While I realize that it can be perfectly normal for a gifted child to have areas of relative weakness, I am still surprised how much weaker my DD's math facts are compared to just about any other skill. She understood math concepts at the third grade level when tested in preschool at 4 years 11 months, and was in the 99th percentile, and I am sure she does better on math facts than most kids her age, but I do worry that this relative weakness may hold her back. Sometimes she seems to just trance out when doing simple math.

I was put ahead in math and on a math team (though was always a much higher verbal score type of person), but have never been quick with math facts. I'm wondering how common this is and the best way to help her make math facts automatic and quick. She still is working on immediate recall of addition and subtraction facts. She knows some multiplication and division too, but I'd like to make sure her lower facts are very solid so that they don't use any weakness against her next year when her reasoning ability and understanding is beyond this stumbling block.

I also find that she makes minor detail errors with punctuation and capitalization in her writing. She loves to write and is very creative, and her teacher says her handwriting is very good, but her spelling and form aren't at the same level. She seems to forget those small details, but then again, there are kids in her class who can't write a sentence and are using a mix of capital and lower case letters throughout and I am expecting proper use of capitals and everything else lowercase with correct punctuation (including quotation marks etc.). Am I expecting too much? Her verbal has always tested very high so my expectations have always been high. I may just may be being picky. I am talking about forgetting to capitalize the first letter in a sentence and sometimes forgetting a period. Occassionally she will sprinkle in a capital letter among the lowercase. She can spell basic words well, but sometimes is way off on bigger words like spelling the word "challenging".

Across the board, her concepts, thinking ability, humor, creativity, vocabulary, etc. are very advanced, but the details--math facts, writing structure (which she knows thoroughly but forgets to apply sometimes)and spelling--seems lower than expected. Her teacher has even noticed this with her spelling / writing details.

I have a hard time biting my tongue with invented spelling that seems way off when she has great phonemic awareness and near adult reading level. I am a big time perfectionist and don't want to be too critical.

Does this sound familar to anyone? Any suggestions? Do I just need to chill out? My fear is that her first grade teacher will be caught up in those things and then not see areas where she needs to be challenged. Her K teacher clearly knows she is bright and is a big fan of hers so that should work in her favor.

We've dealt with this.

There are three seemingly valid interpretations (and many invalid ones, like your child is just sloppy and lazy...)

*She's just a kindergartener. Give her time. At this point those skills must be done in sequence, and even if she knows it all, her brain must learn to process it in parallel. It will come.

*Her brain is just moving too fast. As she matures and her hand catches up to her brain -- or she learns to type, these things will come. Her processing speed and working memory are quite possibly not up to the rest of her mind.

*You're seeing the early signs of a learning disability. This is where we're at with my daughter, now finishing 4th grade. On reflection, we've been seeing signs of it throughout her schooling, though I doubt it would have shown itlf very clearly until recently when the differentials started to become greater.

Honestly, I'd chill for a while unless you see other red flags.

New here...hello!

I am an adult with high creativity and poor detail management. A smart phone and a secretary have made my life infinitely easier!

My dad's critcism of my mistakes despite my great effort and creativity still echo in my head even 30-some years later. I also struggle to not impose my perfwctionism on my DS5. He seems to grasp things so easily that I'm surprised when he doesn't.

So I say to you as much to myself, our kids will eventually internalize their own inner critic. Best not to rush them into feeling as if "less than perfect" is unacceptable.

Thanks for the input, Geofizz. Did your daughter have any of the same issues that my daughter is having? We have questioned ADHD in the past, but her K teacher has said she is doing amazingly well and isn't seeing those signs. Does your child have any attention issues? Mine can sit forever to work on a book she is writing or to listen to stories or read to her younger sister, but can also be very silly animated and distractable.

Welcome Evemomma,

I am sorry you went through that and are still feeling the sting. This is exactly what I want to avoid with my daughter. In many ways I sympathize because by nature I am creative and disorganized, but have worked hard so that people now look at my clean and organized home, academic accomplishment, written work etc. and see order. I still misplace things daily and forgot people's names though. I feel HORRIBLE when my critical part comes out and I correct my DD when I could let something slide.

