Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional math computation weakness

I am wondering if you all might be able to help me with an issue that may or may not be a g/t issue.

My dd14 is a creative and "bright child" (read never been tested); she is good natured and loves to write and sing and act and dance and read. She enjoys English, Social Studies and Science at school. But she doesn't like math. She started out in the advance math class in 5th grade, "stepped down" a level for 7th, and is "stepping down" another level for next year.

She is having (and in retrospect has always had) a lot of trouble with math calculation. She recently got a D on an Algebra 1 test; I had her sit down with a tutor to go over it and learn the material she hadn't understood. Well, the tutor told me that she understood everything perfectly. She verbally outlined each step to take and even finished the tutor's sentences for her. But she had made many many errors in computation.

Last night she was studying for a test. I sat down to help her with a section she was having trouble on. (She hadn't understood/heard one step of the process. Once I gave her the missing piece, the whole thing clicked no problem). But to graph the inequality she had to multiply and add some very easy numbers -- and she messed up. Twice. "two times three is six plus negative two is five".

I don't know if she can't hold the numbers in her head long enough to manipulate them, or if it's something else. She doesn't have a "number sense" it's not fluidly understood that subtracting is the same as adding a negative or that, like in the example above, an even number plus or minus an even number isn't going to be an odd number". I know she was taught these things. I don't know why she doesn't "have" them.

So I guess she is going to need more computational practice. Would anyone know of a (not too rote) way to practice these skills? Something online a teenager could fit in?

But also, if anyone has any intuition about what might be going on, I would appreciate your input. Can this be an ADD thing? memory? lack of interest?

Thanks for the help.

My daughter has very low (relative) working memory scores. Math is one of her biggest struggles and for the same reason you mention. She has a very difficult time keeping the numbers in her head while manipulating them. She also has ADHD and HATES math, so a lack of interest in the subject matter could be part of it. She can do the work but often/always makes mistakes in basic computing. It frustrates her immensely and she has trouble getting past the easy calculations to the rest of the work because she wants to walk away as soon as she makes a mistake.

I'm interested to see what others suggest to help. Right now, I spend the majority of time calming her down and talking her through problems to help her keep track of where she is. That might be okay in elementary school, but she needs some tips to help her work independently.

I think it is a problem of not enough practice.

She obviously "knows" the concepts, since she could finish the tutor's sentence. Of course she has holes in her knowledge, need you to help her with missing steps -- this is normal, not a big concern. It is definitely not a memory problem, if she could remember the concepts, she could remember the numbers.

She probably did not do enough practice problems over the years, and now it's all showing up. The only way I can see is to drill with problems -- starting with mixed arithmetic operations, then to algebraic expression manipulation. Once getting over this hurdle, everything she learned will click together.

My son has some similar issues and he also much prefers to read, act, write, sing, do social studies and science than do math. He tells me that he thinks math is boring but useful so I just think for mine it is a lack of interest. It can't be a memory thing with him because he can do things like memorize my credit card number and other numbers easily. He could usually remember all the steps to solving problems and often came up with ways to solve the problem differently using as little writing as possible or doing the problem mentally because of his dysgraphia.

It almost looks like he has ADD when he does math sometimes but he doesn't have it for anything else. I got him to practice math computation this year by having him do 8th grade math on IXL and using mostly mental math or letting him solve the problems any way he could just so long as he got the right answer. IXL takes away points if you get an answer wrong which I really like because it forces him to pay closer attention to computation while also increasing his speed. I told him that some of those approximately 250 8th grade math skills are what I have found most useful in every day life but I had forgotten some of it and had to relearn it. We plan to use IXL or something like it to practice math even as he takes higher level math to keep those skills sharp.

But still, there are days, even with practice, when he makes computation errors and it seems to be just some kind of glitch that happens. It makes him mad when he makes errors on easy things and sometimes refuses to do any more math that day. He is more likely to make a mistake on something easy than on something harder for some reason.

