Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy "Lazy" thinking?

I am curious about what to do with my dd7, in third grade. She is currently grade skipped and in a 'normal' public school, but one that caters well for gifted kids who "show what they can do". She's comfortably above the 99.9% and in a class with a number of kids with similar scores, though she'd previously been grade skipped so she's a little younger than most of them.

She is, as I have mentioned previously, not terribly motivated academically. This I get - I was much the same. Mostly this doesn't worry me - she's interested and passionate about ideas and stories and people so I have a sense of what's important to her. She enjoys school, has a group of friends and largely gets taken along for the ride academically with the other gifted kids and so is getting work above grade level.

What does worry me though is that she's kind of 'lazy' in her thinking (I would never use that word in talking about it with her, but it is probably the best description). She just wont even consider whether she knows how to do something unfamiliar and/or she'll often pump out the easiest most obvious answers in her school work. If an answer or a solution or some piece of understanding doesn't just pop in to her head, she just doesn't both with it. She had a maths assessment recently at school for placement and she said some of the questions has been really hard. "Like what" I asked. "Like 7 x ? = 56". I replied that she knew that. "Do I? Oh yeah, 8"

This happens all the time. Similarly she'll see something represented in an unfamiliar way and before she's even looked at it she'll determine she can't do it (this could be maths, grammar, projects, whatever). If I can actually persuade her to look at it (which can involved half an hour of cajoling, huffing - often from both of us by the end! - and, sometimes loss of privileges if it's something important) she will look at it, understand in a couple of moments and be on her way. Obviously I can't do this at school! It shows in the work she brings home and in her reports - which show her working a year or so ahead at school when in fact she is capable of working a number of years ahead...

It is not entirely unreasonable that the teacher has not discovered dd's capabilities, because she does often look for all intents and purposes like she doesn't understand more complex work. She will simply say "I don't understand what you mean" and, unsurprisingly they don't have half an hour to cajole her through to the point of actually looking at what they're asking for (and because they rarely see what she's capable of, I can see they think I'm mad to suggest they probe a bit deeper).

In terms out expectations of dd, we've always focussed on effort rather than outcomes, we talk about our own mistakes and point out how we've overcome them - I wonder if perhaps we've gone too far in that regard and she feels too much pressure to 'try', I don't know.

Any thoughts on how to deal with this? I'd like to say "hey, she's happy, get over it" - but I worry that it will become her general mode of thinking and approach to the world, the outcomes of which I don't see as terrible positive long term (not in a 'I don't want her to a garbage collector' kind of way, more in a 'I just don't want her to limit her choices so that if she wants to be a garbage collector it's a choice and not because it was the only option' kind of way)

Is this some kind of reverse perfectionism thing?

Hmm. Well, it sounds to ME like it isn't "perfectionism" exactly, but its evil fraternal twin, "fixed mindset" talking.

Does she feel happiest "knowing" or "learning?"

I'd ask her that and pay attention to her answer.

That's an interesting point. I have actually had that very conversation with her and she says learning. But I perhaps haven't delved deep enough in to whether that is just because she knows that's what I'd be looking for or whether that's really how she feels. She is certainly not a kid who feels she has to demonstrate what she knows - she's very much an under the radar kind of girl and has been since preschool (and has a group of friends in class who are highly competitive when she is not).

The psychologist who assessed her commented that while her processing speed was fine (though 98% rather than >99.9%), she found dd to be very reflective and that she required a lot of time to present answers that she (dd) felt adequately captured what she wanted to say. My gut is that these two factors - the social element and her reflectiveness - play a role in it too, in that she rarely has a chance to give a meaningful answer in class before things move on or the other girls have answered before she gets what she wants to say out. And so she's kind of stopped bothering to. That only occurs to me now as I type this.

My DS7 is similar. I think part of it is that he has never really had to try very hard. He almost always knows the answers and almost always before anyone else. I have been trying to give him more challenging tasks at home because I feel like he is not quite where he used to be academically. It is very frustrating because he just doesn't want to try hard. Maybe it is personality type? But he is a perfectionist though. ???

