Nobody's Perfect

I am a perfectionist.  It is like a curse.  I want everything to go just right, but of course it doesn't.  It can be frustrating, but I am aware that nobody is perfect. It is obviously very frustrating for Haley too. 

My daughter has difficulty with her fingers sometimes.  She has had occupational therapy since she was very small.  They tried to teach her to use her fingers.  They tried to get her to write, to cut with scissors, to stack small blocks.  The thing is that she knows how things are supposed to be and she knows that she can't do it just right.  My daughter is a perfectionist with an imperfect body.

She gets very upset when she spills food or drinks.  I don't mean a big splattered mess, I mean a tiny drop on the table.  It makes her very cranky and life cannot continue until it is cleaned up.  There was a time when she would just whine and cry until I did it, but it has been nice lately that she will get a napkin and dab it up herself.  She still grunts and fusses, but she doesn't expect me to do it anymore.  Well on a good day anyway.

I have been trying to teach her to dress herself lately.  It is something that she has never had any interest in.  She does take her jackets off and occasionally she will put one on.  She learned how to do that in school.  I love it when she comes down the stairs with a jacket or sweater on that I did not put on her.

We are starting with her underwear.  She wears pull-ups because she has not been fully potty trained yet (subject for another day) but at school they keep her in underwear and take her quite often.  I dress her in the morning in pull-ups because she has a fairly long bus ride.  We put underwear over them so that they can remove the pull-ups at school.  We get the kind with Velcro on the sides.  She does really well with the underwear, but she has difficulty maneuvering her long legs and those unruly toes.  She gets frustrated.  She sometimes tries to give up, but I don't let her.  She grunts and stops.  It takes all of my will not to just reach over and help her, but instead I just keep encouraging her calmly.

So that is probably part of the reason that she still doesn't dress herself.  If it is not going well or right I take over and do it myself.  Maybe that is the reason that she doesn't do a lot of things on her own.  I am a perfectionist.