I say this carefully and with full understanding of the ramifications. You may need to learn. It really depends on how much you want to support your son. And I don't mean that in a snarky way, more your parenting philosophy. Philosophically, do you want to support his weakest skills so his best skills can fly; or do you want him to develop more evenly and with more of a focus on independence? Both are valid choices, and both lead to good outcomes. I think it depends on the parent and the child. For my family, we chose the first option. I learned how to support his violin. I could not play, but I could study what needed to be done during practice, what I should look for with how he was playing the violin so he didn't fall back into bad habits. At one point, after he broke his arm at age 11 and it finally came out of the cast, I stood with him for Every. single. moment. of. every. single. practice and held a pencil next to his wrist to make sure his wrist did not pancake. That was for 4 full weeks. My dh even researched how to support him develop a better vibrato. Because ds had broken his arm, it was tricky to do vibrato (his was too jerky because the nerves had been impacted by the break) and his teacher was struggling to give specific instructions as he had never taught a kid vibrato who had a broken arm heal that way. My dh watched videos of different techniques, and then worked for 2 full years, trying this and that with our ds until he was successful. As for preparing for competitions, ABRSM is similar to competitions, in that there are winners (ds won top scorer for all instruments and all grades k-12 when he was 13). To prepare, I went through the syllabus and studyied what the judges were looking for, how each step could improve his ability (not just his score). I sat with him while he memorized 50 scales (which on the violin is quite a thing), we tracked with a little chart how each one was progressing, what he could remember first time accurate. It took him 8 weeks of 30 minutes a day on scales only to get them done (separate from all the other preparation). The chart was a very visible remind of what needed to be accomplished. In addition, my dh did all the ear work *with* him at night - 100s of hours. My dh didn't know the ear work, but learned it with him. My boy had an auditory processing disorder, so ear work was close to impossible to master. In fact, violin itself was close to impossible to master given he couldn't hear the notes. He could not hear what was in tune. He became such an amazing violinist through sheer drive and intellect. He used other parts of his mind to compensate for his learning disability, and then slowly every so slowly rewired his brain to overcome it. And throughout all this work, we were in it WITH him. BUT we did not force him to play, we did not nag him, it was all directed by him. We would tell him what needed to be done by the exam date, then lay out the plan together that we thought would work. We talked about buffer time at the end, and mental well-being in the middle of the frustration of the picky details. We drove him to lessons, rehearsals, string group, orchestra, and performances. We lived violin. This was our choice to be this involved. There are different parenting philosophies and the above was our choice, made with much reflection and self-evaluation along the way to make sure we were the parents we wanted to be. But I will say that there is NO WAY that my ds would be so accomplished and find violin his best friend if we had not walked this path with him. The auditory processing disorder was a major hurtle to overcome, and it was not one he could have done by himself. So I guess what I am saying, is that maybe you need to sit down and have a good hard think as to what it is you believe about the role of a parent, and what you think is best for this specific child. And then implement that approach.

My older boy played enough that he developed fiddler's neck, an infection of the practice mark on the neck of violinists. In the end, the solution was a antimicrobial silver-infused cloth that he wears every time he plays/practices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler's_neck

I sure you know all about asymmetries in highly gifted kids. Mine struggled with executive function skills for years (as in until he was 20 or even 21). For my high asymmetric kid, I acted as his executive function piece of his brain for years, but I did it *while* training him to do it himself. I described above the types of questions I needed to ask. We tried writing it, drawing it, orally talking, sticker charts, paper chains, self-rewards, we basically tried every single thing I could think of. For us it was an unbelievably long process -- 10+ years. My ds was taking grad-level math classes at MIT as a freshman while still calling me for help on trying to figure out how to prioritise homework each day. But slow and steady wins the race, and it is obviously a valuable/critical skill to learn. IMHO, there is some indication that your ds may have a learning disability in executive function skills or at least a major asynchrony. I would suggest you meet him where he is at and work every so carefully and slowly to help him master these skills. I will also agree with 8. You have people in your life who can see your son and give you feedback as to how to handle this very special situation. However, I will tell you that when my ds was about 9, he got super intense with his math. Hours upon hours a day. In the end, I hid the book until we could come to an agreement. Now, he was pushing himself so hard that he would cry for hours while continuing to work and would refuse all help. But I could see that the intensity was unhealthy. Sounds like this is not the case for your ds, but I did want to say that if you see it heading towards something unhealthy, you should intervene. It is just a circuit breaker, not an end to the passion. My ds just needed a week off and a new, more balanced approach.

