sure?"
She let's one correction throw her off completely. I gave her 15 problems for her math assignment and asked her to show which operation was required in the problem before doing the problem (to get her to slow down and think deliberately about the assignment).
She managed, even with that, to get two problems wrong for performing the wrong operation. And she missed two problems because she completely skipped them.
All because she can't pull it together after being corrected.
She's going to have great success in college and the workforce if she needs and entire day off to recover from being corrected.
If she doesn't learn to toughen up the world is going to eat her alive. And I'm so angry for having an entirely wasted school day that I'm tempted to ground her for a week.
I cannot not correct her so as to no upset her. But no matter how I try to correct her she gets upset. She doesn't do this with her skating coach. Maybe I'm just lucky?
Arrrggghhh.
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Carole
Wife to Tom since '94 and mom to Bree since '96
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folklaur
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| Posted: Aug 30 2007 at 11:59am | IP Logged
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Hi,
My oldest dd is just a few weeks away from being 18. I can tell you, when she was about 12, I could have written your post!!!!
Looking back, I think the ages of 11-14 were the hardest as far as parenting her was concerned.
Anyway, as I said, I could have written your post, write down to the Coach part (my dd was in dance...)
I just asked her about your post. Now that she is older and more mature, I knew I could talk to her about it. And she said she also totally recognized herself in your post. She said, that when she behaved like that, there were a few things going on.
First, she hated to be wrong.
Then, she said that no matter how I worded my correction to her, what she was hearing was, "You're wrong, you're not good enough, you're not smart enough to have figured this out."
Of course, I never said any such thing, or even close!
I think our daughters are constantly looking for our approval, especially at that age. The are so insecure ( and the hormones are really starting to effect them too, so in their mind everything is exaggerated..)
I know this doesn't really help much, but you aren't alone!
And it did get better. I often thought it was never going to, and how was she ever going to survive in the world? But as you said, she doesn't do it to her coach - so in "real world" situations, she already knows better.
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Barbara C.
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| Posted: Aug 30 2007 at 12:06pm | IP Logged
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I am by no means an expert, but I have a suggestion as an outside observer. Maybe it would be best if you let her do as much work as she can independently. Let her do all of her math problems while you walk away and do something else, in another room if need be. Then when she is finished, you can go back and correct her work without comment. Mark the incorrect ones and let her try them again on her own. If she gets them wrong a second time, then go over the incorrect ones with her. This might make her less apprehensive or oversensitive and make you less impatient with her.
You said that she doesn't act this way with her skating coach; what about the other adults in her life? It may just be one of those things kids do with their parents that they wouldn't do with people on the outside.
There's also the possibility that you may just need to step back a bit. I know my first instinct is to try to correct my daughter or husband before they have a chance to make a mistake, but they may see it as me just looking for them to mess up. Sometimes it's just better if I let them know there is a problem afterwards and let them figure out how to correct the problem on their own. And I've noticed while teaching my own daughter that what I mean to be a gentle correction sometimes comes out more brusque or with a more negative tone than I intended. Sometimes I need to examine if I am being unreasonable.
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MrsKey
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| Posted: Aug 30 2007 at 12:08pm | IP Logged
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Thank you, Laura. And please pass along my very sincere thanks to your daughter.
There are times when I really wonder if I'm going to survive this phase without my head exploding. It's nice to see that there is hope. 
It is also good to hear that this is normal/typical.
And I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your last sentence eases my mind. You're right and I completely missed the common sense in that. She doesn't do it with her skating coach so she does realize that there are appropriate times and places.
A million thanks!
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J.M.J.
Carole
Wife to Tom since '94 and mom to Bree since '96
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Red Cardigan
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| Posted: Aug 30 2007 at 12:35pm | IP Logged
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Hi! I was getting a similar reaction from my oldest dd last year, particularly in math and grammar, the two subjects she dreads. This may not work for you, but I found it did wonders for me: for daily work, I hand her the answer keys when she's done and have her circle the ones she did wrong. If there are lots, then we'd sit down and go over the concept, but she would be the one to say, "I got several wrong, so I think I'm not understanding something," instead of me being the one to say, "I think we need to go over the concept some more." But if she only got one or two wrong, I let her tell me if she didn't understand something or if it was just an accuracy/basic math error.
Somehow, removing "me" from the equation helped her to see the mistakes as just mistakes, not a crisis, KWIM? 
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Erin
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| Posted: Aug 31 2007 at 7:08am | IP Logged
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I would have to agree a lot with Laura, the age plays a big factor. The best book I ever read in that time of need was "The Five Love Languages of Children" Once I realised 'I' needed to speak my dd's love language our relationship turned around.
We no longer have her running to her room and throwing herself under the covers crying herself silly because I 'dared' to correct her work, gently at that. In fact to relate a funny story, her ds11 recently re-enacted a very similar scene because I corrected him. I heard dd in there explaining to him that he was over-reacting and needed to stop and listen to the direction, I think it was how to lay out his page with a margin  It was so sweet, she was very good to him, but really it wasn't long ago it was her. Today dd celebrated her 14th it can only get better right? 
Hugs to you.
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Erin
Faith Filled Days
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Topic: Oversensitive kids - what's a mom to do
