Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How can he not see the problem?

DH and I are very frustrated with DS8's schoolwork and grades. He gets 100% on virtually everything he actually does and pays attention to, but is frequently getting horrible marks because he'll only do half the problems on an in-class assignment. When asked why, he says he didn't see the questions. The other issue is that he sometimes won't read the entire question, so he answers incorrectly. We know he knows the content. Frankly, he's capable of much harder. And if you ask him verbally, he knows the answer.

We have been working with him since 1st grade on checking his work. Things got better in 2nd, but now it's AWFUL AND he's getting letter grades this year. He's upset because his grades aren't perfect. We're upset because his grades don't reflect what he knows, and we think it's important for him to learn this proofreading skill now.

With homework, DH & I rarely point out what is wrong or where the issue is - we just tell him when it's not completely correct, so he can review his work. This usually leads to a frustrating 20 minutes where DS has fits saying he CAN'T find any problem. We frequently end up sitting with him and pointing to the questions, and having this dialog: Us: "Number one: Is this right?" Him: "Yes" Us: "Number 2: Is this right?" etc... until we have gone through every problem. Doing this, he is almost always able to find the issue. We can't understand why he can't do this same technique without us.

Is it laziness? Is it lack of focus? Is it his attempt to move on to something more interesting? Whatever it is, any suggestions to fix it? I know I've seen other threads here on similar issues. I haven't been able to find them this morning. I would love it if anyone has suggestions.

Now the poor thing says he "can't do math to save his soul" because he got another bad mark in that yesterday. And he's good at math -- qualified for CTY with Math and Verbal scores, and won high honors for the Verbal. Not sure how he's going to react when he sees he also got another bad mark in Language Arts.

We've requested a meeting with the teacher to see if she has any ideas/suggestions.

If you've read this far, thanks a bunch. I appreciate anything you might add. I'm going to stop pulling out my hair over this and get a cup of coffee.

I would have him assessed for learning disabilities or other problems. If nothing is found, I guess you just have an absent-minded youngster. He wouldn't be the first bright, absent-minded kid. I know from experience.

I would try not to stress about the bad marks in the meantime. He's not closing off future opportunities at such a young age. You have plenty of time to address this problem.

Is it possible that he's rebelling?

We had this same problem in our house. One of the reasons we saw it was more evident was in the lack of challenging work. We have since been accelerated a grade and this is much less of a problem. Sometimes I think the work is so easy that they often rush through it skipping over things.

We still have it happen on occasion (but again, it's usually on the things that were "review" and they were careless errors.)

I think sometimes their brains just move so fast they often overlook things. DD will do the same thing and we too, "Is that right? What's wrong with it? YOu find it." She would often "check" her work and couldn't find the mistake because she would be so sure what she did was right and would check her answer but not rework the problem without looking at what she orig. put. Again, it's always on things that are "too easy" that we make the most mistakes (careless errors, not lack of knowing how to do it. that's the difference!)

We go through similar stuff. My son got a 60 on a science test recently. I am positive he knew 100% of the material (because there was about ten minutes' worth). He must have missed a page or filled in bubbles in the wrong order, or something . It frustrates me because yes, he does need to learn to be careful and organize his work, but the expectations seem so one-sided!

His teacher is completely disorganized - doesn't update the grades online, doesn't send home graded assignments in a timely manner. It's my understanding that doing these things are school policy.

If they would just post homework assignments and test dates online it would save a lot of frustration. But that would not be "Teaching the kids to be responsible about writing down their work."

The tests my son takes are a joke - silly facts like what is a pocosin? Who cares? Why can't someone ask him about Alexander's contribution to military strategy or to discuss the fall of the Roman Empire? Just once in a while?

He is expected to be a perfect little robot when it comes to completely his busy work, but nobody offers him anything challenging and the teacher doesn't complete her own busy work.

I think as a parent it's a difficult position to be in. I don't want him to percieve me as being dismissive of the school. OTOH, I think the sloppy work and lack of attention to detail is both developmental and due to lack of challenge. What's especially frustrating is that the time spent on this nonsense could be spent actually learning something challenging and interesting.

I look forward to reading the responses.

Like lucounu said, I would recommend not emphasizing the grades. Instead I would stress the importance of developing the habit of carefully checking one's work. I was frustrated with DD8 missing easy questions in school this year because she would completely skip over them. She's learning it's worth the effort to review something before turning it in since otherwise the consequence is getting additional work at home. One of her classmates gets grounded for every question missed so I haven't gotten any grief about being unfair.

One thing I've found with kids I tutor is that having a specific assignment to DO something with the tiny details (negative signs in math and accent marks in language are my favorites) helps the kid actually see them. So I'll have them go through a whole page (or stack of flash cards, or whatever) highlighting every single one. Or for negative signs, while they're working, every time there's a negative sign circle it. Something - anything! to get them to pause for just a half a second right there. And I've had much better luck having them pre-check rather than going back to double check after work is done (they never think they did it all wrong!)