My daughter also hates the impact that mistakes have. She gets very down even talking about it. "if I make one little mistake I get the whole answer wrong, and if it is a multi-part question, sometimes I get all the parts wrong because of it!"

I am curious about the working memory. Is that the test where the children have to remember lists of numbers or something like that? Would that weakness show up in other places besides math? For example in English or music or something like that?

I agree that she needs computational practice in all cases. I looked at IXL and the Jump math thread that started this morning has got me thinking...

I am telling myself that if she had ADD or something like it I would have seen it in other places as well...? Any red flags that people had before their children were diagnosed would be helpful to me. I think she does a good job of keeping on top of her work, but she definitely isn't perfect. I mean how do you know what's going on in someone else's brain?

Particularly timed practice?

DD7's math class is doing timed drills for addition / subtraction / multiplication (haven't covered division yet). She had 10 minutes for each sheet of 100 problems. She finished 50 or 60 multiplication problems, scattered at random around the page, as she picked out the ones she liked best. She finished 11 addition problems. On the subtraction page, she did no problems, choosing instead to write a diatribe about hating school and how annoying boys are.

I know she can subtract, because she never has any issues with the subtraction needed to solve a more difficult problem. And she doesn't get in trouble, because the teacher doesn't collect the timed practice sheets unless someone's finished and wants the reward for finishing. "I just fold it in half and stuff it in my desk when she calls time, and no one notices." LOL.

OP, I was the kid who made careless errors (and nearly failed math in 7th grade) because I didn't care about getting it right, and I did care about the ability to do it all in my head. Showing every step of the work really helped me when I decided I did care. I suspect that if she'd written out "6-2=5," rather than saying it, she might have caught the error.

My eldest has auditory processing issues and an appalling working memory (13th percentile on WISC-IV, compared to 96th percentile VCI). It's been suggested to me by another psych, who we are planning to re-test with on the SB-V, that it just shouldn't be possible to get scatter as severe as hers. Whether the new testing does or does not reveal something different, she's just like my DH - in that she seems unable to hold and manipulate random facts delivered orally.

She has a memory like an elephant for everything else but if you try speaking 2 instructions there is almost NO chance she will remember both of them and it's random whether it's the first or last one that get's lost. It's a bit puzzling to me exactly how this works but working memory is quite separate from the ability to understand the concept. Certainly for myself, my DH and it seems DD we will generally remember forever something we have understood (ie the concept of how an equation works) but DH and DD are not necessarily able to understand and manipulate in their heads the data that needs to be computed with the equation. Which from recent reading seems to be a trait of the strongly visual-spatial learner with an auditory-sequential deficit. When I read some of Dr. Silverman's articles on visual spatial learners I was laughing out loud at how perfectly my DD was described.

Master of None: I was reading up on Silverman's description of Visual/Spatial learners as mentioned by mumofthree. I'm not sure if it applies to my dd; I will have to think on that a little, but it did seem to parallel some of the comments you made earlier about your dd. I've copied a little here:

"Teachers often misinterpret the student's difficulties with the instructional strategies as inability to learn the concepts and assume that the student needs more drill to grasp the material. Rote memorization and drill are actually damaging for visual-spatial learners, since they emphasize the students' weaknesses instead of their strengths. When this happens, the student gets caught up in a spiraling web of failure, assumes he is stupid, loses all motivation, and hates school. Teachers then assume that the student doesn't care or is being lazy, and behavior problems come to the fore. Meanwhile, the whole cycle creates a very deep chasm in the student's self-esteem.

Concepts are quickly comprehended when they are presented within a context and related to other concepts. Once spatial learners create a mental picture of a concept and see how the information fits with what they already know, their learning is permanent. Repetition is completely unnecessary and irrelevant to their learning style."

Uh. That actually fits me to a T. I need paper and pencil to calculate anything. Despite having taken numerous finance exams, I get anxious mentally calculating the tip on a restaurant check.

