A book can help with
For the child who screws up the page the moment it isn’t perfect.
Some children can’t bear to get anything wrong. The drawing is binned because one line went astray, the game is abandoned because they might lose, the new thing isn’t attempted at all. Underneath it is usually a worry that being wrong says something about them rather than about the drawing.
Books are unusually good at loosening this. Several of the best show a mistake turning into the most interesting part of the picture, which is a much more persuasive argument than being told it doesn’t matter. They give a child permission to be a beginner, which is the thing perfectionism steals.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Oops is fine
For the very youngest, the message is simply that spills and smudges are part of things and nobody minds.
A torn page becomes a crocodile’s mouth, a spill becomes a creature, a smudge becomes something new, all through flaps and pop-ups to play with. It shows rather than tells that a mistake can be the start of something. Brilliant for small hands and endlessly re-readable.
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In Todd Parr’s bold, cheerful style, page after page of ordinary mistakes, each one greeted with a shrug and a reason it’s fine. The repetition is the point at this age, and it’s reassuring rather than instructive. A good early counterweight to a perfectionist streak.
or on Bookshop.org
Not being perfect
Now they can follow a story about the trap of always getting things right, and the relief of getting one wrong.
Beatrice is famous for never putting a foot wrong, and the pressure of keeping that up is enormous, until the day she slips in public and discovers the world doesn’t end. It shows perfectionism as the cage it is. The clearest book there is for the child trapped by being the one who gets things right.
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An artist draws one eye too big, then another mistake, and another, and each error is absorbed into a picture that becomes more wonderful for it. It’s beautiful, nearly wordless in places, and it makes its case visually rather than by argument. A modern classic on the subject.
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Failing usefully
Older children can grasp the bigger idea: that getting things wrong is how anyone gets good at anything.
Short true accounts of people who were turned down or told they had no talent long before anything went right for them. The entries are a few pages each, so a child can dip in rather than commit to the whole thing. Handy when someone has decided that one bad result means they are no good at something.
or on Bookshop.org
Forty familiar inventions that came about entirely by accident, from crisps to sticky notes, told with plenty of jokes. It’s the best possible evidence for a doubting child that mistakes can be the whole point. Perfect for the reader who prefers facts to feelings.
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Living with what you did
The mistakes that matter at this age have consequences for other people and cannot be tidied away with an apology. Each of these makes a child sit with that for a while.
Seven children take turns telling the story of their school year, until a snowball goes wrong and their teacher ends up in a coma. What follows is about who owns their part in it, and not only the boy who threw it. The accident runs through the whole second half, so it helps to know that going in.
or on Bookshop.org
Castle steals a pair of running shoes because he cannot stand being the one in the wrong kit, and then has to decide what to do about it with a coach who has already seen straight through him. The mistake is small and entirely understandable, which is exactly why it works. His father fired a gun at him and his mother before the book begins.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A page for turning a scribble or a blot into something on purpose, plus a family habit of sharing one mistake each at dinner. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
A child terrified of mistakes will avoid anything they might not be good at, which quietly narrows their world. The aim isn’t to make them careless, it’s to make being wrong survivable.
So talk about your own mistakes at the dinner table, praise the effort rather than the flawless result, and let them see you having another go at something you’re bad at. A child who can be a beginner will try far more things.
For you, the grown-up
There’s a companion page for grown-ups over on the main Book Quote Therapy library, with books for adults who are hard on themselves.
Read the grown-up version →These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.