Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Math development

I just looked at some of the PBS math development pages, 'casesomeone posed them on the puzzels thread.

That's not for real, is it? I mean, they expect 4 yr olds to do basically not much more than 2 yr olds. (My almost-2 is pretty much an "average" 4, though he can't count out loud & so misses a bunch of those things, I didn't look at the five year old, though, if there's as little change, he might be there, too...)

I'm asking, really, because... well.... I'm ok with the 50% ahead thing, almost getting used to it, but... This just doesn't make sense to me. I'm SURE I've had perfectly good conversations with a lot of little kids about this stuff, DS has NOT seemed inordinatley ahead in these things... I'm just confused, that's all.

I know this sounds a bit daft, but I'm *sure* a lot of this stuff is just to make 63.7% (or so) of the population think their kids are in the top 10%. How could there be THAT little CHANGE over time?

-Mich (really, didn't someone show that 4 month olds could recognise the differences up to about 5 not that long ago?)

I consider enumeration to be the first real math milestone, and this is one that truly can take awhile to master. I think it said that the average 4.5 year old was enumerating up to the number five. That is assigning a number to each object and understanding that the last number has significance to the group. I believe that enumerating to three or even four is pretty normal even at 18 months. I would not even blink an eye if a 12 month old understood two of something.

In fact, under the 2 year old milestones PBS does say that a few children will be enumerating up to five items. So, it must not be that odd. But, regularly enumerating higher than five earlier than that is remarkable in my book. I wouldn't get worked up about it. I would just know that this could be his "area".

It would be clearer to me if you gave some examples. I am having a hard time imagining what else he could possibly be doing with numbers without actually speaking them.


I actually thought these milestones were pretty spot on. I have seen worse. But, I don't ever really rely on PBS for milestones. I think you need to remember that these data were the result of a comprehensive surveys of children from all backgrounds. Some of these four year olds may very well have been able to complete these tasks had they been exposed to the concepts more.

I also think that 18 months-2 years can be a hard age as far as looking at milestones. Kids develop in spurts. A lot of times looking at milestone charts or comparing to peers can make you scratch your head now, but I *swear* it gets better. There is just such a wide range of normal at this age. But, later...your son will still be different, but milestone charts are out the window, and it won't be so painfully obvious when compared to his peers.

I do not think that this stuff is to make people think their kids are in the top %10. This website seems to be a fun way to see what your child should be doing at each age and may also be used for parents to catch delays. It also seems to be a vehicle for advertisements.

I really don't think that they are making these lists so parents feel that their kids are smarter. Just looking through the list of the 2-3 year olds I see some areas that DD is right on mark with (more of the language skills). For instance, it says that 2 year olds can sing the ABC song. Yep, DD just learned that a couple of weeks ago. However, it also says that they don't recognize letters (well, she's been doing that since she's 12 months old...).

A lot of my friends kids are ahead on this thing but then again I know my friend's school history and my 3 closest mom friends were all in gifted programs growing up (as well as their DH's) so my sample is pretty skewed. That being said we go to the playground often and at least when it comes to gross motor skills (I don't know all the details of these kids' lives so I can't say much more than that!) the lists seems to be pretty spot on. For instance, DH just met a kid today who still wasn't walking at 16 months but there's a wide range of normal for these things.

FWIW, there are a number of things DD can't do on the 4 year old list but others that she's well beyond (mostly puzzles and to a lesser degree route counting/number recognition). But she enumerates inconsistently. She used to go much farther with it (maybe 8 or so?) and now barely will do it with a handful of objects but her interests seemed to have moved on. She's definitely not doing simple addition/subtraction, though!

As to the question about change over time. Some toddlers just might not care about this stuff at all or are not exposed to much math stuff. DD's never been exposed to anything with gardening (unfortunately) so her skill set in that area has not changed at all over time.

Oh, he does speak numbers, just not often, and he can't count 1-2-3-4 etc out loud (he seems to do it in his head, since he ids numbers higher than most people can count by geshtalt). But he'll hand you 5 of something and say "five" often enough it's not a fluke. I don't think he's gone higher than 9 or so. He can wait for the exact number of balls (in the ball run at the science center) to make the basket tip (the largest there is 7), but I did point that out to him when he was getting interested in really working out the sequence of events (he remembers sequences just fine, that was one of the milestones that stuck out at me, I HAVE to tell him the plan for the whole day or he gets upset, and he'll construct a "Pian" that has many steps). He'll keep looking until he finds x animals if you tell him there are x still needing to by tidied, or if he's taken some downstairs or whatever.

He totally can't say "three" -- he's been trying. It's hilarious. Once when he was working on it I said "once, twice, thrice" about something, and he stopped what he was doing and gave me this "You're not serious" look which was a total copy of one of my not-so-great habits. He's really pretty cute.

I have reason to believe there could be some good number genes floaing about, but... Maybe I'm just facilitating in some wierd way? It really seems to me most kids "get" numbers pretty well pretty young... They pretty much all get the "three times, no more" thing by 2.

I have no idea what he's *consistent* about, really. I don't quiz him or anything, well, ok,not much.

