Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments 7 yr old making mistakes

My 7 year old who is in 2nd grade can perform in maths at much higher grade level than his. When his teacher is giving him 3rd grade math he is making several mistakes or not completing it. When I ask him he tells me he was thinking about something else or he does not know how he got it wrong. Any body else experience a similar issue?

Oh, yes! We can sympathize here. DD actually makes a lot of mistakes in math. In her case, I chalk it up to complete disinterest. She just can't be bothered to try to do a good job on questions that are 'too easy' for her. It really is a Catch-22 because her teacher wants to see that she can do the work so that she can move her forward to harder things. If we can engage her verbally, it is amazing the answers she can pull out of the air. But give her a pencil and she shuts down.

That depends.

Is the third grade material much lower than your child's working level? If so, then I think that it is probably explained by boredom/lack of interest.

My daughter and I have looked at it this way:

a moped and a 12-cylinder sports car are BOTH fine methods of transportation, but one of them is perfect for a run down to the end of the street and back, and the other one... well, it seems a shame to even warm it up for such a task if that's all you plan to do.



Many HG kids have trouble being asked to do things that don't seem worth the effort of tuning in; sloppiness and procrastination rule the day when our DD11 is asked to do tasks like those. Her accuracy level increases dramatically when she is actually engaged.

We have observed that this is particularly true in math(s).

Try this-- make up about five problems for your child of two types. One type, make interesting APPLIED problems where he has to actually pull out the information and set up the problem hinmself. (Word/story problems) Then offer a few that are the plain variety, where it is merely a matter of going through the algorithm to do the operations.

My daughter ALWAYS did better on the former. Always. Her accuracy would be close to 100% on those, and entirely hit and miss on the latter. This, of course, is mostly true with material that is more than a year below her readiness level, but we see it periodically even with more challenging material. If it isn't :real: she simply doesn't care as much about the effort.

The problem isn't the student, and it isn't the math. It's often the manner in which the student connects (or does not) with the material.

I started a couple of similar threads, one for each of my DSs. Here are the links in case the replies given might be helpful.
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/96825/1.html

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....an_he_not_see_the_problem.html#Post87166

DS7 tells us that the reason he doesn't get his work done is because it's too easy and he gets distracted.

We had HUGE issues with DS9 (DYS) with this early this year -- he'd miss whole sections of a test, and end up getting an F. It has gotten better over the course of the year, and I attribute a lot of that to the fact that he is able to test out of the work that he already knows. (Amazing how DS doesn't overlook problems on the pre-tests, when he knows that a good enough grade means he can do more interesting work, huh?) DS9 still struggles with checking his work, but I strongly believe that a lot if the issue can definitely be a function of it being hard to keep a young brain focused on something that is not remotely engaging.

We tried several different tactics with DS9, after brainstorming with the teacher:
1) cover the worksheet/test with another piece of paper, so you only see one problem/question at a time. This seemed to help him focus on what he was doing.
2) At the teacher's suggestion, I created an answer sheet for DS's homework each night, and gave it to him when he'd finished the work, so that he could correct it himself. Then, I went back over it and would tell him if he needed to re-check it again, giving him no indication which or how many problems were wrong. I think the reason this helped was that he saw he was spending A LOT more time on the work by not doing it/checking it right the first time.

Don't know if this helps, but you're definitely not alone around here.

I think it is also a maturity level of tackling the task. We experienced this with DD and CTY. She is high energy and she likes to do things fast. Even when I told her she needs to slow down and do the "work". She would make silly mistakes like adding two numbers to get 67,then writing 67 tens because she just rushed. even though we reviewed and went over the material,

Two seconds later, she just took shortcuts and had the answer but did it wrong. She even wrote 0-50=50 when she did much advanced math correct. She knows the answer, who knows what goes on in their heads at this age. Distraction?

Some kids are focused. The problem is that I know I was really unfocused too. Yet, the math totally came together for me later, so I advanced many years. So I am a great believer in the VS adjustment. That in the early years, the highly VS learner just has distraction issues which causes silly mistakes.

But there are cognitive skills that blow the mind when they just produce answers. I think it all comes together later. The brain is still developing...

Ren

When DD was 7, she did the same thing! She has since been grade skipped and in the beginning of the year, we were still constantly doing it but as the year went on, the more the math got into the less basic material, the less the mistakes were happening. while the material is still way too easy, it was better than it was. For example.... adding and subtracting multiple digits, she'd make the dumbest mistakes, but doing long division with remainders or multi-digit multiplication and the errors stopped. She used to blatantly skip over problems, you name it, it has definitely improved now.

This is a good thread. DS5 is similar. He can instantly do some things that would take most adults longer, but can make careless mistakes. Sometimes, when it's a problem with a reading portion and an illustration, I've caught him just assuming he knows what they're asking by looking at the illustration, and giving an instant answer (a good part of the time that snap answer would be correct if his assumptions were correct, but I can't reward him for that).

He has gotten a lot better at being methodical through practice, but is not perfect by a long shot. I don't worry about it because he's only five, and I think that he's far ahead of the game on practicing being methodical as well as everything else. But I definitely think that being methodical is going to take practice for almost anyone, and that it may take extra practice for a kid who does mental math quickly and is easily bored.

Thanks everyone for replying.

I noticed that DS is in a hurry if he is completing the task. He will not read the problem completely. He also does not want to pick up a pencil but work out everything in the head. Some where in the process gets distracted where multiple steps are involved and gets lost.

The problems that he is trying to do are not very simple, he needs to read and slow down and focus. Once he gets these down it gets much easier.

He comes up with cool math logic and performs calculations without using his fingers while I am hiding my hand behind the back to use my fingers for calculations

Its just so strange that you can see such differences in the same child doing something that his brain can figure out so easily.

We come down hard on DD for the "silly" mistakes. It is a common thread for her that we are trying to break of just rushing through things and being sloppy. We got her ballet report card and it was similar. The same with piano. She hates to work and learn the pieces, loves to play them really fast when she knows the notes, but hates to slow down and perfect the composition with all the nuance.

I came down on her for not working through the problems on paper as I specifically asked. And will continue to make her do it. Just like her piano teacher says, you can play fast but you must practice slow. When she wants to amuse herself by doing math quizzes in her head, when or why we never know why, but we don't care how she does those. But when it comes to her math work, then it is a different story. Just like when she wants to dance around to music we put on for dinner and the evening. I don't care how she does it. But I told her that I do not want another ballet report card giving me indications of sloppiness. They want her to get into the serious ballet program because of her talent but I told her she can't get in if she continues this way. The carrot is that she will be able to perform around NYC in the special program -- whiches what she wants to do. I wish it was like teaching the dog to sit. That it took less work and repetition.

Ren

For us, it's more of a problem of focus and of DS7 rebelling against parents. He had some math he didn't finish at school, and I could see from the parts he did at school that he understood it and could do it. But then when he brought it home, he just didn't want to be sitting there with me telling him to stop playing with his pencil, etc., and just do it. And while he's goofing off, he'll write down the wrong answer, even though he just said the correct one out loud. I'm sure this is age-appropriate behavior, and I'll make him correct it, but I view the concentration issue as a long-term project. It's certainly trying to watch him spend 30 minutes doing 10 minutes worth of homework.