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    Joined: Apr 2011
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    Are there any other parents of kids with a pronounced spike in Verbal strength over Math. It seems like most of the literature around HG->PG kids covers children who are either not 2E and are fairly evenly gifted, or, if they have a significant spike it is Math. It also seems like there are more stories here of supporting 2e children who have dysgraphia or dyslexia over dyscalculia. Most studies and stories of radical acceleration are also in relation math and sciences.

    Where does one find the research, and the tribe, for a child whose strength is entirely verbal? Particularly given that "Verbal" is a really crap search term.

    Note: My child does not have dyscalculia, but it's interesting that active issues with math also seem rarer than active issues in the verbal domain. Perhaps I should say more correctly that there is no measure in which my child could be described as having a math disability, but they do feel like they do at times, because there is a yawning gap in Verbal>Math aptitude and achievement.

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    Dyscalculia is wildly under-recognized/ understood/ diagnosed, so it gets talked about a lot less than it should. That said, having a DD with both dyscalculia and dyslexia, I would guess the main reason for the paucity of attention is that in our modern society, not being able to read is a life-and-death issue in a way that being weak in math just isn't.

    (Also, dyslexia is highly remediable is ways that other LDs aren't, which means immediate appropriate action is critical. And culturally, we are comfortable with the idea that lots of people are bad at math - and they live fine lives doing other stuff. We still mostly don't believe that anyone of normal intelligence should struggle with reading, and our society is pretty destructive for people who do.)

    In my experience (with two 2E kids of opposite "persuasions"), verbal children are far easier to support academically. Even in an unsupportive system, they can self-enrich - read, write, research, analyze - to the depth they crave. Without acceleration classroom discussion may not be very interesting, but teachers don't usually consider it a problem for the child to do more than needed.

    The situation can be really different in math, where a child can't go a lot further than they've been taught (especially in younger grades), so acceleration is needed to be able to work at that depth they crave. Otherwise, the child just doesn't have the basic tools they need to do math. (In an anti-acceleration system, it seems to be a lot harder to be a mathy kid than a verbal one.)

    However, *socially* is another story. Math strengths are specific and noticeable, which makes tribe-finding easier - courses, camps, on-line resources, there's tons out there virtually, and often locally. I know how to find math and mathies for my math monster. It's way harder to find like-minded kids for my novelist.

    It was quite noticeable recently when both kids were filling out applications related to their passion. DS could list a plethora of math/ science extracurriculars and chose his references from among those teachers. DD was applying to an art high school, but simply doesn't have a reference for her art. She writes fantasy novels at home, alone. There's never been a course or mentor available to her.

    Verbal strength - like reading weakness - is a fairly global capacity which affects almost everything. It's easier to deal with because it's everywhere - but like so many things, if it's everywhere, that often ends up feeling like it's nowhere.

    Long-winded way of saying, I hear you!

    Last edited by Platypus101; 02/17/20 07:17 AM.
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    Platypus makes good points. I thought I would take a minute to search for publications on 2e/SLD, and came across this Belin-Blank guide on 2e for professionals from a few years back, which you may have seen before. There were two older revisions of it prior, which focused mainly on 2e/ASD, but this one includes ADHD and SLDs:

    https://belinblank.education.uiowa.edu/research/docs/pip2.pdf


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    I was one of these kids until high school. I actually made an overnight leap in math at the age of 15 and more or less "caught up" to where you'd expect my math ability to be given my global ability (I still consider it a relative weakness, but most people who know me would laugh at that). I also have a spatial weakness (possibly an actual learning disability), which has not improved.

    Your child's situation may be very different, but what the math weakness came down to for me was that at lower levels, math instruction is execrable. I was homeschooled and my mother chose curricula like Saxon Math for me, which... did not help things, to put it mildly. It's endless, meaningless drill, taught by people who have no idea what math actually is.

    When I went to public school in tenth grade (undoing my accelerations), I was afraid that I'd be hopelessly behind the public school students. But actually, I was lucky enough to get thrown into the formal logic unit in geometry... and even though the teacher hated math and didn't grasp what he was teaching on a deep level, it suddenly clicked for me. I got 100 on basically everything in high school math from then on, and the math chair made provisions for me to double up and take both trig and precalc in eleventh grade so I could take AP calculus as a senior.

    I do find that I'm slower at arithmetic than most mathy adults, but just the experience of being thrown into a subject that was labeled as "math" but relied entirely on fluid reasoning and not on drill-and-kill made a light come on for me.

    You may want to have your child read Lockhart's Lament and see what they think of it.

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    I am one of those that score PG in math but have difficulty with verbal. I even have to have a running movie in my head to really get what someone is saying. Names are really hard, but I can remember the phone number. DH was very strong verbally, rivalled Buckley, his ability to use words, his vocabulary was off the charts, remembered facts like an encyclopedia. But he could do math well enough to be top of his class and got to Harvard from a small city in PA. But what was noticeable, and a case for the whole math/music connection. Both had piano lessons as kids. He went much farther as I was focused on pursuing a sport towards Olympics. When DD was pushed into piano at 3 from a group piano lesson, we had to get involved to take notes in the class -- pushed into serious piano -- I was able to pick it up very easily. He gave up. And he was more inclined to learn.

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    Originally Posted by Platypus101
    In my experience (with two 2E kids of opposite "persuasions"), verbal children are far easier to support academically. Even in an unsupportive system, they can self-enrich - read, write, research, analyze - to the depth they crave. Without acceleration classroom discussion may not be very interesting, but teachers don't usually consider it a problem for the child to do more than needed.

