Just had DD7's parent/teacher conference.

DD is more mathy, though reads above grade level, is visual spatial. Discussing reading strategies, because sometimes DD just reads through, without understanding some concept, just enjoying the story. And her writing is sloppy and she doesn't try too much in her writing work.

Creatively, she composes, she has choreographed different dances to certain pieces when she was only 18 months old. Since I taught dance in college for extra money, I was impressed. But she doesn't try in writing.

On the way home, I was thinking. As a visual-spatial mathy kid, I was reading Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon. I remember only developing intellectually as a reader when I hit puberty and suddenly I was reading European literature. I remember my friends reading Harlequin and I started reading better stuff.

Anyway, we were working on strategies, with the teacher, to push her. DH is verbal and has always pushed his intellect with his reading. (Though I am the one that enjoys Proust and Thomas Mann...)

I would like to hear from others who have visual spatial mathy kids and how they are with reading and anyone else who has experience. Some of it is just sloppy, her writing is a mess. She sometimes tries, but mostly channelling ee cummings.

Have you had her formally assessed for learning disabilities (dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc.), visual processing and visual-motor coordination problems? "Sloppy" hand writing, poor comprehension, and written output that is considerably below the level of oral output in complexity, organization, and amount are all huge red flags for these kinds of issues, and really bright kids often manage to compensate by using their reasoning to help fill in the gaps for difficulties in these areas for years before anyone notices.

If it was consistent, but she can write legibly and can organize her thoughts. She did a research project on ophthalmology last year that blew me away.

Which means, it is just sloppy and uninterest. And she is prodigy on the piano, so she can read music and do the motor coordination just fine.

Your child's profile sounds like mine in school. I always got downgraded for my penmanship, primarily because I couldn't be bothered to care. You can read it, right? Next assignment, then...

If the choice was write something for five minutes with basic legibility or write the same thing for fifteen minutes to make it look pretty, the first choice was going to win every time.

I second what Aculady said.

And I would be very careful about assuming it's just careless or sloppy work. It may be-- but if there's an underlying problem, you don't want to be punishing a child for something that's not their fault.

Piano proficiency is very different from handwriting-- handwriting is not only a motor/planning issue but also needs the language centers of the brain, which are bypassed in piano.

DeeDee

I'll third what Aculady said and second what DeeDee added. My very dysgraphic ds is a very talented piano player - handwriting and reading/playing music are two very different processes. Some kids with dysgraphia have trouble learning to play a musical instrument but others don't.

Re reading, if she's 7 and reading ahead of grade level, I'm not sure I'd push her - I'd be much more interested in seeing her find books she loves and develop a love of reading than worrying about the specifics of what she is or isn't reading. OTOH, I have a 7 year old who has struggled with reading (relative to her other strengths, her reading is at grade level but she is far ahead of grade level in other areas and complains about how hard reading and spelling are). DD does the word-substitution thing you mentioned when she's reading out loud to us - to me that's an indication that she's not looking at all the words but putting together what she's reading from context. If she's just doing this because she's going fast that's ok, but if you see other signs of potential reading red flags then I'd follow up with a closer look (in our dd's case we see other things too).

I'm also curious how you know that your dd is a visual spatial thinker - is it from something she's described to you? Or based on reading about vs folks online? The reason I ask is, when our dysgraphic ds first started struggling in school, we attributed a lot of his behaviors to visual spatial theory - but there was much more to it. He really is a visual spatial kid, but I don't think we really knew that for sure until he was a bit older and could clearly describe (over and over again in different situations) his thinking process. If we'd just continued to attribute everything to that we would have missed some challenges that he really needed help with.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Groan. I'm such a lawnmower mom. �I bought three of these..http://www.rocknlearn.com/html/writing_strategies.htm
I bought math word problems, reading comprehension, and writing strategies. �I bought them first and then realized how close to Christmas we are, so they're going under the tree. �
I posted a controversial post on young gifties on another gifted forum, "should they change to fit the rest of the world or should the rest of the world change for them since they will eventually anyway?"
[[thought-bubble- i don't think education changes you]]
[[adapting might expand you]]?.�IMO education doesn't create mindless drones, it might reveal one if that's what's under the skin (burn!).o Education won't kill her creativity, it's too deep and too real.
If your dd is not 2e, and you've never posted reasons you think she is, this is where a quick outline of what everybody expects her to produce will cut down on the suffering. �(even if you think she knows because she's shown you once or twice, it doesn't hurt to spell it out so that she knows that she knows). �These 3 videos teach to the test, teach to produce. �HTH.

P.S. Wren, only because I don't think you suspect disability, only discrepancy. �To me that's a red flag that this is a teachable area.�



I've gone and posted things I think instead of Things I believe or things I'm sure of. �Drat. �I don't disagree with Dee Dee an Aculady that you should be aware that these things might come from something treatable. �If you try a few other teaching strategies and you can't get her to understand assume that she can't understand and not that she's being stubborn. �And you're not saying different things either. � By passing the language center of the brain could certainly be the opposite of audio/sequential aka visual/spatial. �And if techniques for a certain label work, consider this... How many people here are using "the nurtured heart approach" when it was written for ADD kids and ODD kids, but it's working well for HG+ kids.

I'll fourth Aculady, third DeeDee and second polarbear. :-)

My DD9 was recently diagnosed with 'stealth' dyslexia. It was so subtle in the early years of elementary school, that it was completely missed. Her work was inconsistent. She could, at times, pull it all together and do a smackdown great job on something.. one that would knock the sock off of everyone. And then, she would go back to three word sentences that were barely legible. She read two to three levels above her grade and, given the choice, always read Diary of a Whimpy Kid books.