How do you go with the stuff you do at home Kazzle? I dip in and out of insisting she do some 'after schooling' on the basis she doesn't allow much challenge at school. On the one hand I want her to experience the satisfaction of giving something a go - and on the other hand, for us - because she really isn't very interested in anything other than books (which she inhales), I feel it is so parent led (and often involves extreme irritation on dd's part that she is being asked to do school type work out of school). Which doesn't seem productive or conducive to enjoying learning either. Sigh ...

We've tried all kinds of extracurricular stuff - music, martial arts, various sports etc all directed by her. But she looses interest and while she'll practice she does it so half heartedly she might as well not bother. To insist she do it properly results in a stand off that can be somewhat prolonged ... She'll do it eventually but by the end we're both so emotionally exhausted that I struggle to see the value in it (beyond gaining a deep understanding of the limits of each other's stubbornness!)

I make it sound like we're at constant logger heads - we're not at all, this is just an area where I feel so uncertain how much to push (and I have a little voice taunting me with 'hothousing parent' ringing in my ears) that I suspect my approach is too haphazard to be very effective!

DD10 is the same way. She used to actually start crying if she looked at something and didn't immediately understand every nuance about it. Now, she has a similar reaction to what you are seeing; "I don't know what you mean. I can't do it, etc etc etc."

It is only when the thing she is supposed to be learning looks interesting or seems to be necessary to get to what she wants does she put any effort into it at all. I think it has a lot to do with her rarely having to think much about school work, so not knowing that it is the norm for people to have to actually read the entire passage, or problem or whatever before knowing the answer.

I also think it is part of growing up. I see it all the time in my students, especially the ones who have never had a teacher/parent who wouldn't simply give them the answer if they said they didn't know. With time they realize that I won't give answers and they think about it and figure it out, but it seems to be a rather hard lesson to teach most kids, forget about those who rarely have to put much thought into school work.

Taking culpabiity away from the kid, and looking for what is missing, I believe the answer is metacognition.

In most school and education programs, there is such a content focus that there is an assumption that secondary skills will just automatically accrete through negative feedback.

I think many gifted kids need direct and formal learning related to metacognitive skills. When they automatically know how to solve a puzzle, add, understand words in context, the slowed down plodding path to solution rarely or never happens. When faced with questions of "show your work" or "how did you arrive at this", etc. they don't actually have the answers.

Here is a good backgrounder on it:
http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=205

Lack of challenge is probably a part of why she's disinterested in schoolwork and prone to laziness, because she isn't regularly being confronted with situations where she actually has to stop and think. I also suspect that part of the problem is she's 7, and in 3rd grade, because early education doesn't involve much thinking at all... it's mostly memorizing facts, and spitting them out later.

Another possible factor is something we discovered in our DD8, who we started homeschooling this year. In confronting our own DD's tendency to skip test questions, to guess wrongly when she knew the right answers, or when the answer was right in front of her, we found out that her public school teachers were basically incentivizing laziness by bribing the kids with extra recess if they finished tests early. Quality quickly took a back seat to speed.

Our DD8 is a lot like this also. It is almost like she has lost part of her "spark" and curiousity. We hear a lot more "I don't know" lately, where before she would at least give some sort of answer and whether right or wrong she was at least thinking about it.

We recently starting doing some brainteasers, anagrams, and perplexers at home (just for fun) with DD8 & DD7 in an attempt to get them thinking. This is family-time stuff and they have really found it to be fun and ask for it every night.

I'd be interested to know if others have this same "lazy" issue and what they have done to jump start their kiddo.

I strongly suspect HowlerKarma's right here, and the follow-up would be: ask her as openly as you can what she means by liking learning more than knowing. How does she feel when she's learning, and can she describe a specific time when she was learning, as illustration? I bet (ok, not much :-) that her picture of learning is more like drinking in information that is interesting and new than like struggling with a task she can't do at first but eventually manages.

One thing I do as systematically as I can is to emphasise that the most efficient learning is often happening when things are almost too hard, and that that's when you start off thinking they're too hard, and only find you can succeed by working hard. If you know immediately that you're going to be able to do a thing, it's typically a sign that you aren't going to learn much by doing it.