Newsletter – 28 July 2023

All young people benefit from an awareness of their personal learning strengths and how their brain learns at its best. This provides a foundation for navigating life successfully. High performing children can ricochet between feeling anxious, perfectionistic and overwhelmed to feeling underwhelmed and that school is ‘boring’, based on the learning challenges they encounter. There is often a significant mismatch between their intellectual abilities and capacity to manage emotions under pressure.

Academically high performing students are also diagnosed with higher rates of anxiety than the general population. These children often have high self-belief and confidence in areas they are capable in but are overly critical about their abilities in those areas they find challenging. This may be especially the case when past success has come easily. This ‘perfectionism’ can be useful at times but can also hinder learning. When perfectionist tendencies are a positive, a child might persevere with tasks until they are resolved, develop deep learning and creative solutions to problems. Perfectionism can be a negative however if children don’t succeed the first time they attempt something. It can trigger a ‘meltdown’, the child might refuse at attempt a task, or avoid something where they fear they might ‘fail’.

Ways you can support at home if your child leans towards perfectionism:

• Support the child to build from their personal strengths. Leveraging off a strength will serve to increase engagement and overall self-belief.
• Studying the lives of successful people will also assist children to understand that adversity and setbacks are to be expected on the path towards any great achievement. Help your child understand that all breakthroughs in learning and knowledge come about due to persistent, sustained effort. Support children to learn that they might not be able to do something ‘yet’ but if they keep persevering, they can develop the desired skills and knowledge.  
• Model and share times where you have persisted with a challenging task until you learnt a new skill.

Having a positive sense of self efficacy and an ability to manage challenges is key to living a happy life. Please make a time to talk with your child’s teacher if you feel your child needs additional support in this area.