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

When I was still trying to figure out whether my son might be highly gifted, I kept reading that early reading is not necessarily a sign of giftedness, which only added to my confusion. Over time, however, I've realized that many articles that downplay "early reading" as a sign of giftedness are probably referring to reading before kindergarten, not reading easy readers cover to cover at age 2, which is what my son was doing. So, I'm wondering, what is "early" in terms of math? Did many others of you who have super mathy kids see it as early as 2 or 3?

My son is barely 4 now, and his preschool teacher has already pooh poohed his abilities because he's not doing math at the same level that he's reading, as if he can't be all THAT bright because he wasn't that interested in addition at age 3 (he seems to get it now, but it didn't come spontaneously, the way reading did, and he'll take words over numbers any day). I'm still assuming this is something that could emerge in the next couple of years.

MsFriz,

I have been reading on early signs since mine is a toddler and Ruf sets the stage with if good in one and not the other than their level would be lower BUT I really think that is more school age and not toddlers. This said I think you can't lump children in groupings and leave it at that. You will always have the exception. The kid that showed a strong ability in verbal up through 2nd grade and then he/she takes off in math. Time will tell how advanced he is in math and the best thing you can do is provide him the resources when he is interested.

And I totally agree with Dottie about preschool teachers and teachers for that matter. I would take their advice absolutely because they might have some great recommendations but always with thoughtfulness and not allowing their advice to be the deciding factor. Will that goes for anyone doesn't? We should more so be collecting information and not relying on just one for the answer but taking it all in and drawing conclusions of our own.

Just because a 3/4yo isn't as strong in math as in reading doesn't mean he won't eventually be a math whiz! Learning isn't as straightforward as all that.

Nice try, pre-K teacher... <eye roll>

Our daycare providers called DS (now 4:6) the little mathematician, and reported that he was doing simple computations at 2:6 (something like single-digit addition). I started keeping notes around this time, and by 2:9 they confirm that he knew how to count by 2's to 20, by 3's to 30, by 5's to 50 and by 10's to 100. Although this indicated his interest in numbers, however, I think it was mostly a function of his extraordinary memory. He solidified his knowledge of simple addition during the period shortly after this, but it wasn't until he was about 3:10 or so, that he really understood what skip counting was about. There was a moment in the car when I told him that the two series continued beyond 20, and he proceeded to count by two's, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, until he reached 134. At that point he stopped abruptly and said "I prefer the odds". Then he proceeded to count the odd numbers up to 41, at which point he stopped from boredom. At around 3:3 an uncle asked him whether there was a largest number; that generated a winter's worth of discussions that culminated in his obsession with the notion of infinity. At some point that year he also discovered negative numbers on his own. I never really understood exactly what his computational abilities were, but at some point he learned to subtract pretty fluidly. Once, when he was around 3:10, he stopped in the middle of a baseball game we were playing to announce out of the blue how old I was when he was born. I thought it was a fluke so I asked him how old various other people were when he was born. He not only knew all their current ages, he was able quickly and accurately to figure out how old they had been 3 years earlier. Their current ages ranged from 2 to 88.

I don't know if any of this counts as interesting, or if it is relatively typical for GT kids. One thing that is interesting, and which I've mentioned here before, is that his reading didn't progress at anything like that rate during that period. Although he knew all his letters, both upper and lower case, by about 18 months, and he read simple words when he was two, he didn't really start to read beginning readers until around his fourth birthday. Lately, though, he seems more interested in reading than in math, and he has made a lot of progress quickly. He now reads at about a late first grade level.

To be honest, I have no idea how typical any of this is, and I would love to hear other stories. It's not like he does double-digit multiplication in his head, but it seems sort of interesting to me anyhow. Maybe not.

BB

OP: I think the interest and the speed with which your ds picked up the concepts seems advanced. I don't know anything about education, though, and my only frame of reference is my own ds6 -- not ND for math! I don't think later interest necessarily means less GT for math; my own ds's reading was much earlier than his math.

Which leads me to ... this is an interesting discussion, as I consider ds6 pretty mathy.

He was a pretty early reader -- sight words by two, slowly growing to a big sight word vocab by 3, to the point that he was reading new picture books (not easy readers) by 3.5; he didn't really have a BOB books phase and didn't read much Dr. Seuss stuff either. Captain Underpants fluently by 4.5, now flying through A Series of Unfortunate Events. Prefers non-fiction about severe weather and natural disasters.

In math, he was doing simple addition and subtraction by 3.5yo and reading digital clocks by 3yo; I honestly didn't think much of it because it seems pretty intuitive to me! I didn't think he was too into math and thought he was more verbal until he was about 4.5yo and started counting piles of change, understanding the concepts of decimals, doing double-digit addition in his head. It just sort of went through the roof. Now he's doing late third grade math at school and doing well there. He could move faster on his own, but so could most kids at school.

What I find interesting, though, is that his strength seems to lean toward calculation rather than concept. For example, on the Cute Quotes thread, I wrote:


But thinking about it today, I realized that he probably didn't really understand the concept -- that you're multiplying top and bottom by the same number to *get* those equivalent fractions. So I asked him, "*Why* is 2/3rds the same as 4/6ths?" He couldn't explain, so I tried to explain it to him ... I *think* he got it!