    The situation can be really different in math, where a child can't go a lot further than they've been taught (especially in younger grades), so acceleration is needed to be able to work at that depth they crave. Otherwise, the child just doesn't have the basic tools they need to do math. (In an anti-acceleration system, it seems to be a lot harder to be a mathy kid than a verbal one.)

    I have to really disagree there. I don't have a mathy child, most of my friends with highly+ gifted children all have mathy children. Most of whom have self directed their math learning in a system that ignored them, until it couldn't. Which is to say have easily self taught to a level of AT LEAST 5yrs in advance of their school grade by mid primary school. It's completely unclear whether they would have continued to self teach, because as you say, math kids get seen and they get opportunities (eventually). They are also acknowledged. I can think of multiple families where their more even or globally gifted child is under-recognised and under-served compared to their overtly mathy child.

    It is certainly true a very verbal child can read books many years in advance of age, and write for the joy of it. But there is a clear need for instruction on critical analysis, persuasive writing, etc, that doesn't' just "happen" (now that I think about it, this happens in our schooling system at right about the same level the kids I am thinking of have stopped having to self teach math and started getting support, or rather support to do math at that level while younger).

    Perhaps this is also a matter of degrees and of personality. Some children will be more likely to self extend, whether in math or verbal, than others, and some will have more or less ease of doing that.

    However, and this is by far the biggest issue for us, there is no moral/social/emotional content to math, at least not in the k-12 years of math content. Doing math years beyond your peers is just math, and it's likely to be beautiful and engaging. Engaging with more "verbal"subjects years in advance of your age is a can of worms. My child is currently doing CTY verbal courses as part of their homeschool work and its really just busy work. It's better busy work than school, but that's what it is, they are not really learning anything other than how to do an online course, and how to work within the American system (which is useful up to a point). I looked at going up an age bracket but the content is not appropriate.

    I am making my way through Miraca Gross's book atm, and she does point out very early on that most of the children in her study who go any extension or acceleration got math/science extension (either first or only) because it was easy to cater to. And this was whether math was their most pronounced strength or not. The children who were more soley verbally gifted ALL got no accommodations and suffered for it.

    This was actually what prompted me to write this post, wanting to see if things had changed in this regard.

    Originally Posted by Platypus101
    However, *socially* is another story. Math strengths are specific and noticeable, which makes tribe-finding easier - courses, camps, on-line resources, there's tons out there virtually, and often locally. I know how to find math and mathies for my math monster. It's way harder to find like-minded kids for my novelist.

    [...]

    Verbal strength - like reading weakness - is a fairly global capacity which affects almost everything. It's easier to deal with because it's everywhere - but like so many things, if it's everywhere, that often ends up feeling like it's nowhere.

    Long-winded way of saying, I hear you!

    I certainly agree that it seems like it's "nowhere" in the options available for my child. I sat with her assessing psychologist at the last appointment and commented on the yawning gap between the pscyhologist's assessment of her IQ, academic and social/emotional status vs how school/s have perceived her.

    Last edited by MumOfThree; 02/17/20 12:28 PM.
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    Originally Posted by pinewood1
    I was one of these kids until high school. I actually made an overnight leap in math at the age of 15

    [...]

    I do find that I'm slower at arithmetic than most mathy adults, but just the experience of being thrown into a subject that was labeled as "math" but relied entirely on fluid reasoning and not on drill-and-kill made a light come on for me.

    You may want to have your child read Lockhart's Lament and see what they think of it.

    Thanks Pinewood1, all of my children so far have struggled enormously with primary school math and found high school math far easier and more engaging. So I am fairly sure this will also happen for the child in question. Once it stops being about rote learning and speed and starts being about reasoning and logic they do better, far better. Though they are never fast.

    And I will look at the Lament, thank you.

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    One point I disagree with MumOfThree. Physics is applied math. The logic of math is essential to programming. Chemistry is applied physics. There is so much you can do with math. Strategy is easier for mathy types. Because of the visual spatial thing. And mathy types by their natures will have different interests. Which makes the world go around. I like novels/plays, read all the classics, all Proust. DH was into NF. He would read 2-3 books a week on a subject he was interested in, whether it was Dark Ages, something about WW1, whatever he was curious about that week.

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    I am not sure what you are disagreeing with? I quite agree with everything you have said.

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    Originally Posted by MumOfThree
    However, and this is by far the biggest issue for us, there is no moral/social/emotional content to math, at least not in the k-12 years of math content. Doing math years beyond your peers is just math, and it's likely to be beautiful and engaging. Engaging with more "verbal"subjects years in advance of your age is a can of worms. My child is currently doing CTY verbal courses as part of their homeschool work and its really just busy work. It's better busy work than school, but that's what it is, they are not really learning anything other than how to do an online course, and how to work within the American system (which is useful up to a point). I looked at going up an age bracket but the content is not appropriate.

    Yeah... I feel like there could be curricula that were appropriate, but I don't know that they exist. Material aimed at a certain age group that was written at an earlier time is often more sophisticated, vocabulary-wise and literarily, but it often brings with it a lot of cultural baggage (what some people have called "The Racism/Sexism/Etc. Fairy") that you might not want to get into.

    A curriculum that gets into more sophisticated literary analysis, writing, etc. based on literature that is appropriate for a certain age seems like it could fill an unfilled niche.

    I don't know how old the child in question is, but when I was elementary-middle school age, I educated myself in this regard. I read encyclopedias, my parents' book about cultural literacy, etc. I memorized Shakespeare soliloquies, taught myself about metrical poetry, and wrote some (terrible) sonnets. Maybe getting into the poetry end of things could be a way to introduce more sophisticated literary concepts without introducing age-inappropriate topics? I was quite fond of the textbook Sound and Sense at that age, and I also quite like Writing Metrical Poetry by William Baer.

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