Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Am I helping or making it worse....

I am looking for some ideas. I am having trouble helping my daughter. She has nearly taught herself to read. She builds structures with her toys that include working parts like pulleys, levers, etc. She has been making symmetrical patterns in the shapes of birds out of little knick knacks and things she finds around our house since she was 2. Her drawing ability probably comes close to a fourth grader while she is 4 1/2. While she paints she actually studies what she is painting and attempts to make it true to form. People think she has taken ballet lessons but she actually taught herself from watching a video when she was 2. The list goes on and on.......but she cannot remember her numbers from 6-19. She knows 1-5 and understands the patterns from 20 up. I have tried everything from workbooks to flashcards to having her draw and decorate the numbers....but she doesn't retain it. At first I thought she was bored with them so I continued to try to keep her focused. But now I have realized that she is actually trying and I have stopped showing her the numbers because it seemed to be affecting her confidence in her other skills. I don't want to push her or make her feel uncomfortable. The problem is that the education in my area is lacking in public schools. She has the opportunity to be accepted into a couple of magnet schools for the gifted. Her father and I are both gifted and I think that is why we have recognized her ability to teach herself and her need to constantly learn and explore. That is all she wants to do. She creates and nothing else. She doesn't play with barbies or Mr. Potatoe heads....all she does is ask why and try new things and she gets soooo excited when she discovers something new and she can show us. But the magnet schools are tricky. One tests cognitive ability only so I feel she did well on the assessment. The other however requires the applicants to recognize their abc's and numbers up to 20. She knows the letters Upper and Lower case. She taught herself how to write and she knows all of their sounds and can put them together to sound out words....she is just a small step away from reading on her own. But the number thing is just odd....she can remeber the most minute details and recall people she met when she was very young...but the numbers just don't click. I don't want to cram something done her throat if she is not capable of understanding it at this point.....but I also don't want her to be bored and struggle in the same school system that her father and I participated in. My mother is dyslexic and had a lot of trouble with math in school. She can hardly read a book. I can't tell if my daughter is having some sort of mental trouble recognizing the numbers or if she is so disinterested that she just can't focus on the number. I really don't want to seem like a crazy parent trying to push their child into something they can't handle. I am far from that. I have given her room to explore everything she knows and I honestly feel that is the best thing for the gifted. But I also want her love for knowledge and investigation to continue. I want her to have the opportunity to fit in with others who think like her. I was wondering if anyone had any experience like this and any advice. I don't know if this is a common thing among the gifted or if she has some sort of disability or if she just hates numbers:)I don't remeber learning my numbers but I do remember first grade math and all the math after....i never saw the numbers. I saw the problem as a whole and could put it together in my head all the way into college algebra. So I don't know how to relate to her struggle. I tought I would try to teach her addition instead and maybe that would more interesting for her. No matter what it is I would like to find a way to make it interesting for her and to help her see them in a way that will help her grasp the concept. I don't care too much about her getting into the school that requires the alphabet and numbers....i think anyone can drill their child enough to learn those. But if she gets into the school that tested her cognitive ability I don't want her to fall too far behind in math. If anyone has any ideas of how to give her a better experience with numbers or any ideas about what might be going on I would appreciate it.

I think I figured it out. I am guessing the numbers just weren't challenging enough for her to want to remember them. Once I went over addition and subtraction with her this morning she did 4 pages worth and had remembered most of her numbers again. I think it is interesting that figuring out how a gifted child's mind works sometimes is a puzzle in itself and is constantly challenging.

I'm glad you figured it out. I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed with some things like that. My kids use to write their words perfectly mirror backwards. That just did not seem normal and my kids were so ahead in many ways it just drove me a little crazy. but then they got over it. Good luck. keep us posted.

Well at least now you can tell DD my favorite joke:

Why was 6 afraid of 7?

Because 7 ate (8) 9.