I just don't know if there is an issue here (with her)and if I should help her in these areas or let it all just work itself out. My nurturing side wants to help her so that her gifted needs will be met but then my perfectionistic side will sometimes creep out (with the same goal but with a less helpful tone).

We didn't really start seeing DD's issues until first grade, but they are different in character.

First and foremost, I think you need to relax. I honestly don't see much in the way of red flags in what you write. Math facts are a different skill than math concepts. My kids both score light years ahead on concepts than computation, because we don't work on much in the way in math before school. The type of autmacy you're talking about is an end of second grade skill. Give it time.

I'd be more concerned if I start seeing my DS making the same type of errors as DD. She was not seeing a switch from addition to substraction on work with mixed operations in math, and her spelling stopped reflecting basic spelling rules. We stopped seeing progress in punctuation and a regression in things like capitalization. We now interpret the spelling and writing conventions as getting to a level of sophistication in her writing that she could no longer attend to those things.

DD is in the gray area for ADHD. I interpret the issues we have as being much more closely tied to dyslexia and dysgraphia than inattention.

I agree with everything geofizz said above. I'll also add that my 2e dysgraphic ds seemed (to me) to be very slow to memorize his math facts, so while he was in elementary I did a great deal of reading about that very skill, and from what I learned, math facts don't really "click" until a child is developmentally ready - and for some kids that doesn't happen until 9-10 years old, no matter what their IQ or ability to understand mathematical concepts. Re the punctuation, spelling, capitalization etc - I didn't know your dd was in kindergarten this year until I read the last sentence of your post. From your description of her writing and your concerns, my impression was she was in 1st-2nd grade... really, it sounds like she's doing beyond a-ok for kindergarten.


This is jmo, but fwiw - my belief is that the best way to nurture our children when they are young (intellectually gifted or not) is to nurture their creativity - if your dd likes to write stories, encourage her to write (or tell stories) but don't pick apart her spelling etc, let the school take care of that for now. If she likes art, give her lots of opportunities to create art at home. Expose her to music/art/library/whatever. If you find she's not being given the opportunities you think she's ready for in school due to spelling etc - that's where you step in as her parent who knows her best and advocate.

It sounds like you have a wonderful dd - enjoy her creativity!

polarbear

I think the expertise of the other posters is far more advanced than mine, and I think you've gotten good advice. I think it's great that for the present, at least, you've got what seems like sufficient buy-in on the part of her teacher, and I'd make sure that this is transmitted somehow to next year's teacher, hopefully in both written and oral form.

I think it's great advice to nurture her creativity, since it's such a strength. One thing DS has liked in the past is writing his own stories in blank books, filling in artwork as he likes. Maybe that would be one fun way for your DD to continue writing and exploring her ideas over the summer.

As a high school dropout with never-fully-explored math talent (so take this with a grain of salt) I don't think that facility with basic calculation is the most important strength for higher-order math thinking, even if your DD always stayed behind on rote learning-- and this seems to be borne out by your own experience. Maybe she'd turn out to be a brilliant mathematician, but always have to use a calculator. My understanding is that these days, a lot of theorem proving is done by computers anyway. I've read of math geniuses with savant talents, but then there are all the rest of them.

I will only speak to learning the math facts, as I have had some success there for addition and multiplication. we have 12- sided math dice. After dinner, when we have time, we play to 500 as a family. the die are rolled and the sum of the die will be the points given to that person. if they get a question wrong, the correct sum is subtracted form the team members pints. the first to 500 wins. each child takes a turn keeping score (while playing) helping their double digit adding. DD13 is well beyond this but is competitive by nature, so it helps her remember basic math while I Algebra I. HTH!

Hmmm. ThoughtnI posted here earlier... Guess it didn't work so well. Anyway, I tend to agree with what the others have said about encouraging strengths at this age and minimizing perceived weaknesses. at your DD's age, what you've described as weaknesses appear to be quite relative to her amazing strengths. the handwriting comes with practice and experience, and your DD sounds advanced for her age anyway. My DS8's handwriting is still pretty bad in 3rd grade, but luckily his current school minimizes that and allows him to work at his level. We did have some issues with a previous school not allowing him to work at his level in math because they said his handwriting was too poor. So that is something to think about, if you think any of your DD's relative weaknesses may keep her back too far.

