Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Quick answer - motivation issue

This is an issue for me so I thought I would start new topic.

I had posted long ago about linear, non linear and was quickly directed to visual spatial. Just putting that in because if anyone sees this, it may help.

So DD very early on would get answers popping into her head, like simple math but at early 2 age. And she can sight read, but I don't know when it happens. But other things pop up, but not on command. (she will be 4 9/28)

When asked to read, though she is fully capable of reading phonetically, she hates the work. She loves when answers pop into her head.

Having talked to people, they have told me that it is a characteristic of visual spatial PG and when they have to work at something early in their life, they can get a lot of noise and confusion until they can organize it in their heads.

I would very much like to hear from other people that may have had this experience and any solutions to help with the motivation.

Reason, I anticipate your questions since I have been on this board long enough. When we did the screen for the gifted preschool, the psychologist, who will also give her the SBV this October for Hunter, told us that she needs to work on this. She doesn't like the easy (boring) questions and she also has the bad habit of not doing the work when she has to "stop, breathe, think" and do the work. Because of an "addiction" to the answers just coming to her.

She scores very high as it is, but my biggest concern is the long term bad habits that can happen with underachievers. My own experience biases my concern.

Thanks, Ren

Ren, not sure if this helps, It was strongly sugested to us to praise effort over results. Results are easy. It is effort that will help you succeed. We have been trying this for some time. It dosn't always work. One thing was finding something difficult, new, and fun. When they solve that then moving on. For each child fun can be different. We used games like traffic jam, or puzzeles. In math we tried new concepts, multi step problems, in reading we would alternate by chapter, I would read, he would read. We tried to avoid repation, and in Math we have tried to avoid perfection before moving on. It seems to have helped. But our DS6 still wants lots of time with us when he does things.

Hi Ren,

I also have a visual spatial girl, but I think this applies to any learner.

Basically, the work she is doing needs to be hard enough to be challenging, but not too hard that she can't do it. They need to experience success in order to want to try again.

We also did the you read one chapter, I read one chapter (you can do alternate pages instead of chapters at this age). This is really a great technique.

Also, my dd8 still loves it when I read to her, even though she is capable of reading way above grade/age level. What I do is get two kinds of books. One half is at her grade level and the other half is either much more advanced or something we can discuss. I read the second set to her.

Ren - I can totally relate to this. Both my kids are like this. My daughter is just a few months older than yours. She reads random words when she feels like it. Sometimes she pretends she doesn't even know letters. A couple days ago we were somewhere and she read the word "Enchanted" as a sight word. It was in regular text within other text.

Thus far I've used activities as ways for them to work on these skills. So they get used to learning to build on experience and practice. Music lessons have been great for my son. My daughter will be starting Suzuki violin next month. This year my son took Unicycling, which sounds so odd, but he learned quite a bit about not letting your team or your coach down and sticking with something when it's not very fun. Most of these kids spent about 3 months against the wall on a bike, not going more than 10 feet. So I think you can teach these lessons in unusual places.

And I'm also going to admit, that I sometimes set up incremental reward systems to get through piano with DS. Stickers work really well for my daughter. When DS was starting to read we kept track of books he read aloud (he still hates to read aloud). When he got to a certain number of books we did something special.

I do think these are really hard skills to get to a preschooler, and it is still a long arduous journey with my 7 year old. I'm thinking homeschooling for us is going to help a lot. We just don't have the GT options here that you have.

Anyway - good luck!

I do try to praise and encourage the effort as well. Good point Edwin!

Thank you everyone. Have been praising the effort and practice for a while. That has become habitual.

It was interesting that she had trouble with the tricycle steering and somewhat with the scooter, though she made more effort here, but when we got the bicycle (with training wheels) she tried hard and mastered very quickly. The reverse stopping, the steering. It took two tries and she was turning in a circle at the end of the boardwalk to come back.

There were also some other physically demanding things that she pushed herself, like a big climber in the playground when she was 15 months old. She struggled and climbed with the bigger kids. Or won't go out with the boogie board since tiny wipeout but has a floatie ring and goes way out and rides big waves, then surfs in with the ring, had a big wipeout but it didn't matter. Why one and not the other?

And I admit, I have a reward thing going. She was going to get 2 puppies at 6, she gets them earlier if all goes smoothly with the princess test (SBV for Hunter and the OLSAT for the citywide schools) so she has to practice "stopping, breathing and thinking" and not rushing when she doesn't like the exercise.

I had to laugh yesterday, we do Brain Quest 5-6 when she sits on the toilet at night (her request) and she had to find things starting with B. She said bullrushes, and then said there were 2 sets of bullrushes in the picture (I told her there were 8 things altogether) but Brain Quest did not identify the bullrushes as things starting with B. So, obviously she isn't going to do badly on the test, but the habits now will matter later on.

Thanks again.

Ren

And what happens if the "princess" testing does not go smoothly ???

I am not sure if I am going to make her wait until 6. We were at the arcade yesterday and she took her remaining $2 out of her piggy bank to get these pixie things out of a vending machine and got 2 of the same. She was disapointed and our first thought was to get another one for her, but we didn't.

When I say smoothly, trying her best, which means "stop, breathe and think". I think that is a reasonable request. Since we have used this tester before, I think we will get good feeback. And she actually likes doing the test with this psychologist. She is well known in NYC and interacts well with kids.

And, I will fold anyway on this, I know.

Ren

reading we would alternate by chapter, I would read, he would read -

hey, we did this too!! DS8 is very visual spatial as far as I can tell and this would get us through a story more quickly and keep his interest up. I recommend it. Now he is reading at 2+ grades above level.