It sounds like he must love it to play so much. Maybe it is time to stop competitions and just embrace the love.

This is great advice. It is easy to over play a piece. Our ds's teacher had him learn a piece for the performance early, then take a break for a month and do other things, then loop back around before the exam and perfect it. We also used video recording so that ds could critique himself.

Yes, Grade 8 at 16, and Diploma at 17. And he is still taking weekly lessons 5 years later! My ds's highschool teacher thought that going through the exams rounded out a musician's skill set. The 4 areas are: performance (with accompaniment), scales, sight reading, and oral skills. I think ds would agree that these were incredibly valuable skills to learn and was very glad that he learned them. Scales with a violin force you to learn to hear the notes, sight reading allows you to learn new pieces faster, and oral skills teach you how to play with other musicians and appreciate music by ear. As for Theory, ds only did up to grade 5 theory which is the minimum required to move ahead with the higher level exams. Theory helped him to understand how music is put together. Sure he could just play it if he can read music, but to really understand why something sounds good requires some theory. Also ABRSM is not just designed for performers, it is also designed for people who want to compose music. For that, theory and oral skills are pretty important.

My older boy is a serious musician (national level here in NZ), but at age 9 he was still doing the suzuki style and did all his playing with his father who was also learning. At about the age of 12, we were told that he needed to begin the process of learning independently. We were told that he would slow down at first (like for 6 months) and then speed up as he learned to self regulate and self-teach. If he/you want to do competitions, then you need to have the focus be about making a plan and keeping/adjusting the plan. Continual evaluation and self-reflection is key. How did it go yesterday? What should you change? Are you overpractising? If it is getting boring, how can you fix that? What schedule will allow you to meet your goals? How can you handle set backs? How will you deal with frustration? Etc. You need to be doing this type of conversation all the time. Like every day. My older started ABRSM exams at the age of 9, and this is the process we went through. It took until about 16 for him to master it, and be able to prepare himself for one of these exams (they require a LOT of prep - as in 100+ hours). So, basically, at the age of 9, you need to be heavily involved. But your role is not to convince him to practise, rather your goal is to teach him how to self-reflect, self-evaluate, set daily goals. Rince and repeat. This is an outstanding long-term goal and one that will serve him well in all areas of life.

I've been thinking a bit more about this. He and I came to an understanding that writing was a critical skill. We also came to an understanding that his AoPS proofs were a huge amount of writing (2-4 page long proofs each week 11 months per year), and they were graded for clarity, style, and proofreading. Thus, we agreed that for both English and SS classes he needed only about 4-6 papers per year in total (depending on length). We also agreed to work together one hour per day 4 days per week on writing. This could be me teaching him techniques, sitting in solidarity while he wrote independently, or having a competition where we would each write on the same prompt with me have a handicap in time to make it fair. So 4 hours per week, 40 weeks per year for 4 years TOTAL for writing across all subjects except math. This work was done WITH me side by side at the table. My point is that we made a time goal, not a content goal for writing. We also agreed to 1 hour per day 4 days a week on science. He typically could do this independently, but sometimes I taught him how to write essay questions for chemistry or physics, or taught him how to deal with organic chemistry. I wanted him to deal with one class that was a synthesis class based on memorizing content and applying it to new problems, and we agreed on orgo. I taught him how to memorize and apply his knowledge. This was a skill I thought he needed for university. Outside of these 8 hours per week that were mostly with me or with me confirming he was working, he did his own thing. He was a kid with goals, so I didn't have to give him assignments or confirm he was working. This time he spent on math, music, and reading. He was empowered to direct his own learning and was not given grades for this work until the end when I had to make a transcript. What is interesting is that even with this non-schooly approach in high school, he was named a Burchard Scholar at MIT for excellence in his work on philosophy and ethics. So this approach of a HUGE amount of reading (20+ hours per week) with a bit of directed writing (4 hours per week) was very effective for him. What is also interesting is that I struggled to come up with enough 'classes' to look like he had a full schedule even though he did a solid 6 hour academic day +3 hours reading per night. 'Classes' are in the eye of the beholder, and my eyes were opened as I tried to organise and classify his learning into little boxes that admissions could understand.