-Mich

There really is that little change over time. It's kind of crazy. My oldest could count (really count, not recite) to two at two, three at three, maybe ten at four and then find the lowest common denominator and regroup at five.

I didn't know how much dd just turned 4 last week was into numbers (and she really doesn't like to show me what she knows)--but she was just counting coasters when she thought I wasn't paying attention and counted them up to 20. I wonder if her teacher knows she is doing this...

That does sound cute!

RE sequencing: I am with you. I have this quote written down from 18 months: "First we eat, then we go to the playground. Yay!" My verbal girl loves to understand time and sequencing. She is a bit obsessed about this. She has close to 20 birthdays memorized, and can recite the order they come in. She had a solid grasp on how the seasons change well before she turned two. This seems to fall more in the verbal domain to me.

DD shows very little mathematical precocity. At 2.5 she can count objects assigning each a number with about 50% accuracy (luck). And, this is only up to 10. She THINKS she is always right. But, we are still waiting for it to click.

DD could eyeball 1 or 2 of something sometime before 18 months. She could do 3 of something shortly after that. She can now do up to 4 with 100% accuracy. In fact, she will eyeball a group of four, and then attempt to count them using 1:1, might completely skip one, yet still come up with four, because she knows it is supposed to be four just from eyeballing it.

So, that is my verbal girl.

What I really find interesting is the gender disparity among children and adults advanced at math. I know it is debatable, but that withstanding, is mathematical precocity overlooked in girls? Are boys nurtured more in the area of math? Is it biological? Does it have something to do with males tending to be more visual-spatial than women?

I honestly think it's definitely a gender-stereotyping thing. Just look at the toys marketed to boys: legos, puzzles, and video games. Girls get: dolls, books, and colors. The vast majority of presents for DD has been clothes/books/dolls. Even if we mention often that she loves puzzles and legos she never given any.

FWIW, I was IDed early on as a "math" kid but I think it wasn't a big leap for my family since my mom's side of the family are almost all in math/science careers. However, in the absence of that I could certainly see how a girl good at math could be missed. I've often seen that there is a stereotype that gifted children must be early readers/early speaker and a math girl might miss that boat. However, people generally believe boys develop latter so parents might be less hesitant to ID a boy who wasn't an early reader/early speaker simply because of his gender.

Another thing too... in my high school the girls that got the most notice for intelligence were always the girls that were good at language arts. They tended to be more verbal in class and more noticeable to teachers. My math/science classes all had male teachers and two, specifically, were really bad about being chummy with the guys (both actually happened to be coaches too).

I think there is definitely a lot of gender stereotyping going on, and girls may be pushed more in the direction of the arts and less in the direction of math in general. Still, I think it's probably less likely for that to happen to a greatly gifted child (at least one who's identified), who is likely to be ahead in most or all areas although not equally in all. Also, I seem to remember reading that girls score better on math tests than boys at some level in the U.S. (I think through high school and beyond), which would seem to indicate that today they may not be disadvantaged so much or so often by stereotypes in the early classroom here. In the U.S., the "no child left behind" crap has at least made sure that kids are taught roughly similar material at the same grade levels.

And teachers in U.S. elementary schools are predominantly female. That link suggests that young girls may learn better from women teachers, which of course doesn't completely negate the possibility that even women pass on anti-math stereotypes to young girls, but at least they're probably not predominantly getting taught math by men in the early years.

A list of Fields Medal winners:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal#Fields_Medalists

I am no chauvinist. I can't assign a reason to the fact that girls typically don't reach the upper echelons of math as much as boys, and I know there has been a tremendously damaging set of stereotypes against women worldwide. I just can't assume that there is nothing biological at work, and I sometimes play devil's advocate. I am interested to know the truth.

BTW I don't think that looking at lists of specially selected high achievers in math necessarily tells the whole story. For whatever reason (biological or cultural, due to simple preference for less "dry" theoretical work which might be highly cultural, whatever) female math super-achievers might be found more in other disciplines, using their math talents to good effect there, instead of in pure math.

I've asked that same question and argued the same argument but until some expert comes in and revamps the findings we are expected to accept the information as accurate.

My DD was counting before age one. She was fascinated with her grandmother's shirts that almost always had buttons on them so she would place her finger on each button and my mom would count them out. Simple enough and we didn't think anything of it, but while changing her one day she started counting. (Changing time tends to be when I got a lot of surprises. Besides her counting, I also found out she knew her left from her right when I was putting her socks on her.) By age two she was able to do basic addition and subtraction.

And for the ABCs, DD knew all of them by 9 months. Again, a fluke, a friend's toddler was over and I pulled out some little ABC books for him. DD was intrigued and after he left she would pick up each book and ask "What's this?" and "What's that?". Within 3 months she had learned all of her ABCs, but as for singing the song ... we didn't really get around to it for another year or so. I figured she already knew all the letters so it wasn't really important for her to know order and she would eventually learn it. Didn't take her long once she heard it.

So imagine how ridiculous the lists seemed to me. I thought for sure the milestones were not even closely right. I was clearly in the middle of GT denial. LOL