I hate to even open this can of worms
When we decided to adopt our son I never gave much thought to the possible differences between us that are related to DNA.
When you have a bio child I suppose you say things like, "He gets his athletic ability from his dad" or "She would trip over her own feet just like her mom".
Or, yep - he is MENSA material just like his parents.
Right now we are struggling at our house. The Boy just doesn't get math. His dad is a mathematical genius and I was in advanced math all through high school. (Although I sucked at geometry and I don't care who knows it. It was a stupid class.)
I got out of him tonight that he talks and goofs off during math so he can bring it home and we'll help him with it. But he admitted, it's too hard.
We are both just sick about it. We spent 2 hours on math homework tonight and didn't even get it finished. I want to get him the help he needs and intend to start the wheels rolling in that direction tomorrow.
And I know there's no guarantee that our bio child would be a math whiz.
But I do have to wonder.
When you have a bio child I suppose you say things like, "He gets his athletic ability from his dad" or "She would trip over her own feet just like her mom".
Or, yep - he is MENSA material just like his parents.
Right now we are struggling at our house. The Boy just doesn't get math. His dad is a mathematical genius and I was in advanced math all through high school. (Although I sucked at geometry and I don't care who knows it. It was a stupid class.)
I got out of him tonight that he talks and goofs off during math so he can bring it home and we'll help him with it. But he admitted, it's too hard.
We are both just sick about it. We spent 2 hours on math homework tonight and didn't even get it finished. I want to get him the help he needs and intend to start the wheels rolling in that direction tomorrow.
And I know there's no guarantee that our bio child would be a math whiz.
But I do have to wonder.
posted by Well-heeled mom @ 9:10 PM
4 Comments:
At 9:53 AM,
Erin said…
We're finding that K has some learning issues also. P (our bio kid) is very, very smart, and both J and I have advanced degrees. What we finally realized was that K has a very different learning style than the rest of us. He is far more kinesthetic than we'd realized--the rest of us can learn by watching, reading, writing, hearing. P in particular has almost 100% auditory recall (it's scary sometimes). K almost exclusively learns from putting his hands on things. We're just now figuring out how to help him learn, and he's starting to catch up on some of the things in which he'd fallen behind. He's not quite 4, so I'm not worried now that I think we've got a better handle on it. It's not easy since the rest of us think in a different way, but we're slowly figuring it out. Most kids learn colors around age 2 1/2 or so. K just learned them in the last two weeks--but once he did, he learned them all. It was just a matter of finding the right key for his lock.
I wonder if it's worth doing a formal learning assessment on The Boy to see if it could be something like this also.
At 2:57 PM,
Yo-yo Mama said…
Ah, Math. How I hated the math. And history. Instead I excelled in Language and Arts. My son does well with Math, but as you know struggles deeply with reading and comprehension. It's the luck of the draw in most cases.
Since you two excel at math, you might feel more frustrated than usual b/c it is so easy for you. Make sure to ask his teacher if she's noticed, and then ask about finding a math tutor for him. They will be objective and might have a different take on how math works.
I have a good friend who is a math whiz. To her numbers are infinite. That's just how her math head works. On the other hand, I believe numbers to be very limited: 10 numbers, 0 to 9. It's just a matter of how you put them together that's infinite.
At 9:12 PM,
Cricket said…
Hey - it's been a while!
I'm a math/science/art person, ex is history/English, but we were both always avid readers. Our 13 yr old son is a math/science/art/history person who runs away from English. He refuses to read and never spontaneously picked up a book until he was at least 10. At that time, he read a Star Wars series and then never picked up the parallel series - I was so excited at him reading, I'd purchased him the whole next set for the holidays and he never read one.
Even though we are blood relatives with him, ex and I have had a very difficult time relating to him and his disdain for books. It is a source of contention.
It took a lot to get my son help in reading when he was younger, but he's actually very good at it now, does great on state tests, but it doesn't seem that he'll ever voluntarily read. Perhaps your son will be similar. It is a painful process.
At 5:20 AM,
Anonymous said…
Lovey Girl is too young to know about any academic strengths yet, but she's SO different from us. I really was a "nature vs. nuture" believer however my belief is slowly leaving. I had the dream of a mini-me yoga lover, but I don't think that's going to happen.
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