This has nothing to do with the OP topic lol, but I found the SS classes for each kid. My older did US history in a world context (we actually only did from 1840-1970, so that is what I stated in my course descriptions) Contemporary World Problems (interest led over 4 years - 4 years of daily Economist, Sci Am, and Nat Geo reading) Philosophy (interest led over 2 years with both nonfiction and fiction) 0.5 Economics of Inequality - we read and discussed Piketty's book Capital 0.5 Comparative Government (A get it done class because it looked like he needed it for where he was applying) My younger boy has done World History - with trade books Geography - with trade books (Guns, Germs, and Steel + Collapse, NZ Geographic, National Geographic) The Social, Economic, and Political Impact of Colonialism on Africa Physical and Cultural Geography of the Mackinzie Basin, NZ 0.5 NZ Demographics (comparing the causes and consequences of European vs Māori demographics over 150 years) 0.5 The Causes and Consequences of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami - (the physics of waves, the immediate response, and the long term social and economic impact. This course also studied how International aid agencies work.) 0.5 The history of Early NZ 1800-1840 (Pre Treaty of Waitangi -- the founding document of NZ) 0.5 Māori worldview, values, and protocols. (also includes some history and language)

We did math and science as classes with set content based on textbooks. Everything else was us winging it. NZ's system allows for specialization, so for my ds to 'graduate' he only needed to take the equivalent of AP chemistry, physics, calculus, and 11th grade English exams - so FOUR official classes for highschool. Every single other 'class' we did was however we wanted to do it. And they weren't really 'classes' sorted by year, we were just living an academic life. So at the end when I had to create 'classes' I just picked stuff that went together from multiple years and pulled it into a 'class.' This is how we did output too. For example, in 9th grade he and his dad and brother were still doing read alouds for modern history, so I got him to write 3 essays on some history topics. Then he wanted to do a research paper on Islamic State (which had nothing to do with what they were reading). When I went to make up classes, I took that research paper on IS and put it into his contemporary world issues class. That class was the one where he read the Economist, Scientific American, and National Geographic for 4 years. So the research paper was done in 9th grade and folded into that 'class'. I put a statement on my transcript, something like "classes are listed in the year the majority of work was done." (My younger one was the kid who did all the really really deep research papers - on colonialism in Africa, and the Indian ocean tsunami etc) Point is we didn't really negotiate output exactly. More, he agreed he needed to learn to write, so wrote about 5 papers per year on whatever he wanted, and then I divved them up into in English and SS classes when I was making a transcript. Basically, we were academic, but not schooly. We took a life-long learner approach, rather than a school-class approach. I planned what I wanted to do each year (content and skills), but left open a massive window for him to adjust the class to fit his interests as we were going along. Kind of the planning is essential, plans are useless approach.

Just a been-there-done-that experience that has long term implications.... My older boy did Algebra based physics in high school because that was what was on the national exams here in NZ. He did not try to place out of Freshman physics at MIT, and rather took an excellent 'honors' 2-class sequence that was amazing, and he never regretted taking. However, the implication was that he was a year behind all the other physics majors. Almost all the physics majors had taken AP physics, and started 2nd year physics courses Freshman year. Because physics classes cascade in the first 2.5 years, ds could not ever catch up (mechanics, EM, wave, Quantum 1, quantum 2). He could only start doubling up to catch up in his junior year. This became a problem when applying to top grad programs as he did not have enough grad-level physics classes to compete well. Some schools were suggesting that he have 3 grad-level classes, which of course meant that he had to have done that by the end of junior year before he applied, which he couldn't do because the classes cascade. He is also a year 'behind' now in grad school, and his advisor keeps forgetting that ds is still taking classes that other advanced kids took in undergrad. It worked out fine in the end, but just thought one more data point of personal experience might be useful.