Did the WISC testing reveal the weaknesses in auditory processing? Or was there other testing that provided this information?

The first testing we did on DD1 as an OT assessment, and they found her to be very poorly integrated in terms of her senses, all top and bottom, that she still has some primitive reflexes and her visual processing speed is about 5 times faster than her auditory processing speed. Making her visual speed well above average and her auditory speed below what is considered acceptable to function well in a class room. He suggested that her sensory profile was enough of a mess on it's own to be causing her problems, but if her IQ was more than one standard deviation above her average sensory profile that was only going to enhance her problems - and it's more like 2+ deviations.

Next she saw an Ed Psych, who noted that she first thought that DD was a classic case of Inattentive ADD - until she introduced tests with a visual component and realized DD had no trouble focusing on visual tests. Like the OT she also suggested a strong auditory deficit with likely auditory processing disorder, which is apparently often linked with poor working memory. I don't think it was directly to do with her WISC results (other than the appalling working memory) so much observations during testing that lead the Psych to suggest auditory processing issues.

The pscyh recommended a review by an audiologist, which we are finally doing now 2 years later. We didn't do it at the time for various reasons, amongst which was that it wasn't urgent then because she was already getting amazing support at school and a formal diagnosis wasn't going to add anything. But as she gets older a formal diagnosis will give her more time on exams etc.

At the time we felt like the OT and Ed Psych we saw 2 yrs ago painted a really clear picture of DD1 and she has made great progress since. However, since DD2's testing a few weeks ago and my doing more research and learning about 2E kids I do question why the psych we saw did not comment with such extreme scatter (40+ points) that DD was likely gifted and compensating and that both her top and bottom scores might be inaccurate. I also wish she had talked to us about the visual-spatial idea that was only put to us a few weeks ago when we called a new psych about re-testing both girls on the SB-V. I don't think that the visual-spatial learning is the only issue with DD, but it really does explain a lot too.

Before my son started kindergarten he was doing two-digit subtraction using negative numbers, a method he came up with and preferred because it was easier for him to do mentally. Since he has dysgraphia I understood why he wanted to do as much mentally as possible. For something like 25-7 he would have said 5-7 is a negative two and negative two and twenty is 18. My husband and I told the two kindergarten teachers at the school about his different way of doing math and I got the feeling it was a problem. They seemed to think their job was to make sure my son did things the way they were taught at their school and only that way was allowed. I am glad my husband was with me because he saw for himself that this school was not going to work for our son but we let him try kindergarten anyway since it was just half day. This was before the teacher suggested holding him back in a transitional first grade so he could learn to color in the lines better and that it was okay because he didn't really need to learn anything else the next year.

My son can't stand to watch math videos. He says they are too slow. He wants to quickly read how something is done, see a few good examples, do it and get it over with so he can read something or do something more interesting to him.

For example,he had to learn scientific notation which is on IXL. IXL is for practice only and he had to learn it first. I tried to get him to watch math videos and he just couldn't do it because they were so slow. I ended up getting an old college introductory algebra book from my hoarder closet and he quickly read about it, looked at the examples and went to work. He could do the problems on IXL faster than I could.

Another thing he can't stand is doing a lot of the same kind of problem which is why we like IXL because he can work on one thing and switch to something else when he gets tired of it. He usually gets tired after 5 or 6 of the same kind of problem and he has to switch because he sometimes starts making mistakes after that. Switching to something else usually solves this problem.

My DD loves the "live" section of mathletics, I am not sure what that involves at higher grades as she is in yr4. But for her I do think it is really helpful to be doing simple maths as fast as she can on a regular basis and she loves it so much that she is motivated to do all the other practice activities too.

My son really detests repetition, and I suppose this is part of his dislike of rote memorization. Time pressure is a big drag for him, he does not do well at all when time is emphasized, like freezing up 'under the gun'. When working challenging problems where the computation is only a small part of the bigger process, he doesn't stress out about the computation, so does much better all around. Master of none's description sounds very familiar!

