Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy maintaining math motivation

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I grew up in a very competitive family. My parents set up trivia questions for us to answer at every turn - at dinner, in the car, etc. I grew to hate these, not because I didn't like to learn, but because, being the youngest, I almost never beat my siblings. To this day, I see the world (to a lesser extent now)as a competition.

I have preached to my children that life is NOT a competition. Maybe I'm over-compensating, but I think we should teach kids to compete not against each other, but compete to learn the most they can, to improve their knowledge base, or improve the time it takes to complete math sheets, or better swim times, or....you get the idea.

How about challenging her in math subjects they aren't studying in school right now - probability, number theory, algebraic concepts? That way, she wouldn't be competing against anyone else in her class, but would regain her love of math. Make sense?

While I disagree with life not being a competition, I agree with it too. Ha! Sometimes competition is a good thing, others a bad. When we learn to compete against ourselves, we are challenging ourselves to be better at whatever the process or job at hand is (I do this often to prevent boredom). When we compete against others, we are learning to win AND lose. Life itself is not a competition, but life is full of competitions.

As for math, I was a math whiz... until I got to my junior year in high school. I allowed myself to step down from the accelerated path/the competition to be the big fish in the small pond. Only it backfired on me. Instead of bringing home A's in hard classes, I was barely making C's in the easy ones. I needed the challenge. I needed the competition - whether that was from within or with my peers.

So you don't want to not push her, but at the same time, you don't want to push her too hard. The thing I love to do with my DS5.5 is to challenge him to the math (and grammar) lessons while playing or having normal conversations about things not necessarily related to a lesson. With math, it gets harder as they get older, but it still can be done. I would start there... if you're talking about her favorite hobby, let's say it's taking pictures, you can talk about figuring out how many pictures can be taken in so many seconds on a certain setting (if you dive into aperature settings, etc...). Or, the total pictures taken when changing the size). If it's making jewelry, you can ask how many 1/2 inch beads can be placed on a 10 inch string (adding other sized beads or leaving room for the "clasp").

I don't know what is actually taught in 4th grade math, so my examples may be WAY off, but I know that working math and grammar "problems" into every day conversations is really exciting to DS.

Also, have you talked to the school/teacher? Maybe now that she's exceeded what they are learning by what she's done over the summer, they can give her more challenging questions with the regular course of study????

I think it is great how you are talking to her about her feelings. I bet you are a great mom. Last year, for the first 2 months, my daughter cried almost everyday after K. I was so worried. The teacher said she was fine at school and suggested she was probably tired after a full day. She told me to consider it a blessing she could tell me all this stuff. She is letting those big feelings go so they get smaller. The teacher said we are building a relationship that she can come and talk to me. Very important. Then, I was more relaxed about this because and I think that was helpful. My kids are sensitive and my attitude greatly effects them. You probably care so much that you don't want her to lose her precious gifts.

My son is very similar with his math, gifted, work above level, very motivated, loves tests and challenges.

Here are some thoughts you make consider:
Try some different kind of Math. Don't push it just have it around to see if she is interested. Try to let her drive her self and realize she is human and some days she just may not do her very best. I try not to push but just to give little nudges. forget the behavior and go for the feelings. If you do this you will feel proud. Do it with her and have fun with it if she wants your company with it. If you can help her take her own lead she will learn to lead herself when you are not there. Enthusiasm can be contagious.

Last year, my son didn't want to do his Math facts. He thought they were too easy. Then the teacher had contests then he wanted to do his facts. If you can find someway to make the work meaningful/Purposeful it may help.

Mindware.com books my son loves these. These are exciting to him and they have lots of learning away from the normal Math.

Mental Math Book

Computer Games

Murderous Math - I've not done these but people here have suggested them.

Play card or domino math games.

also remember, this is only one day, or one week that is not good tomorrow could be so much better. All Math excitement does not have to be lost over one bad day. I have to tell myself this all the time. It's hard balancing being on top of things with knowing when to back away a little to let things run there course. I'm not saying this is your issue, but I can empathize.

My homeschooled twice-exceptional 11 year old son also likes competition and plays the game Who Has the Biggest Brain on his iPhone. It posts his scores on Facebook so that his friends can see it and try to beat his score. He is competing with a college kid so he is motivated to keep increasing his mental math speed. He did very little math last year, but ever since he found online games like this and I let him use books with lots of the word problems he likes, he likes math again and will do it without being told to do it.