I did want to mention that each 'course' does not need to take the same amount of time or have the same testing requirements. For example, math was with AoPS and could take 3 hours per day. But for Comparative Government, we used an AP prep book and had him read it and take the little multiple choice quizzes at the end of each chapter and call it done. So like 30 minutes a day for 3 months. We thought Government would likely be a required class for a number of US colleges he was applying to, so it was a get it done class. Also, instead of history, we did social sciences which allowed for more rabbit trails: philosophy, contemporary world problems, economics of inequality. And these courses were reading and discussion only. Without being tested and judged, they were joyful. I wouldn't call any of them 'easy', but they were not a slog because he was in complete control of what the course looked like. For example, for philosophy after he had read some library books on the great thinkers, he decided to read Godel Esher and Bach which is a very difficult computer science classic on consciousness. I folded that into philosophy. Point is, rigor is on an independent axis to testing/assignments/scheduling. One is based in learning and the other in schooling.

Found it. This was my write up concerning my ds when he was 15. I'm not sure what I was responding to, but it gives a feel for how dysgraphia impacted my ds's math capability, and how hard we worked to remediate it..... An event 3 years ago (DS age 12) really impacted how I perceive of showing your mathematical workings. My younger son was struggling to write, so we took him in to get tested for dysgraphia. They worked him through a battery of tests that took 2 days and about 5 hours. I was in the room because he wanted me to be. He was 11 at the time. For the math section, the final question was something like you have 5 oranges and 8 apples costing $20, and 8 bananas and 6 oranges cost $19, and 9 applies and 4 bananas cost $21. How much does each fruit cost? (this is not the question, just something like it). I got out a piece of paper and simply coded it as three equations and three unknowns, but then realized I was going to get fractional answers. Yuck! Well, my ds had not started algebra certainly had never done simultaneous equations, had never seen a problem remotely like this, plus he could not write. Although he was allowed to use paper, he did not touch it. It took him 15 minutes to get the answer. He did it in his head. To say that the examiner and I were flabbergasted, would be to undersell our response. Neither of us could figure out how he did it. It was an amazing display of both raw intelligence and memory. When we got home, I was really curious about how he did it. So we talked. I pulled out a piece of paper so I could actually write down what he did since he could not write, and what he explained made no sense. Clearly, he was using ratios in some way. But we had not yet covered ratios, so he had no words to describe his intuition. His 15 minutes of insight could not be coded into standard mathematical language. At least not by me. I was at a loss. Because my ds could not write, he did all of his math in his head, and had for years. I often scribed for him, but it was more me showing him what to write down rather than just writing verbatim what he told me to write. So that week during math, I tried to scribe for him by just writing exactly what he told me to write, and it became very clear that he had no idea. None. He could get the answer because of his mathematical insight, but he could not code it. Over the next year I came to understand that this was a piece of his dysgraphia. He could not *code* his thinking into mathematical language of expressions and equations. His thinking was web-like and based on intuition, it was not linear or really logical, and certainly not structured in a standard way. And I came to believe that this was going to be a bigger and bigger problem as he advanced in math. Given his amazing mathematical intuition, it would be sad for him to be limited in math because he could not write it down. His mathematical insight needed a strong linear, logical foundation of writing to be put to great use in higher math. This was the beginning of my journey to *teach* him *how* to show his work. It was absolutely not about showing *his* work because *his* work was a jumble of insight that could not be written down. It was about rewiring a piece of his brain so that he could take that jumble and code in into linear logical steps. This took 3 years. But this process showed me that there is more than one reason why students don't show *their* work. My son had to be trained not just which steps to write, but how to *think* like a mathematician. Intuition is a wonderful ability to have, but it simply won't get you far in math without proper mathematical thinking. And writing is thinking made clear. If you cannot write it, you are not thinking it. My point is, to ask a student to show *her* work, is the wrong approach in my opinion. You need to train a student to write the workings in a certain way, and that certain way when repeated day after day, year after year, will train a student to see math differently. It is no different than practicing scales in violin, over many years you train the ear to hear if notes are out of tune. Drill is what is required. So for my son, he had to drill proper workings to be able to train his brain to think linearly and logically. To do it the other way -- show your jumbled workings so I can see what you are thinking -- is to miss half of what teaching kids math is all about.