For written questions, where it's more than just a little negative sign, one thing that DS did for a while was to read the whole paragraph they had there but then underline the actual question. So like for a word problem, read all the information but underline just the part that says "How many apples does John have now?" (or whatever) Just slowing down to make sure he found the question and underlined it was sufficient for him to stop glossing over important parts.

If I had any really brilliant suggestions, I'd be using them, but I think it might just be the age. I was snapping at my own ds8 this morning and feeling like a lousy parent because he had done his math review and made some really silly mistakes. I felt bad because it is 5th grade math and I briefly thought, "is this just too hard?" but then I realized that the mistakes were all STUPID stuff - like having the right answer in the "work" area and copying it incorrectly to the "answer" area, or not including decimals, or adding 2 and 6 to get 12.
I think part of the problem IS the age. Ds10 rarely got perfect scores in 3rd grade, even though if you actually asked him to walk you through a problem, he knew it nearly 100% of the time. Now, in 5th grade, he usually does get perfect scores. We tried lots of different things with him in earlier grades: putting check marks next to each one he double-checked, circling the "question" that was really being asked, underlining the pertinent numbers in a word problem, and double-checking the answer with traditional math when they were asked to use goofy methods like partial sums. But honestly, the biggest solution was time- just waiting until he was able to develop those skills on his own.
Why is it important that your ds get good grades? I think that if it's just to teach him, you can let go a little and give him time. However, if it's important for the school so that they continue to give him enrichment or that he qualifies as gifted or something like that, then you have more of a problem. You might want to meet with the teacher or point out the type of mistakes he makes. I have a friend whose daughter would make silly mistakes no matter what, so she met with the teacher and requested that she be given more challenging work no matter how she performed. For example, if she breezed through the spelling list and made really silly mistakes, she would have her daugher learn both the regular and the accelerated list. If she made arithmetic errors on the pretest in math, she would ask that she still be given some of the advanced homework in addition to the regular stuff (because she knew that her dd knew the stuff, she just didn't think).
If the only issue is really grades, then the bottom line is that they don't matter that much in 3rd grade, so I'd let it go a bit (obviously, easier said than done, since I was the mom snapping about rushed and thoughtless work this morning, lol!). Oh, one other thing that helped was setting times for homework, IF he rushes through. My ds10 gets advanced work, but because his math teacher isn't sure how long it will take the small group of kids doing the alternate homework, she says, "set the timer for 20 minutes." It's actually been great to see him sit and spend the time on it. I am thinking about doing the same thing with ds8 - instead of him racing through his homework in ten minutes and making stupid mistakes, saying, "you need to work for 30 minutes on each of the four nights you have homework. If you race through your own, I'll give you a workbook." That might take away the incentive to finish quickly??
Theresa

Interesting thread. It has made me ponder the element of motivation, a distinguishing characteristic for the HG+ kids. If there is no motivation within the tasks assigned would the child not become bored and careless? There is no internal drive to conquer that which is beneath their abilities or seemingly a boring task.

I also think age has a lot to do with the issue. This idea of checking your work is something so easy for us to do but younger children ... is this not part of learning to learn? Perhaps with repetition from the parents and stepping through this idea the process will become natural to the child.

I love the idea of a pre-check. Thanks for the suggestion.
We too have found that "easy" questions = sloppy work.
DD10 is such a perfectionist that I actually welcome the mistakes. I never make a big deal about her making mistakes. They tend to happen when she isn't paying attention and she knows it.
With DD8, I find that she just doesn't see things sometimes -- skips a critical word or an entire question. She rushes through thinking that she knows what she is doing or what the question is. I can ask her to look at it again and she still seems to miss the same info. For her, I have to go back and break things down into more manageable pieces. I used to literally block off the rest of the page so that she could focus on one paragraph/question. Now she can do this without the visual aid. Sometimes it helps to have her read the question out loud and then she'll catch her mistake.

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I particularly like the idea of the pre-check and finding a way to cover up the other questions while DS focuses on only one.

As for why we're worried about grades, there are a couple reasons. DH and I worked hard to get the school to differentiate, and they have agreed to. Unfortunately, we're not seeing it unroll as we'd hoped, and aren't sure whether or not that's because of DS's grades. For instance, the teacher is supposed to differentiate in math but we haven't seen any so far. I hope to understand when we meet with the teacher whether that's because of DS's grades or some other reason. It is very difficult to push for differentiation when the grades aren't reflecting his abilities. I have a great deal of respect for the teacher, though, and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to come to an understanding that DS's lack of focus (or whatever) is not a good reason to hold back differentiation.

DH and I are not all-consumed with DS getting good grades (although having All As in 4th, which he's capable of, would qualify him for a 4-year scholarship which would be nice but is not something we're going to put pressure on DS for). Mostly, we see the grades as a symptom of a problem: DS's inability to proofread his own work. We think it's important that he learn how to do this in the early years before the grades really start to matter. We agree that it's part of learning how to learn, and want his good habits to be established early, so life is not harder later.