Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Won't get easy work done

My daughter is wrapping up kindergarten. She is has an October birthday, and with the September cut off is one of the oldest in her class. The first week of school her teacher at least clued in that she was advanced and gave her the first grade math book. She also eventually agreed that the letterbooks, where the kids learn the letter sounds and beginning reading, were below her and let her read books of her own choosing and do the accelerated reader tests on those.

In terms of level, she is at at least third grade level in reading and likes multiplication, addition and multiplication of fractions, etc. She can write well (her handwriting isn't perfect).

The problem is, she won't do work unless she wants to do it. She has an incredible attention span, so if she is thinking about something, she will not stop to do an easy worksheet in the classroom. She struggles with open-ended writing assignments (they are supposed to write stories in their journals) because she wants to write a complete story (when she tells a story, it takes quite some time since she includes lots of detail).

We have been trying to convince the school, a small private school, to let her skip a grade. They think that she shouldn't because she can't get the work done in the classroom. They acknowledge that she knows all of the material--when she tried out first grade for a week, the teacher got frustrated that when she introduced some simple multiplication ideas, my daughter wanted to talk about some other things about multiplication, and the teacher didn't want her to confuse the class...).

Any advice on how to teach my daughter to play the game, to get the easy work done so she can get on with stuff that is of interest or to just write what she has to to get credit? Horrible lessons, but it is a skill that we all must learn in some form or another.... I just don't think she is going to get anything out of first grade next year except more boredom.

I find that quiet disheartening that her teacher discouraged her from asking those questions in class. I think that would have been far better dealt with by asking her to save her questions and then have the teacher talk to her privately over lunch or recess.

All I can say is if you find an answer please share! I am still unable to force myself to do things that are boring, repetitive or stupid, especially when it comes to school work. At work I've tried to explain this to bosses and ask them to give me new and challenging things to do (which for some reason seems to really frustrate people when you offer to do things above and beyond your job description).

I think you're only hope is talking to her about the things she's skipping over and trying to explain why they are important and what they will lead too (open ended stories ... help the reader come up with their own story from what you made?)

Maybe you should be discussing moving to an even higher grade?

My oldest DD won't do the easy work for anything...

Your daughter sounds like my DS5. I'm not sure if I'm excited or scared for K starting in August!

age 6 or 7 is just too young to learn to play the game. You could probably medicate her with ADHD medications and get her closer to compliance but I dont reccomend it. What is wrong with a kid expecting to learn at school? Perhaps a different school or homeschooling or a double skip until her maturity and focus catches up to her intellectual ability?

Do it for her.

That's what I did with my DS7 last year. I faked his handwriting and made a deal with him: I do this for you, you'll do stuff at your level for 60-90 minutes a week with me. He kind of won on both counts there.

I'm a rebel here. I don't believe in forcing a child to do pointless work. Too-easy homework assignments teach nothing and have negative value as far as I'm concerned. When teachers or others argue that "she needs to learn how to do unpleasant tasks" I remind them that putting your laundry in the hamper or cleaning the kitchen are unpleasant tasks that have useful results. What do you gain by writing out the answers to 4+6 when you can do 1/2 * 5/9 ? Answer: nothing. This practice squashes love of learning and breeds resentment besides. The problem is that you might not get anywhere with the teachers if they already think she needs to do something so pointless.

So back to doing the work for her.

Maybe if she (really you) starts doing all the silly assignments and handing them in, the school will decide that "she's" making an effort and will let her skip a grade.

Rant off.

Val

Your poor daughter! Can you consider homeschooling her for awhile? Mine were at Montessori until the end of grade 2 and SK, respectively. They were often bored, even in that environment. What pushed me to homeschool was watching my older stepson, also bright-to-gifted (but untested) slip through the cracks in school to the point where he stopped attending and earned about 1 credit per semester in highschool (we didn't have custody and weren't informed of these things as they happened). He just tuned out entirely and wasn't prepared to "play the game".

Not trying to scare you, but if her innate love of learning is squashed already in K, and she's running into conflicts with the system already, you may end up with an even bigger problem on your hands some day.

It's going to be at least 3 years before they start teaching the math she already knows, and by then she'll be further ahead still. It sounds like your present school is not very clued-in to gifted issues.

Wish there was an easy answer...

Sometimes rather I made deals with my son like "If you wash the dishes, then I'll ask you the math problems while you're doing that and write the answers on the page for you." It's the same kind of deal Val has in that he didn't have NO work, just different work (and believe it or not washing the dishes was often his choice). This is only temporary though and doesn't do anything about the in-class work.
Any way of finding a school system that allows individuals to move at their own pace? They are not fulfilling their requirement to provide education for your daughter right now. I wish I had answers!

