Q: My child has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and is in first grade. She is both a perfectionist and oversensitive. How do I get her to not be so literal about everything? How can I prevent her from getting so emotional and feeling hurt so often?

A: I'm not sure I can help you with your daughter being literal, because many 6-year-old children are just that. Many are also oversensitive, and I do think I can assist you with helping your daughter to become stronger.

The words you use around children to describe their behaviors are often internalized as their personas. If your daughter has heard you call her oversensitive when you describe her to other adults, she'll assume that it's part of who she is.

Think about the qualities you would like her to develop, like being courageous, strong and a good thinker. For example, words like "kind" and "persevering" will allow her appropriate sensitivity without oversensitivity. When you can say, "That's my brave girl", she'll become braver and stronger and won't cry for absolutely no good reason. When she is crying for no reason, it's all right to ignore the tears, change the subject or just tell her there's no reason for her to cry. Sensitivity is a wonderful quality to cultivate in a child — oversensitivity is not. How you and your family respond to your daughter's oversensitivity will either make it a badge of honor, or will minimize or extinguish it.

You can also model aloud when you are courageous and strong, and use examples of self-talk like, "At first, that just hurt my feelings, but I thought about it and decided it's silly to be hurt. Not everyone can be my best friend. I will just think about something else."

As to her literal thinking, that's much less of a worry at your daughter's age, but a good way to expand her creative thinking is encouraging her to find multiple answers to the same question. For example, you could say, "Let's see how many different ways we can describe the sun." Or you could explain that some things are exact and some are inexact. Four and four will always equal eight, but eight could be 7 + 1 or 5 + 3 or 4 + 4. You'll want to be careful to stay within boundaries for her. It's nice when a child accepts a "no" literally and doesn't try to persuade you to change it to a "yes," so there are some advantages of being literal for young children, and she is less likely to be manipulative.

For newsletters about fears and fearful children and/or children who march to the beat of different drummers, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address below. Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.