We attributed all of her school issues to 'lack of motivation' or 'sloppiness' initially. We KNEW she could do that work if she really, really tried hard. But the kicker was that it took such incredible concentration and heroic effort to do her best job (read somewhat legible) that she could not do it on a regular basis. So, she gave up trying instead.

I guess what I am trying to get at is that it might be a good idea to keep an open mind about possible causes for her writing issues. The biggest red flag for us was the difference between her written output and cognitive abilities.

Except that last year, we started out with really messy writing and the teacher just told her unacceptable and she did fixed it up.

But then again, it has gotten really sloppy. So if she can control it to some degree like that, it seems rather more disinterest and sloppiness.

And her abililty in reading seems more visual spatial with the mispronunciation of words, which I still have a problem with sometimes. As a visual spatial, if I do not visual as someone is talking, I cannot remember what they say. If I focus, I can visual the scene for the rest of my life, like pulling a movie reel out of the stock room in my brain.

My DD8 is similar to yours in that she is more mathy, reads above grade level, and is visual spatial. She is in 4th Grade (grade skipped K) and is now +2 in Math (5th Grade). She is a very talented piano player, and prefers to compose and add her own personality twists to most piano pieces. She memorizes pieces after playing them once or twice.

DD has read since she was 3 years old, but preferred books with pictures until about a year ago. (I was told it was an age thing by her teachers.) She had excellent fluency, but had some comprehension problems, which may be caused by the fact that she was sheltered, but most of it was because no one ever took time to tell her what some words actually meant. Dictionary.com is now our best friend. Now when she reads, she either looks words up in dictionary.com (which will also pronounce the words correctly for her) and will ask what certain phrases or words mean. We also try to listen to her read out loud. This has resulted in a great improvement in her reading comprehension. The school tests show she is at an 8th grade reading level comprehension now.

Her writing came in slow and was very hard for her. It was basically sloppy at first and she didn't seem to care. She learned how to trace letters in Montessori school at age 3, but they did not work on the proper formation of the letters. Because she was grade skipped, her writing was not as pretty as some of her classmates and she never liked writing in her journal at school. Once we got a whiteboard at home with colored markers, she began to write and draw more, and her handwriting drastically improved. However, putting thoughts on paper tended to jump around, for she wrote things down as she thought of them and would not take the time to figure out how to build a story. Fourth Grade is a big writing year in our school, and I've seen a lot of progress this year.

Hope this helps.

I'm having my 6 year old do Handwriting without tears, a series of little workbooks that help you with handwriting in a painless way. Something to think about with that. He does a page a day, which takes 5 minutes, and it's helped ALOT.
My kids are math-y kids. Last year, my (very active) then second-grade boy who read above grade level but NEVER read anything, did our little school reading contest. You got little prizes for reading- he read 400 books or chapters in books over 4 months.
It really ignited his interest in reading, incredible as a it may seem. The contest is over, but he has gotten hooked on different series. There are lots of nice series for girls too- can you try to get her hooked on that? Maybe a little contest like we had could help.
My son is hearing impaired; he wears a hearing aid and has a documented auditory processing disorder. I make sight word cards, 10 a week, that we flip through daily. After a year, we've done like 450. It's a great way to improve his pronunciation of words, speed with reading, reading fluency, etc.
Could you try that? HTH

Why I think DD is visual spatial? She has the same abilities as me to remember scenes, even as a young kid, she pulls something out from years ago and places it exactly in context. And I have talked to her about her thinking. Since DH is that verbal, literal brain, that files facts like an encylopedia, DD is like me and her math skills are much higher than her verbal. Though her verbal is strong, she does things that I do with words.

I know that part of the problem is her speed of thought with the writing. With visual spatial you think of the picture and then you have to write all the words and here you are this 7 year old and have to print them all out...

And I had to train my mind to read and remember. I couldn't just read the words, I had to make a movie as I read. I can describe what happened on a timeline, figure out the year by events. And DD is like that. I remember forever. But I cannot remember names. It takes me a long time to remember someone's name. I have to hear it a lot. But I will remember their phone number, just once.

These are the pattern I see with DD. Even when I see her do her online math, the patterns and tricks she uses to remember the multiplication and division.

Thanks Master of None. Your experience "feels" similar to what I think is going on.

Ren

This is how I work, too. If I meet someone and they tell me their name, and it's unusual, I'll forget the name in under 2 minutes. I'll meet them time and again, and the process will repeat itself. Then one day I'll see how their name is spelled, and I'll never forget it. This recently happened with a new neighbor, until a piece of her mail was delivered to my mailbox by mistake.

Honestly, I think that reading comprehension assessments at that age are a joke. In early elementary school, reading comprehension usually involves too much of picking out the insignificant details. As I said in another thread, who cares what color the dog was? This isn't so much a visual/spatial thing as a forest/trees kind of thing... and I guess I've already exposed where I come up on that continuum.

I remember comprehension testing at that age, and it always felt like such a chore, because I'd read the passage once, then have to go back and skim it again for almost every question. It was consistently the worst section on my state assessment exams regardless... not that my worst section was a score worth mourning over.

Fast forward to adult life, and I'm the guy who keeps ruining mystery shows for my wife, and she still hasn't forgiven me for figuring out much of what was to come in the final Harry Potter novel, so I guess my comprehension is doing fine.