Is this unusual, that he'd be able to do the computation without realizing how or why?

BB:

I love that you started a journal talk about being a head of the time (age wise with your child) so when you do have him tested or the school you will be able to provide a lot of useful information. Or even more important keep documentation to share with him later on in his life. Here is the funny thing as I read your argument on not very strong in reading. FYI: it is not typical for 18 mth olds to know all their ABCs upper and lower and to be able to read a few words by 2. I think you saw his interests in math and got excited by it, which who wouldn't but from what you decribed your son was pretty equal in verbal and math.

So now with this equality ... is it normal? not for the ND child.

As for my story it is still short because my DD is only 29 mths but she has been able to count up to 10 (rote and count)before 1 yr and up to 20 solidly now. When she is interest she will go beyond 20 but that is only when she is interested. She also is able to add and subtract but again only when she is interest. Like today it evolved around playdo and how many seahorses mommy was making her. That was adding as she continued to demand and later when picking so many up in her hands and squishing them together came subtracting. So that is for the most part math and I would say she is weaker in the math side than her verbal. She has always been that verbal kid that collected words and used them in long sentences with proper grammar. Even at 8 mths she was able to replace I with you. And her verbal tenses are usually about 90 to 95% accurate. On occasion she will say a present tense when it should be past. She also has this knack for being able to say any word no matter how complicated and usually on the first try. The word of yesterday since she was driving me nuts was mischievous. She got it on her first try. She also had her ABCs upper and lower and the sounds each letter makes by 18 mths and was reading some memorized words by the time she was 2. So please someone correct me if I am wrong with my assumptions but this is not normal such as BB's son is not.

Unusual for ND kids maybe...unusual for our GT kids...probably not. I know that my DS6 can do a lot more computation than he really fully understands. He loves fractions as well and the patterns that he finds in them. He adds, subtracts, and simplifies them but I am not 100% sure he could answer all the why questions.

BBDad:
You descriptions and time lines of your DS sound very familiar to my DS6. I wish I had kept records of his math milestones but I didn't realize how unusual it was until he closer to 4 years old. By that time it would have pretty hard to go back and figure it all out down to the month.

My DS6 also knew all his letters early but he didn't actual read whole words until around his 4th birthday. Within a year or so he went from very early beginning books to chapter books. I would say he can read almost anything right now. DS6 never seemed to learn phonics. When he comes across a new word he asks me what it is and then he knows it from that point forward. Surprisingly though he is becoming a pretty good speller. Even though reading has come so easy DS6 he still does not read for pleasure. When given a choice he prefers math.

OP: I also think that you can't discount math talent just because it comes later. According to the standards of other children on this board my DS6 is a late reader but the rate of his progression has shown that he does have a talent for it. Also just because he has a talent doesn't mean that he will ever have a passion for it.

I wonder the same thing with my daughter! And then I think, does it matter now at age 4.5. if she can't explain how/why she arrives to correct solutions so consistantly, given that a) with homeschooling the chances we will circle back to it are high b) I'm the same way. I can solve complex equations because I can just "see" the answer.

On the note of the circling back, I do plan on covering math in depth, but often if I show it to my DD a handful of times at most, she understands it very well and can extrapolate upon whatever concept she is learning. Also, she's the type of kid that knowing the definition of a word, concept, etc. *IS* all the explaination she needs to internalize it on a deep level.

So, to *finally* answer your question: YES! It's normal for kids like ours. (Well, at least, I think it's normal and what you described above can apply to various and depending on the child several disciplines at once). I agree with Kriston, too that learning can present itself in spurts as she described in post further back in this thread. I see evidence of that frequently with my own children. I'm sure ND kids do this too, but at least with GT kids it's a deeper learning that happens much more quickly in comparison.

Mizzou

This is very much like our DS. He certainly knows the sounds of all the letters, but he seems to hate sounding out new words. I would describe him as a whole word reader (is that an established bit of terminology?). It doesn't seem to matter how long the word is, either: he's perfectly happy with words like variation, accessibility, dinosaur (of course!), and so on; once he's asked me what they mean he recognizes them. But he sees them as whole words instead of as compounds of sound parts.

Interestingly, it does seem to me that his focus has turned towards reading lately, and perhaps a bit away from math. At any rate, he seems most interested in things that have to do with words rather than numbers. This is a pretty big departure from the norm, so it takes some adjustment on our part. You thought some number game was going to be just the way to capture his attention, but really he wants to write poetry. You want to say, "Stand still for a moment, so I can catch my breath!"

Also, as Kriston said (in so many words), with respect to both math and reading the learning curve is not smooth - it goes in fits and starts. Sometimes he'll make huge progress in a very short amount of time, at other times he seems to catch on less quickly. It seems a lot to me like the way he grows - sometimes there are huge spurts, and sometimes he's the same height for a couple of months in a row. Presumably there's something like the same process at work.

Yup. I really do think of it as growth spurts for the brain.

And I read somewhere that kids can grow as much as 3/4" in one night, so there's room for some pretty serious spurts there!