Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What's normal vs gifted in Math?

My DS7 has never shown a big interest in math. He's VERY verbal, and early on had difficulty with one-to-one correspondence (counting objects) as he couldn't see that he should count them in some order. He recently has been asking more math questions, though. So, in a few days, I taught him how to add large numbers (carrying,etc...). And in the few minutes every couple of days we've talked about multiplication and division, he now understands those concepts (doesn't have all the multiplication tables memorized, but reasons out the answers -- not always correctly, but given enough time, he generally is able to figure it out). In school (1st grade), they're doing simple addition and subtraction. Does this seem like the type of thing you who have gifted math kids see from them, or are the mathy gifted far above this?

Thanks for the input!

Mine would be that it's a spectrum! As you can see from what they're doing in school, what your DS is doing is above the average required in school; on the other hand, plenty of children can do these things younger than 7 (my DS5 for example has those concepts, though not with great speed or accuracy, and there are plenty here more advanced than him). There's really enormous variation.

One thing that may be relevant to say is that it seems that in schools they are often really, really hung up on accuracy and speed, so the fact that they are still doing addition and subtraction of small numbers doesn't mean that those kids aren't ready for multiplication and division concepts, just that someone thinks they should be perfect at adding and subtracting before they're allowed to go on. I don't think this can be universal, because I remember a relative who used to teach in an English prep school (i.e. age 8-13) commenting on one boy not knowing his times tables when he took his admission test at 7, i.e., it was normal that applicants would, and I don't think the school in question was enormously selective; it's more a question of what's expected. (She was commenting, incidentally, because this boy turned out to be one of the best at maths she ever taught!)

It is hard to say if he is gifted but don't think that just because he didn't get math early during toddler years that you have to rule out the math component in the gifted realm. All children develop differently and it is possible that verbal was more interesting to him and he focused on that. But now math appears to be an interest and he has clearly jumped leaps and bounds. I also hear people state that their kid was not a early talker and used that as criteria for not being gifted but oops they were wrong.

DS was clearly verbal from a young age. I did not think of him as mathy. At the beginning of 2nd grade, he tested at the 4th grade level for math (on NWEA tests)which is certainly strong but not amazing. But by the end of 2nd, he tested at the 8th grade level. The test didn't actually mean he was proficient at the 8th grade level, but it did tell me that he made a huge leap that year, a leap I was not expecting. He is now in 7th grade and bored in 10th grade math because it is "too easy." Math is still his weaker area, but he is still clearly more gifted in math than I would have imagined when he was little.

My DSalmost7 was also extremely verbal from a very young age, but he wasn't what I would consider a "mathy" kid. He knew how to count really high early on and could read a calendar early (both by about 3), but nothing amazing, just what I would consider "regular gifted". When we brought him home from Kindergarten half way through the year last March, we started with 1st grade math. In literally a single lesson, he went from being able to sort of add single digit numbers to adding any size numbers he wanted, including carrying. In 6 months, he blew through 3 years of curriculum. His calculations are still a bit slow, but he gets there. He's probably conceptually working even higher, but until he can calculate more quickly (which for him, I think is a developmental thing) we aren't moving forward to find out.

He's definitely good at math, he's just not self-taught and it's not really his passion. If we had only gone by what the school was doing, we never would have seen what he could do.

There are some kids who get the stuff very intuitively early on, there are others that take a concept and run with it once they're shown. If he enjoys it, work on it with him and see what he does- he might surprise you!

I read somewhere (sorry, can't remember the source - but it had to do with research from the neurologist Hughlings Jackson) that very early reading (not necessarily very early proficiency with numbers) is highly correlated with giftedness in math. The idea behind this is that early reading requires working with a closed-symbol system, which is also used in higher-level math. In fact, according to this theory, children who are very early readers are not necessarily exceptional in literacy or writing (use open-symbol systems). That was my take home message from that article anyway. I'll try to hunt down the source...

Okay, this article goes into the idea I was talking about above -- that is, precocious reading being highly correlated with math ability later on...

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10007.aspx

This was hinted at in some of the posts here, but I'm going to say it outright: learning often comes in leaps and jumps, not in a steady progression.

I never thought DS7 was partularly GT in math. His lowest scores on the achievement test were his math scores. But last year, when he was ripe for it and I was finally giving him a challenge that school hadnt given him, he leapt ahead. He covered something like 2.5 years of Singapore Math in 4 months or something crazy like that. He's slowed back down to a more leisurely pace this year--science seems to be where he's leaping now--but I fully expect more leaps in math in future years.

I'd say that if you're seeing a math "sweet spot" for your child right now, then go with it.

Interesting article. We always assumed that DS6 was gifted in math. I guess a child who uses abacus to count how many arms 6 octopuses have at the age of 2 is likely to be pretty good in math. DS6 read chapter books at the age of 3 and I must admit that at that point his reading seemed much more off the charts than his math knowledge. That said we always saw him as a math kid perhaps because we could appreciate his logical thinking or perhaps because we fully expected him to be one. Dh, BIL, FIL and I are all quite gt in math and I must admit that we expected our children to be good at math. He was always VERY logical. There are lots of math moments which stand out like learning a binary system in a museum in 15 minutes at the age of 4. To us he was always a math kid.

DS4 is a different story. He has been more verbal than his older brother at pretty much any age. He started reading at 2, he was better in puzzles but he was never better in math than his older brother. His math has been coming along lately and he does know a lot. I have no doubt that he too will be very, very good in math but I don't think he will be such an extreme as DS6. We call him our engineer and I believe that's who he is. He can see things in different light, he has the right imagination but he doesn't have DS6 extreme logic. I may be wrong and DS4 may be better than DS6 in math in few years but I doubt it. We will see.

The author's suggestion that early reading predicts skill at "code-breaking" types of math is interesting. But the article doesn't discuss different types of early reading. I'm curious whether phonemic early reading predicts a different type of math skill then whole word reading. DS6 had strengths in both, sounding out words at age 2, and whole word reading at age 3. Consistent with the article, his math skills are stronger than his literacy skills (writing, silent comprehension).

For those of you with precocious readers (that includes your DS Dottie :)) - was there a particular strength in either sounding out words or whole word reading? Do they excel at any particular types of math?