My son gets upset when we give him praise

My son just turned 3. He is a very smart boy. He started reading words at 2. He is obsessed with numbers and can count into the hundreds. But there are certain things he is insecure (I think) about out. He wants us to write numbers for him on his chalk board. When we try to get him to write them, he usually nails it, but the second he is done drawing a number, he throws down the chalk and cries. He does this with several other things. We have tried praising him every way we can think to. I don’t know how else to reinforce his good work. I think he gets nervous when stepping outside his comfort zone and once the pressure is off he melts down.

I should probably mention, we are in no way forcing him to sit down and do this or anything. After we draw a few numbers, we gently nudge him to try. There are several things he just wants us to do for him too. He has an old laptop with educational games. He doesn’t play them for long before he brings it to us and wants to sit on our laps and watch us play his games. He wants us to play with his play do. Idk if that’s relevant. But the whole thing seems counterintuitive. I don’t want to make learning and practicing traumatic for him. I just can’t figure out how to get him confidence when learning new things. He learned reading and numbers on his own which the help of a few kids shows. But I don’t know how to teach him things like writing without him having a meltdown when he does a good job.