Author’s practical guidance
Doing it badly and being allowed to
Source named in the book: self-efficacy research (Bandura) · Montessori
The shirt is inside out, the water went on the floor, the sandwich is cut wrong.
Say this now
“You did that yourself.”
A statement, not a verdict. No adjective is needed.
“It works. Leave it.”
Permission for something to be finished at a lower standard than yours.
Do this
- Decide in advance what you will not fix: clothes, drawings, sandwich shapes.
- Fix nothing in front of them.
- Pick the moments where the standard genuinely does not matter. There are more of them than it feels.
- Let them go out in it.
- Fix safety, never appearance.
Avoid this
- Fixing it while they watch.
- "Let me just straighten that." — the "just" does not soften anything.
- Praising the effort out loud and redoing it quietly later. They see.
If it repeats
The gap between what they want to do and what they can do is widest between two and three, and it closes slowly. Perfectionism about their own work usually appears around four — and it is more likely if the earlier attempts were corrected.
Why the book suggests this
The shirt is inside out, the water went on the floor, the sandwich is cut wrong. Every one of those is a finished attempt, and what happens next decides whether there is another one.
Adults correct almost automatically. It takes four seconds and looks like nothing. But from the child's side the message is perfectly legible: I did it, and then it was undone. Enough of those and they stop starting.
Related prepared situations
What happened next?
From this collection
Same Words: Big Skills
45 prepared situations in this family area.