That's funny, master of none. Drawing bunnies and flowers does sound a lot like something mine would do:) I try to get her to do one page with picture and then try a page without pictures.....she gets mad when they have the same problem on the same page. She says, "Why are they doing this one again?" It has been pretty easy moving her up because apparently she can count items by looking at a group and doesn't have to point or even look at each one. She will look at a group of 5 or 7 or so on and just say the amount without counting:) Now to figure out how to get her to pass her assessment when she refuses to name numbers is beyond me.....hopefully they will try more challenging stuff first.

You know come to think of it she did the same thing with her ABC'S and reading. When she was 2 she started teaching herself how to write using a workbook. She had only let me show her how to do a couple pages and then refused to do anymore. I figured she wasn't ready. Then about a week later I went into her room and she had written her letters throughout the workbook. I tried to get her to write for me and she wouldn't. That is until she saw her older cousin writing. Then mine would right rows and rows of letters. Then she started scribbling again. When she was about 3 I overheard her reading a book in her room that I had only read once to her several weeks before. When I asked her to read it she wouldn't. Then at her cousins again I went to pick her up and her aunt asked if I knew she could read the book. Then my daughter stopped again. She went back to art. Then just last week I went over her abc's upper and lower to make sure she knew them for the assessment. All the sudden she started saying most of them by the sound they make. So I let her watch a letter sounds video. After one time watching it shE will go through the alphabet saying all their sounds and forgetting to actually name the letter. Now she is reading again but she is getting some sounds backwards. Like instead of car she will say acar or instead of sun she will say usn. But if I take the words out of a sentence she slows down and will say the word right. I think she wants to be able to read as fast as me:) I guess I am starting to see a pattern. I did think about showing her some of the cooler number patterns and things like pascal's triangle. I thought maybe it would spark an interest in math. And I am going to start letting her count her money every week and figure out what she can buy with it. She likes money:) Why do I feel like raising her is not only a full-time job but one with lots of overtime involved? And what is funny is I am not actually having to teach her much....I spend most of my time and energy trying to keep up with what she wants to learn next:) But I can't say that I don't love the challenge and all our special moments. It is definitely worth it.

I can definitely relate to the frustration and see similar patterns with my DD. She is our 'sneaky' reader. She has known her abcs since age 9 months and the sounds the letters make since before 15 months. She was able to write letters before she turned one and started reading before she turned two, but when and if we praised her or showed any attention to her abilities she would shut down and have nothing to do with it. It is a pattern we see all the time with DD and I haven't fully come to terms on how to handle it. What I have come to discover is if we make a big deal about anything she out and out refuses to do it for a long time and goes backwards, such as writing: she went into a phase of scribbling. She is soon to be 3 1/2 and is writing her name but she is such a perfectionist. This afternoon I asked her to write her name on some Valentine cards she made for her classmates. She got very frustrated with the 'Y' because she hasn't fully mastered it. When I offered to help her she got upset. I even offered that she should take a break but that wasn't acceptable. Finally she allowed my to correct it so she could continue but was upset that it didn't look right. It looked like a 4 not a Y and that was not her name. Such the perfectionist! I continue to reassure her that it doesn't need to be perfect and just the fact that she tries is awesome and the kids at school will be excited that she put in the effort, but she is not convinced. Even though she admits that most of the kids at school don't know how to write their names, it still isn't enough for her to accept that she doesn't have to be perfect.

LOL! My DS 3 is also like that. He only does what he wants and it has to be his idea or he won't do it!
I've learned to be sneaky. Examples-
~ I'll write short sentences on our white board and leave them there for a while. Eventually he will creep over and read them but he won't do it if he knows I'm watching.
~ With writing I leave trace pictures and letters around the house with pencils/crayons and and he'll do them, in his own time.
~ With Numbers I leave flashcards around the house and he'll put them in numerical order. I'm not sure if he can count the teens or not, its one of his secrets, but he can put them in order:)
He gets mad 50% of the time if we praise him for anything?? The complete opposite of my praise hungry DD7.
The good part about his independence is that he potty trained himself early, with absolutely no help from us; and he already wants his training wheels off, which I will do this weekend.

I am very worried how my self motivated, do it MY way, perfectionist will be in the classroom.
He is what we call "too big for his own britches"!