As for math facts, I have heard others say that they will come when they are important to your kiddo. If there is some fabulously interesting math she wants to do, but is being slowed because of lack of math facts, there's some incentive. Or, maybe she'll do what my kiddo has done-- fooled the teacher into believing he's got his math facts down because he can add so quickly in his head!

But if your DD wants to do more math stuff, I think someone mentioned here before that it's fun to use 2 dice with chutes and ladders. Roll the dice, and then you can choose to add/subtract/multiply/divide -- pick the best one to improve your position.

Correct spelling, correct punctuation, and simple computation are skills that are improved by practice and repetition. Since she's only in K, I wouldn't worry.

On a side note, I'm really disappointed with the way they have kids writing these days before they've mastered the basics, since they're basically inviting the children to practice doing it the wrong way. There was no such thing as "inventive spelling" when I was a kid... you spelled it right, or you got marked down. And this is why you did simple sentences until you had enough of a spelling vocabulary and grammar background to write more.

Hi Dude,

While I admit that is can be frustrating for me to read stories with misspelled words, I understand the theory behind inventive spelling. First, it helps to liberate the child to express him or herself without being bogged down by the mechanics. This way, he or she focuses on the true purpose of writing: communication and expression! The other useful aspect of inventive spelling is that children use their knowledge of letter sounds to work out words which can solidify their phonemic awareness etc. I know all this, but I guess I think my child is ready to move beyond this stage, and was wondering if other kids showed a gap between reading skills and spelling / punctuation skills. She knows all the rules, but forgets them in the "heat" of writing a story. She can spell words that are easily sounded out like "acrobat" or ones that follow rules she already knows,and all the basic words, but she sometimes makes surprising errors because she is rushing through her story. I know substance is more important than mechanics, and that there will be plenty of time to master the details, but I do think she is ready to move to the next step and I do worry about her patterns of kipping the small stuff. Some kids learn grammar and spelling almost by osmosis just like they learn to read simply by being read to, but it does seem that spelling often takes more work for reading even among kids who are very verbally gifted. Maybe I think there is more of an issue than there is because she learned to read by two with no formal lessons and so I expect her spelling mastery to be as effortless.

My DS8 taught himself to read at a very early age. His reading and comprehension scores are incredibly high, and have been since he was first tested. His spelling, not so much. At his current school for HG kids, the spelling is incredibly challenging. That was the first time we had to try to teach study habits, so we were happy to find a challenge. (And I had to learn how to help him learn spelling too, since spelling always came easily to me - I can look at a word once and remember how to spell it.)

Grammar is also not as high for DS8, but I'm not exactly sure what he's learning in school. He just finished 3rd. Not something we've ever taught at home. He's always gotten good grades in everything anyway, so I'm not worried about it. If it was getting in his way somehow, I might change my tune.

It all sounds perfectly normal, particularly for a bright kid. I have rising 4th graders and one of them still has problems with correct spelling and grammar usage. It really only became as issue for DS in third grade. In his case, he wasn't taking the time to revise/edit. Also keep in mind that it is not uncommon even for excellent spellers to spell incorrectly in the context of writing an extended complex response.

My teenage D never truly mastered all of her math facts in lower or middle school... but is taking an online statistics course for fun this summer, and is very excited about AP Calculus for this fall ("I love derivatives!", she announced the other day). Honestly, I think kids who have some weakness in math facts (or slow math processing speed) never really get them nailed these days because of the use of the calculator. They have a lot less repetition than we had 30 years ago. My D is headed for engineering camp this summer, too. I noticed this last year that she was finally pretty much on top of multiplication facts when we were working on SAT prep, so somewhere along the way she has gained ground on them during high school. I honestly would not sweat it too much.

thanks everyone. I've noticed that her spelling and math facts have improved lately. Perhaps I was just expecting too much too soon.