Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy To slow down or to accelerate?

I've been lurking in this forum and also read the Genius Denied book. There's always been an advocacy that gifted children should be challenged and not bored in school. Aside from kids who are so vocal and complain regarding school, there are probably more who coast their way through school without letting their parents know or pushy parents who put up more work for their kids than is appropriate.

Which one would you rather believe? Race to Nowhere or Waiting for Superman? I haven't watched either, but know the gist of both films.

I would like to hear from people here regarding their stories of what worked and what did not. My dilemma is regarding DD5, who excels in math. We enrolled her last year (around 18 months ago at 4 years old) in Kumon as she watched too much Dora the Explorer that all of us at home (including DW and even DS2) could no longer stand it. Much to our delight, she went from counting (1 to 100) to long division within one year. She's now doing fractions and she will be starting algebra before her 6th birthday next year. Her Kumon instructor indicated that if she goes on at her current pace, she most likely can finish all the Kumon levels before her 7th birthday which includes some college math!

While we are really happy she is learning high school and some college math this early, what do we do next? She is now in kindergarten and while her math skills are many years advanced and her reading skills are about 3 years advanced, we did not accelerate her due to having to jump through too many hoops and that she is not developmentally ready. She is not even top in her class now, as her handwriting is pretty sloppy (which even causes some answers to be wrong when she answers her Kumon math). We cringed when she told us that she answered her tests in school very, very fast as she was used to the Kumon method having a time limit. Unfortunately, that meant she finished REALLY fast, but overlooked a couple of questions and this incident confirms she is not mature enough to interact with older children. We are also in a bilingual school, which basically meant that while her English (which we use to speak to her and she has Kumon reading to help her) is above her grade level; all she knows in Chinese, she learned in school.

We are not in the US, and although am willing and capable of teaching her advanced math myself, the question is, if she finishes math early, then what? Is it time to slow down the pace? She's not complaining and doesn't seem to be overwhelmed at all. It takes one hour of her time everyday now doing both Kumon math and reading. And if she doesn't do Kumon, she will just use that one hour to watch a replay of her favorite cartoons or play Angry Birds anyway. I myself coasted in school before, and am thinking that with more parental involvement, DD should aspire higher and not coast. Just didn't expect she is doing better than I thought, also asking myself what could've been if I was given more opportunities in the past and worked harder. I see a lot of myself in DD and DW even remarks that only your child can be such a nerd! LOL... We were about to test her for giftedness, but held back when we asked ourselves, what do we do with the test score? Maybe we should prepare for rapid acceleration or early college in the future? But is it necessary to prepare this early?

Anyone with similar situation and how you handled it?

I haven't had a chance to think enough about your overall question to provide an opinion. However, I disagree that overlooking questions means she's not mature enough to interact with older children. Lots of children skip questions, write sloppily, and race through work to get it over and done with. This is common in my DS6's 1st and 2nd grade classes. Also, many many gifted children are not top in their class, for many different reasons. Sloppy handwriting doesn't mean that she doesn't need the mental challenge of more advanced material.

I need to ponder your main question (accelerate, or slow down?) more before providing thoughts on that. There's a whole separate current thread on whether it's okay to coast or not, that might provide you some valuable thoughts on that topic.

I think this goes back to asynchronousity and gifties being on their own non-linear timeline more than other people. �Just because she learns some college level math doesn't have to mean she has to go to college right away, does it? �Just because she's not going to college yet doesn't mean she can't learn a little college math, right? �I would call all education compared to what little I know about reading instruction. �Early in school you learn to read, shortly after then you read to learn. �During the learn to read stage there's many things that may be taught in various orders depending on the school, phonics, spelling, handwriting, decoding, comprehension, and vocabulary. �These components can be advanced really in any order but they all lead to reading to learn. �(taking notes when it gets too advanced). �
There have been conversations on this board that suggest science and math are the same way. �For example there was an article somewhere about a twelve year old that understood astrophysics on a college level but was having a hard time paying for it because he was too young for scholarships. �If you read the comments of the article a couple professional astro-physicists pointed out that the article hyped it up like the kid might have something to tell us new right now, but really he was just reaching a level where he could begin to understand and be taught by people that knew something about it. �Do you see the difference? �
I don't even know if I answered the question good, but you did ask for opinions, right? �I think I'm noticing a grey area that most people are seeing the future as a flow chart and don't want to take a wrong turn or miss an opportunity. �While time keeps marching on an milestones and years have come and gone I think the future is more fluid and organic and billowous than a neatly define flow chart on a timeline, and with more layers too! �Dang it, I know what I'm saying. �I don't think I brought that idea across very clearly.

