Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Math resources for DD who states she hates math???

I have a 12 year old who is less than fond of math and I am looking for some new resources that might float her boat a bit more, or some advice on how to get over the "math hating".

A bit of background...she went to a college prep school for elementary school and did very well in math, she absolutely hated the homework, thought of it as busy work and would take an hour completing something that should have taken her 15 minutes because of her bitter complaining about it, but would score extremely well on any test. For the last two years she went to a "gifted" school, and continued to complain about math, not because of homework, because she didn't get any, but because of the teaching (unfortunately the gifted school did not seem to teach math well and I think we took a giant step back). I hired a tutor for her last year and she liked the tutor and seemed to be OK with doing the work and she seemed to grasp the concepts, but the math complaints continued. To be fair she is much more of a language arts kind of kid, but she also loves the sciences and I think she has a knack for math but I just can't seem to find the right trigger to get her excited about it.

Forward to our current situation...this year we will be delving into homeschooling full time and we have been experimenting with the various online sources. I LOVE AoPS, she "hates" it...I think it is because it stretches her and forces her to get away from the rote work she so bitterly complained about previously (but was able to do) to actually having to "think". We also looked at Life of Fred and while she in mildly interested in the story telling I can not see building a math program around it. Most recently we are trying iMACs, she seems to like this, but this morning she tells me she can't see how any of the information she is "learning" will be useful :-) We've only scratched the surface of this program though.

Does anyone have a child who was not into math, but found a way to turn it around? Part of me thinks she is so used to complaining about it that anything I introduce will fail. This is probably as much of a parenting issue as it is a content issue. How can I help this kid??? Any advice is most welcome!

I can't help but think our DD10 sounds just like your daughter. She deliberately flunked out of her AoPS class! She was mad that she had extra homework her friends did not. I will say that she is working on AoPS now because she and her friend decided to get together once a week for a math class with this friend's mom. It was all about having a friend do it with her that made it (somewhat) fun. Now she and I work on the problems side by side. She gets pretend peeved when I get the answer first (I haven't done this kind of math in years so I am enjoying it as well!!).

Both of your DDs sound a bit like mine. DYS DD10 seems to have a love-hate relationship with math. While she hates extra math work and becomes bored in math very easily, she seems to take some pride in being "good at" math. While she is extremely strong verbally (via testing it is usually her extreme strength), she also tests well in math. She complains school math is too easy/boring, but AoPS...not sure that is working, either. She is in a class right now and is not thrilled about having to do any math work outside of school (which is not making homeschooling ever look like a great option, in case I was wondering ). To be fair, AoPS classes move at a pretty quick pace and require more work than I'd realized (not easy to sell during summer, but this seemed like the only time to really try it). I, too, am trying to figure out how to best help this kid!!!

DD, too, loves science...so I see math as important for her.

greenlotus - I think that DD would like the "friend," but I'm not sure who I'd recruit. Most of DD's friends on not even in her leveled math class at school.

Some fun things (not necessarily a program or curriculum) that might turn her onto math...

Number Devil...fun book...you can research each concept they talk about together.

The Math Instinct: Why you're a Mathematical genius (along with lobsters, birds, cats, and dogs)...by Keith Devlin, NPR's "math guy"

I don't have a girl (two boys) and I have never explored her books but you can look into Danica McKellar's books for girls about math. She is mathy and proud of it so there may be something there.

My DD loves the Number Devil and has even reread it a few times so I can second its recommendation!

If your current goal is to try and stimulate her affinity for math, you may wish to go with resources which she has expressed some amount of interest in... the story-telling style of Life of Fred.

If your goal is different, such as getting her to perform at a specific level, and/or to like a specific resource because you like it (AoPS), possibly with an underlying thought that high math achievement and/or experience with AoPS may be consistent with stereotypical "giftedness"... that may be more difficult.

Because you mentioned online resources, there's also the Khan Academy review of common core math. This may also help you understand what level she is at, according to common core standards.

Have you looked at jousting armadillos?

What level math is she on? I found math boring until I took Algebra, same with DS16. All math is not equal I find "arithmetic" very boring and tedious. I don't have a lot of good suggestions other than those above. But something you said hit a bell me with me.

My DS16 is also very good at math, picks up new concepts quickly and test well. But it has always taken him a lot longer to do math homework than the other kids in his gifted program making math frustrating. I didn't really understand what was going on until I got DS tested last summer. DS has much lower low processing & working memory but very gifted at Perceptual Reasoning. Therefore explaining why he picks up the material easy but gets bogged down in hours of homework. Therefore you might want a math program that doesn't include large amounts of practice.

Thank you for the replies thus far...you all have mentioned things I am not aware of, so I will look into everything!

My immediate goal for her is to just like math, or at the very least not fight it, she seems genuinely pleased when she "gets it", then the walls come up when answers aren't forthcoming quick enough (in her mind).

I want her to keep all her options open, at 12 it is hard to predict where her path will take her, so I just want to keep all the gears greased!

You might be onto something here....her processing speed is quite a bit lower than her Perceptual Reasoning as well. It is hard for me to figure out how much work to "assign" to see if she has truly grasped a concept and we are OK to move on. Hopefully I will figure this out fairly quickly or we will both be struggling! We are currently refreshing Pre-Algebra so she will be ready for Algebra in the Fall.