I have no suggestions for your big picture situation, but I do have a suggestion for helping your DD cope with the "explain" math problem you describe.

When my kids had interviews for a gifted program I prepped them by describing to them a "Cliff Clavin" answer. Which references (obviously!) Cliff's final Jeopardy answer of "Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?"

In case you are not as old as me Cliff Clavin was a know-it-all character on the tv series Cheers who appeared on Jeopardy in one episode. He had a huge lead going into final Jeopardy and didn't need to wager anything to win. But, being Cliff, he bet it all and lost with his response of "Who are three people who have never been in my kitchen?" to the answer Tony Curtis, Cary Grant, and Lucille Ball (or something like that).

I described the episode to my kids with a great degree of drama and emphasized the fact that it was indeed true that those people had never been in Cliff Clavin's kitchen.
I encouraged my kids to come up with their own "Cliff Clavin" answers if they didn't know where to start with something or were stumped. Bright kids are usually capable of coming up with Cliff Clavn answers that contain enough information to demonstrate knowledge.




Last edited by JaneSmith; 09/13/10 07:10 AM.