A child repeatedly restarting a drawing may be struggling more with mistakes than with the drawing itself. A child sits down with a sheet of paper and starts drawing. The first attempt does not look quite the way they imagined it. The paper is pushed aside. Another sheet comes out.This time, the eyes are slightly uneven. Start again.
22 Sept 2026 | 10:49
Does your toddler behave differently with grandparents than with you? What’s the biggest difference?
A third attempt gets abandoned because one line went wrong. Soon, the child is no longer enjoying the drawing. They are chasing a version that exists only in their head – and getting increasingly upset each time the picture falls short.For parents, this can look like a child who is simply “very particular” or wants everything to be perfect. Sometimes, it is exactly that. But when restarting becomes a repeated pattern, psychology suggests there may be something more important to notice: how the child feels about making a mistake.
It is not the drawing that matters as much as the reaction to it
Children can have high standards without having an unhealthy relationship with perfection.Research increasingly distinguishes between perfectionistic strivings – wanting to do something well – and perfectionistic concerns, which involve being preoccupied with mistakes, feeling that one’s performance falls short and worrying about negative evaluation.A 2026 study in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry describes this distinction clearly. It notes that the more problematic side of perfectionism is not simply having ambitious standards, but becoming highly distressed when those standards are not met. Children may become self-critical, afraid of failure or so worried about doing something imperfectly that they avoid or become stuck on a task.That difference can be useful for parents watching a child draw.
Repeatedly starting over can sometimes reflect a child’s difficulty accepting an imperfect result.
A child who says, “I don’t like this one. I’ll try another way,” and calmly starts again is doing something very different from a child who becomes distressed, tears up the paper or refuses to continue because the drawing is not “right”.The behaviour may look similar from the outside. The emotional experience may not be.
Why a small mistake can feel surprisingly big
For some children, a mistake is simply information: That line didn’t work; I’ll change it.For others, it can feel like evidence that they have failed.That is where perfectionistic concerns become important. Research has linked this dimension of perfectionism with worries about mistakes, doubts about one’s actions and the gap between how well a child thinks they should perform and how well they believe they actually performed.In other words, the problem may not be the crooked tree or the uneven face in the drawing. It may be the thought that follows it:“If I can’t make it look right, I’m not good at this.”A study of 203 children aged 8 to 12 found that parental expectations were associated with a more striving-oriented form of self-oriented perfectionism, while parental criticism was associated with a more critical form. The latter was, in turn, associated with negative affect.This is one reason psychologists caution against treating every perfectionistic-looking behaviour as a child’s fixed personality trait. The environment around the child can matter too.
Sometimes the child is trying to escape the feeling of getting it wrong
Repeated restarting can also be understood as an attempt to remove discomfort.The child sees something that does not match the mental picture they had in mind. Instead of tolerating the imperfect version, they start over in the hope that the next attempt will finally feel “correct”.This connects with a broader psychological concept called intolerance of uncertainty – finding situations with an unclear or imperfect outcome particularly uncomfortable.Research involving children and early adolescents has found an association between perfectionism/intolerance of uncertainty and later psychological symptoms. In a one-year prospective study of 754 children and early adolescents aged 8 to 14, higher perfectionism/intolerance of uncertainty at baseline predicted more severe obsessive-compulsive symptoms at follow-up, even after accounting for depression. The finding does not mean that a child who repeatedly redraws something has OCD; rather, it shows why difficulty tolerating uncertainty and imperfection is an area psychologists study in childhood.That distinction is important. A drawing is not a psychological test.In fact, a review of research on children’s drawings cautioned that drawings alone are too complex and ambiguous to reliably indicate a child’s emotional state or personality. A picture should therefore never be interpreted as proof that a child is anxious, perfectionistic or experiencing a particular psychological problem.It is the repeated pattern around the drawing that may tell parents more.
What parents say after the “wrong” drawing matters
Children learn not only from whether they succeed but also from what happens when they do not.A particularly interesting experimental study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology examined how parental behaviour around mistakes affected children’s perfectionistic behaviour. The researchers worked with anxious and non-anxious children and compared high-perfectionistic parental behaviour – focusing strongly on accuracy and avoiding mistakes — with a more relaxed, non-perfectionistic approach.The study found that perfectionistic parental behaviour increased observed perfectionistic behaviour in children. In the non-perfectionistic condition, children also improved in task accuracy while showing less task-related perfectionism.That does not mean parents cause perfectionism every time they correct a child’s work. Nor does it mean parents should never encourage children to improve.The larger message is simpler: a child needs to experience mistakes as survivable.So instead of immediately saying, “No, no, don’t erase it, it is beautiful,” parents can sometimes ask, “What don’t you like about this one?”That gives the child an opportunity to explain whether they are experimenting, learning or feeling genuinely distressed.
Try changing the conversation around mistakes
When a child keeps restarting, parents may instinctively reassure them: “It’s perfect! Don’t worry.”But constant reassurance can sometimes keep the child’s attention fixed on whether the work is perfect.A more useful response could be:“You wanted it to look a certain way. What could we change without starting the whole picture again?”Or:“Do you want to keep this version and try another one beside it?”The aim is not to force the child to accept a drawing they dislike. It is to gently introduce the idea that an imperfect attempt does not have to be discarded.Parents can also deliberately model this themselves. A mother who says, “I made a mistake in this recipe, but I’ll see if I can fix it,” or a father who laughs after making a spelling error rather than becoming visibly frustrated, gives the child a different lesson about mistakes.The lesson is: getting something wrong is not the same as being bad at something.
Parents can help children learn that an imperfect drawing does not mean they have failed.
When should parents pay closer attention?
One imperfect drawing is nothing to worry about.Even repeatedly starting again may simply mean the child has a strong visual idea, is developing their artistic skills or is enjoying experimenting.It becomes more worth noticing when the same pattern appears across everyday activities – homework, handwriting, dressing, craft work, games or speaking – and the child becomes unusually distressed by small errors, avoids trying unfamiliar things, takes an extremely long time to finish simple tasks, frequently seeks reassurance or gives up rather than risk getting something wrong.A 2026 randomised feasibility trial involving children aged 7 to 12 with elevated perfectionism offers another useful perspective. A six-session parent-delivered cognitive behavioural intervention reduced parental perfectionism and was associated with improvements in children’s school satisfaction, academic self-efficacy and several measures of emotional wellbeing, although it did not significantly reduce child perfectionism itself between groups. The researchers described the findings as preliminary and called for larger, longer studies.For parents, therefore, the goal does not have to be to make a child care less about doing well.It is to help them learn that “not quite right” is still a place from which they can continue.A drawing with a crooked line can stay on the table. A second attempt can sit beside it. And sometimes, the most important thing a child learns from the page is not how to draw the perfect picture – but how to keep going when the first one isn’t.
