Several months ago, a new Ethiopian restaurant opened up in our humble city. The food is wonderful and the owner is from Ethiopia and has a passion for Ethiopian children who are living in the United States. A month or so ago she began Amharic classes for children. (Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia.) Friends of ours take their daughter, Frehiwot, and have said it's fantastic. Zinabu even told us he would love to relearn Amharic.
A win-win, right?
Wrong.
I didn't account for Zinabu's perfectionism to rear its ugly head. He refuses to go. Literally refuses. He actually began crying when he thought we were going to sign him up. He told me he wants to learn Amharic without other people around. Uh... what? He doesn't want anyone looking at him or noticing him or being in any way aware of his presence. This is common for him but we're usually able to work around him. For example, we went to a school roller skating party the other night and he put his roller blades on and stood by the wall for the first hour. Once I quit looking at him and stopped telling him to get out there and have a good time, he eventually made it onto the rink. He puts so much pressure on himself to do things perfectly. And if he can't do it perfectly (like roller skate or learn a new language) then he just plain won't.
The force is strong with this one.
So even though there is a fabulous Ethiopian culture/language class being held once a week only 3 miles from our home, we are not attending because he just
won't
do
it.
And I won't make him. That would just have the reverse effect and he would be miserable and most likely wind up hating Amharic and all things to do with Ethiopia. Which we do not want.
Perfectionist children are hard. Do you have one? Yes, he's brilliant in school. To the point we could probably have him skip second grade next year if we wanted to. But his brains are no match for his need to do everything perfectly. I'm stumped.
