3 year old very hard on himself

My DS is 3 1/2. He's in daycare FT, in the preschool room. They work on a lot of letter tracing in the classroom and the teacher had asked me to work on it with him at home too. He likes it, he gets excited to trace shapes and letters. But sometimes if his tracing isn't 100% perfect, he gets sooooo frustrated with himself. And it's not coming from me criticizing or anything like that. I mean, he's 3! Of course it's not perfect. And while I'm telling him he's doing so great, I'm so proud of him, etc, he's yelling "it's NOT great! I can't do it!" and borderline crying. I don't want him to have a negative association with this, so I encourage him and then we move on and do something else. This is just one example, he does this with other things too. My DH is the same way, very hard on himself. So a part of me just thinks this is his personality but I mean, he's still a baby. He has the rest of his life to stress over stupid stuff Any advice?

Re: 3 year old very hard on himself

My older son is the exact same way (now 6)
Nothing we do made a difference, he's very hard on himself, and very quick to give up if he doesn't get it perfectly the first time around.
I think it's personality - I am very much this way and for that reason I made such a conscious effort NOT to be overly critical, and always encourage him to try things and not quit, keep working at it etc etc.
I really think some things are just wired in you - the only thing we can do is contiune to encourage him, praise him for his efforts (when he does make the whole hearted effort, sometimes he's lazy and sloppy and THOSE are the things I get on him about) but I just keep encouraging him to do new things, try his best, keep practicing etc - give him examples of people he can relate to or admires who are really good at something (my son playce ice hockey so I usualy use John Tavares as my "he wasn't always THE BEST hockey player") example

But I understand your concern. I'm with you!