My son also loved competing in our state's spelling bee a few years ago. Without the competition I don't think he would have learned the thousands of words he learned. He loves trivia. Any kind of trivia. He is thinking about joining another 4H group now that does horse riding competitions, not because he is that interested in horse riding, but because the leader is a veterinarian and she is teaching the kids about veterinary medicine involving horses and she requires homework and they compete against each other with quizzes over the material.

My son seemed gifted in math when he was tested by an educational psychologist right after he turned 7. At that time the WIAT showed he was working at a 4th grade level but he lost interest and began to hate math when his motor dysgraphia made it difficult for him to do the writing that was required. Competition that doesn't require writing is helping rekindle his interest in math.

Even piano recitals are a competition for him and he will practice harder when he has a recital coming up.

I call the sweet spot the 'readiness level' - maybe I stole the term, maybe I made it up, but it helps me realize that it's something my child deserves, not something 'special' that I can get for him if I try really hard.

Of course your daughter's level of product is 'uneven' if she is being taught at the bottom, or below her readiness level. If it was really seriously below, then she wouldn't perform at all. This is just a 'law of nature,' not a personality quirk. How am I so sure? I have no idea! It just seems like the decent thing to do.

You wouldn't ask 5th graders to go to first grade and learn to count - it wouldn't be decent. Remember all those TV movies where a perfectly bright child is thought to be retarded because they have a hearing difficulty that is missed? We all cry over the terrible indecency of those weird situations. And do we ever ask, 'do you think that child can catch up later?' I'll be some do, but I'll bet most don't. But we don't even ask, we just assume that putting a child that far below their readiness level isn't a decent thing to do.

OK, so my question is this - the reasonable way to solve this is finding an 'in school' accomidation. Is there a 6th grade in your daughter's school? Can she take the bus to the middle school in the AM? Can she take a class online, or do partial homeschooling for Math? Can she place out of Math all together and go to the library and do an independent study? Do they have a math team at her school or the middle school? Is there a math circle within driving distance the she can do one the weekends?

If all else does fail, yes I would insist on 10 minutes a day of Aleks.com, monday through friday, just to get her the idea that 'in our family, everyone works - and your work is to challenge yourself.' My son 'had' to be skipped in 5th grade due to the fact that he had such a bad attitude - he only wanted to do what the teacher had assigned everyone else. That pull to 'be like everyone else' will come soon enough - and it has some advantages, but it can be an intellectual disaster!

I do consider my son to be a 'reversed underachiever' but that was quite a struggle, and he sure doesn't see himself as being similar to the 'good/compliant' kids in his honors classes this year. His dream is to be the 'gothed-out' kid who graduates with all As and all honors classes, even thoush he certianly isn't 'goth.' Maybe he would be like that anyway, but I think that his long early years of enforced underachievement gave him a jaundiced view of 'athority figures.'

We all do the best we can at the time - but I'm so glad that you don't have to figure this out all on your own, they way I did!
Grinity

Also, she might like to master the Rubix Cube and see how fast she can whirl those squares. Directions are on YOuTube. ((wink))

I think that for females, it is particularly easy to 'forget' that one can function. I think that there is still 'enough' sexism in the air that one can't help absorbing that we parents have to be particularly careful of females 'getting used to' being underchallenged. Also, as one spend more time inside their 'readiness level zone' then they become calmer and more flexible. If a child spends too much of their learning time chronically underchallenged, then the readiness level zone shrinks and sometimes becomes a negative space - you know, the kids who are bored by everything easy, and quit at the first sign of anything difficult. Good for you for committing yourself to 10 minutes of 'mom-homework.' Yippee!

Me too! I think it's an ENTP thing,but I totally had to learn from DS to appreciate competition. I not only disliked it, I didn't understand the appeal of it. Some writers, such as Sylvia Rimm love it. I'm happy that my DS13 is reading 'The Fountainhead' now, because (I snuck a peek at his book report) it is teaching him to be less concerned about what other people think and more willing to follow his own morals. Yippee!

Grinity

If there is any way you can get her school to allow her to do self-paced online math instruction (we're working up to asking DS's school for that, but haven't done it yet), then I suppose she could compete with herself to see how fast she can progress through the material...

Have you considered trying to redirect her from math facts and standard elementary math curriculum topics to more beautiful and mysterious mathematical topics? I got a lot of mileage with DS by talking about the Fibonacci series, Pascal's triangle and prime numbers. G is for Googol might get her started. This might rekindle an interest, and if it did, she wouldn't be competing with classmates on these topics.

I'm not sure that either of these ideas actually address your original question, though...