That part about how gifted kids learn/unlearn math was very compelling. DD7 had issues in the past week with this. Her 2nd grade class does these weekly 100-question timed tests and this week it was x4.
We studied using flash cards and she did fine, though she never really enjoys it. One time she fought the boredom of it by cutting out large numbers from paper and assembling the answers. Increasingly she is starting to tune out math homework because "it's boring."
So the day of the test, she got stuck on 4x7. Something went wrong and she couldn't remember the answer, got stuck on it, and would not move past it. So she ended up missing 49 out of 100 by default and was very distraught. She had hardly ever missed any before.
So this might in fact be a gifted issue rather than my normal gut reaction of it being the case of a 7-yo who needs to endure some drudgery?
