I guess we will just agree to disagree. I do think it is important to internalize basic facts, however, each person's recall time will still be different even if they all have internalized the facts. I think this is what the OP is getting at. It's not that her kid doesn't know the facts, it sounds like he has a slower recall time.
I also think, once the basic facts are internalized and students move on to very complex concepts, speed of calculation really takes a very small percentage of the time that one uses to solve a complex problem. The kind of competition math problems that take a couple of hours to solve, if one can solve it, or the kind of math projects that takes a few years to crack, I think very little of the time is used on basic calculation. And whether a person recalls a basic fact in 0.5 seconds or 3 seconds won't make a difference.