Here's an interesting article that might help:
http://www.educationaloptions.com/resources/resources_rufs_tips.php

My hunch is that if your DD were a boy, the environment would have more slack for her 'being the way that she is' but since many many girls are compliant, she is getting even more grief for her 'rebel' stance.

This is so, so true!

This is why my brother (who is now a "rocket scientist"--aerospace engineering for the past 25 years) had to repeat calculus in high school. He didn't show his work on the problems (because he did them in his head and didn't have any work to show), and even though he always had the answers right, failed the class anyway. He refused to dumb it down to show work that he didn't need to do to get the answers, and failed. The teacher knew perfectly well that he knew more than the teacher did, and made him his assistant the next year when he had to take the class again--as long as he would show his work on the problems!

I struggle with the same thing with my DS6, hard as it is to get him to sit down for the two minutes required to run through the busy-work papers and show what he knows. He'd rather be working on his 4th grade math book instead, but we do the junk to get to the good stuff. Good luck with yours!

If the teacher knew that your brother knew more than s/he did, why did s/he fail him? Is the purpose of the class to learn calculus or to write stuff down the way teacher likes?

Richard Feynman talked about this idea in his essay The Making of a Scientist. Some older kids were doing 2x +7 = 15 and he said "X is 4" and they said "You did it by arithmetic. You have to do it by algebra." The implication was that he didn't understand algebra.

So he taught himself algebra and argued that the point is to figure out what x is, not to follow a set of rules blindly. He also argued that the rules represented a way to get the answer if you don't understand what you're trying to do. Then he gave examples of people who could "do" calculus --- by using the rules --- but didn't truly understand it.


Food for thought.

Val

I like Feynman a lot. His lectures on physics are treasures.

Like pretty much everything else he wrote. I was reading his description of the Challenger investigation and was struck by how wonderful he was. My favorite part was when he used ice water to test the O-rings. Brilliant!

Val

Wow, are you sure you aren't me? Calculus is what changed my Math/Biology major too my freshman year in college... not because I didn't understand it, or didn't get the answers correct, but because I was unable to show the "correct" work. For me, it was work on the computer, in a specific program. I could use paper and formulas all day long, but I could not translate it to the programs being used on the computer. And not to show my age too much, but I took a real typing class on a type writer when I was in high school, so computers weren't quite what they are today (or at least we weren't using them as we do today).

We've done a ffew things ever since K:

1) communicate with the teachers, and encourage DS to communicate with the teachers himself. Sometimes I feel that it si more effective coming from the kid than from the parents because some teachers just brush off the parents as being pushy.

2) tell DS that it is important to do the boring stuff right so that teachers believe him when he asks for more challenging stuff.

3) tell DS that not everything is interesting. Most of the time the work itself is not particularly interesting but it gets him to where he wants to be. Basically "we do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do". This is the kind of patience we need to train ourselves to have.

4) occasionally when DS is really bothered and can't seem to get over it, I'd do the work for him.

It works to a certain extent.

There is an interesting article in the 2e newsletter this week about how personality, level of giftedness, and gender can affect classroom behavior. I've never paid a huge amount of attention to Myers-Briggs testing, but according to Ruf, an FP (feeling perceiver) is more apt to refuse to do the work that is beneath him/her.

Both my sons absolutely fit these descriptions of kids who won't do the work to jump through hoops, or to please the teacher, or to get it over with, or whatever. If it's a "stupid" assignment, it is offensive to them personally.

It sounds like a few of us adults may have made similar choices as students, regardless of whether the choice "got us what we wanted" which is what popular child psychology seems to tell us is motivating our children. (Pet peeve here - I have heard that my kids "must not care, don't want to work hard", etc a few too many times. No one has ever said, "I'm so sorry that I offended your sensitive 7 yr old!"


http://www.educationaloptions.com/resources/resources_rufs_tips.php

Oh dear, Lauren. Sounds like a sadly familiar tale. I hope the new school goes well, but I'd be seriously planning to start homeschooling before the year is out, lest your little one's love of learning be crushed by these "professionals" who seem completely unable to think outside the box. Why should these poor kids be forced to sit and do baby work all day just so they can learn how to be bored later in life? As an adult, if you had to sit through unproductive meetings all day where everything that was covered was stuff you'd known for years, you'd go ballistic eventually.

I'd better be careful, or I could go on a (bigger) rant myself, lol.