Fwiw Austin (someone here) has recently thought about it and thinks after the kids can solidly do algebra it's time to hire them a private tutor from the university, a student with a math degree. That way they're learning from a real mathematician when it counts.

I just recently had the same concerns (not quite as fast as your child, which provides me some relief.) I read the following articles,

http://mathmomblog.wordpress.com/20...ration-enrichment-and-the-calculus-trap/

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/articles.php?page=calculustrap&

and have since slowed things down quite a bit and am enriching much more, rather than simply advancing. For example, even though my DD has long mastered basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, I have her play 24 as her math time some days. If you are not familiar, it just gives you 4 numbers that you need to somehow make into 24. She enjoys it, and I think it gives her a deeper foundation. I've also purchased the Heuristic Model Drawing workbooks from Singapore math, they are a great enrichment, and might be doing the mental math enrichments as well. I also plan on having her do Alcumus online math, which provides a less direct route to Calculus. So she will do some probability and number theory before she heads to Geometry, Algebra II, etc. Duke TIP also offers some great math courses, one of which is decoding secret codes, which is fun, while mathamatical.
I think gifted children can absorb at a very high pace, but I'm not sold on the fact that they should do it as fast as they are able to. What I've decided to do is to slow her down as much as possible, while still maintaining a challenge. Wider and Deeper is much better, in my opinion. So while I refuse to "coast" and simply wait for the others to catch up, I'm trying to find different scenic routes to take than the straight standard curricula.

This is the path we are choosing as well...wider and deeper as opposed to faster.

Likewise, we're not speeding up or slowing down, just changing direction. We're currently working with the school on doing logic puzzles, word problems, and tackling related skills and relative weaknesses instead of pushing the computational skills further forward.

Colinsmum put an awesome set of links for "deeper, not faster" into this thread:

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....7141/Advice_multi_accel_in_math_wha.html

Agree - wider and deeper, horizontal.

Hi Golden Tiger,

I definitely agree with the previous posters. I spoke recently to dd's teacher who has a majority of kids in her class who are tutored (dd is in grade one). She mentioned that while a lot of the tutored kids are very quick with answers when presented with numerical equations, they really struggle to apply maths outside that limited setting. They struggled with word questions, with using manipulatives and so on. Similarly with reading, the tutored kids in dd's class are all beyond grade level for their decoding, but have very limited comprehension. DD was reading Harry Potter to me at school in the play ground the other day and another little girl, who I know is tutored, asked to read some. She read it quite well, but then had to ask me what had happened.

I'm certainly not suggesting this is the case with your daughter, but, just wanted to point out (as you're no doubt aware) that the learning she will be being exposed to at Kumon is comparatively limited. As the previous posters have suggested, I'd give her a chance to apply her knowledge in different contexts - and you've already been given some great suggestions

Best of luck!

Just thinking. �I'm imagining the homeschool forum's recommendation for history: go through the histories once in the early years for the exposure to historical names, themes, and vocabulary. �Next, go through all the history again a little deeper to get the stories and some of the details in the second set of years. �Then, go through the same histories a third time to analyze the stories and develop some opinions and learn some lessons from then. �This is supposed to take three sets of four years. �Spiral approach, right? �If you're giving kumon lite and they're liking it they'll build on them bones over the years.

You're going to have to keep adjusting and providing for their education yourself if you keep this up. �Understanding algebra concepts is not the same thing as being able to sit through an algebra class every day and keep up. �Meanwhile, what's a school going to offer them? �Something I didn't think about but if your kid's excelling at math you probably have a close relative with an advanced math degree. �You're going to want mentors. �Start asking your cousins and the spouses cousins and stuff. �You might be surprised.

Disclaimer: my kids are preschoolers and I expect they'll have dual enrollment in the local public school and Mamma's House Independent Study Program. �Hee-hee. �