Yesterday I was working with a perfectionistic six year old. She is trying very hard, and it results in her being tight physically. We were working on relaxing muscles, and imagery of stretchy "mitten strings" to get her bow arm to pull straighter. She was doing better but whenever she made a mistake, she would wince and freeze, tighten up, and have to restart the piece.
I said "I have something to tell you about mistakes. It's a secret. You know what happens if you make a mistake? Nothing. Sometimes no one else will even notice. I think it's the only place you can litter. Just drop the note and go on. You can't do that with trash, but you can with a note because it just disappears."
She wrinkled her nose and said, "I've heard of this 'mistake" thing before. At school. And they also said it was a secret!" She then went on to tell me that there were a bunch of kids playing string instruments and the person who was playing piano with them made a mistake, but no one even noticed.
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