Hi herenow,
I'm willing to bet that your child is rather bright and has been able to compensate/adapt until now. Like most of us, we know what 6-2 or 2+7 is, under normal conditions but under stress or tiredness or other things, it just gets slower and we easily make more mistakes.

Here are some ideas of what seems to be working for us:

- Write out everything, don't do it in your head. Especially when tired or stressed like on a test. Recognize your own body's feelings.

- Is she allowed a 'working' paper in math test? Or use the back of the 2nd page, for example... or just off the edge of the margin as a working area.

- When doing 6-2 does she prefer horizontal format or vertical? Write out things in the way she likes to see it.
- When writing out 6 - -2 go ahead and write it out and the mark it as a plus visually to show that two negatives make a plus

Maybe play some stressful timed games to get use to the feeling of being under pressure that is unrelated to math. Then do some math drill games for fun and just try to get better and better at it. Give self a reward when reach a reachable goal. The goal could be to get 2/10 right under 15 seconds and not break down from the stress and the reward will be ... . It is mastering the internal feeling. This is an ongoing technique that even adults find extremely useful in overcoming difficult problems.

best wishes

wow. I can't tell you how much I have learned from this one post. I looked up auditory processing speed and am mulling it over, but not sure it fits my dd's profile overall. It's just a little tricky, because these children are pretty good at compensating for their weaknesses...until they can't anymore. I am going to watch her a little more closely, and ask a few more questions.

Would an auditory processing deficit have a big impact on something like learning a new language? or is the visual so mixed in it's hard to say?

You called that one. DId you read this article? http://www.science20.com/news_releases/math_under_stress_working_memory_key

a small excerpt:
The type of working memory involved in solving math problems may be affected by the way the problems are presented. When arithmetic problems are written horizontally, more working memory resources related to language are used (solvers usually maintain problem steps by repeating them in their head). However, when problems are written vertically, visuo-spatial (or where things are located) resources of working memory are used. Individuals who solve vertical problems tend to solve them in a way similar to how they solve problems on paper. Beilock wanted to know if stereotype-induced stress (i.e. reminding women of the stereotype that "girls can't do math") would result in different results for solving vertical versus horizontal math problems. The findings showed that the women who had been exposed to the negative stereotype performed poorly, although only on the horizontal problems (which rely on verbal working memory). Beilock suggests that the stereotype creates an inner monologue of worries, which relies heavily on verbal working memory. Thus, there is insufficient verbal working memory available to solve the horizontal math problems.

I think I am going to get the Krypto game to start, but have her work on paper, vertically She needs some "success" before going on to some of the harder things. I like the mathinasium idea (especially as it takes me out of the equation). I tried to look at mathletics, but couldn't figure out how to do it --it looked like it was just for schools. I agree we will have to find a way for her to practice under stress... maybe later.

Thanks everyone!

absolutely. She absolutely needs to start with "success with no stress" and work her way up to dealing with it under time stress. I think Kumon does this -- they start the child off really really easy, and help them develop confidence.

Thank you for the game idea. It looks like just the thing to work on math skills, math sense, and holding numbers in your head. It looked like I can start with the "easier" numbers first?

Herenow - thanks for that article, absolutely fascinating, given my DD's working memory was over 4 standard deviations from her VCI!

With Mathletics here in Australia it is mostly used by schools but anyone can sign up. You do have to pay, about $90 p/a I think it was, but here at least there is a 1 or 2 weeks money back period which gave me the confidence to go ahead and see if it worked for DD. Given how obsessed with it she is, and she seems to have taught herself (or asked us to teach her) 1/2 of this years curriculum in the last 3 weeks, I figure it was $90 well spent. From what I can make out from discussions on local forums you also have much more control over how your child uses it including the ability to switch grade levels, if you pay yourself rather than the school controlling it.

Unfortunately the Mathletics website is detecting my location and forcing me to the Australian version of the site so I can't see what mathletics.com looks like and how similar it is to our version.