My younger boy has dysgraphia, which had a major impact on his math. I was searching through my files for the difficulties we had with math, and ran across this lovely little peak into his brain that although not about math, I thought many of you might find interesting. It just shows how complex the brain is, and how real learning disabilities are. I typed this. DS was 16 at the time. "It is not a processing speed problem. It is as if I'm missing a piece of my brains that allows it to make automated movements. Each different letter is not a single sign, it is a collect of strokes that I have to do. Y is 2 strokes; other people have a letter as 1 stroke, they even have whole words as a single movement. I tell my hand to write 'the.' It has no idea how to write 'the'. It tells my brain that. My brain say write a 't'. My hand says which stroke. I say the down stroke. Then it asks what's next. I say the up hook to connect to the h.... I am not drawing letters. I remember when I used to do this when writing thank you notes to grandma, I'm not doing that now. Each letter is composed of 2 or 3 different movements. Some letters are only 1 easy movement like a,e,d. O is hard for me as I do an o as an 'a-stop'. If I don't say stop, I write an a - so an 'o' is two movements. A's are one of the only letters that is automated. N and r are difficult. I naturally do an r, and have to think to extend it to an n. So an n is two steps - an r plus an extension.... It is as if I am on a moving walkway in the airport. My thoughts are like when I walk on the super fast moving walkway. Writing for me is like when you step off. There a physical shock of stepping off and feeling like you are wading through molasses. It is distracting..... When I try to write faster, my hand panics, and it starts to jitter and send signals to my brain saying 'panic.' This negatively impacts my brain, making it unable to send better and clearer signals to my hand."

Each ADHD kid is different, of course. The kid I'm thinking of, could not focus for more than about 90seconds, and then would need to do something else. I personally found it exhausting to try to help him. His parents did not want to medicate him, which I respect.This kid also was being forced by the school to just go way too fast. He was having to go to school, work with me 2x per week, do math homework after dinner, and wake up in the morning to do more math homework. He was working 7am to 9pm 5 days a week, and still had a ton of homework on the weekend. Clearly, way way too much. The problem I had was trying to work at the speed of the school, which for this kid was impossible. Could I have taught him without needing to keep him up with the class? I'm not sure. 90seconds is just not a lot of time to get an algebra concept cemented.

What does your son want to learn? How does he learn? What does your dh want to do? How much time is there each day or week?

I My point to all of this is that there is not 'math skill', rather there are many different components that come together to give a kid success in math. Most, but not all, can be remediated.

My understanding is that the number of neural connections are what give you general intellegence, and the number of neurotransmitters give you speed. So the kid I taught with slow processing speed, had plenty of neural connections to get through calculus, but just not enough chemicals to allow her to work at a neurotypical speed.

I almost put that one in my above list but ran out of time. I have taught 2 kids with dyslexia that had trouble with math because of it. Dyslexia is a decoding problem, and math does require decoding. This problem can be remediated with time. With the kids I taught, they could not do algebra because they could not do fractions, and they could not do fractions because they had not learned their multiplication facts. This is a standard problem with dyslexia but in my experience, dyslexic kids who could not learn their multiplication tables when young, can do it at about 14. So both got them memorized, then I taught them fractions, and then algebra. The only math kids that I have been unable to help is those with ADHD and the kid whose memory was so bad. The ADHD kids simply cannot focus long enough to learn anything, and the kid with the poor memory could understand math and do it, but then couldn't remember it 5 minutes later. The kid with truth dyscalculia would never be able to learn algebra and there was no reason to try. However, we just switched to qualitative stats. The kids with ADHD and the bad memory could not even do qualitative stats.

Yes, that sounds like what happened.

@cintinative My understanding is that learning disabilities are just the bottom of a bell curve, but they are then compared to your general IQ. So if your IQ is low, and your math skill is low, it is not a learning diability. There has to be a decently different percentile to 'count'. That of course does not help a kid who is struggling. I'm a math tutor, and I have seen a lot of stuff. IMHO, the idea that math skill is a single thing that can be measured is ridiculous. Here are some examples of what has caused poor outcomes in math for some of the kids I have worked with. 1. Poor memory. You can teach them something and they simply forget. This requires drill drill drill unfortunately. But I have seen it bad enough that there was no way to remediate it. So a kid who couldn't learn his math facts. I sat with him for 10 minutes with THREE cards 2*7 3*7 and 4*7, and he could not remember them after 10 minutes of drill. This kid could understand math and do it, but would forget it in 5 minutes. That is a kid who will never be good at math because nothing would ever build. 2. Slow processing speed. You can be conceptually very good at math, but then not able to do it fast enough. This can cause a kid to never be able to keep up with a class because everything is just so slow to get done. This is a chemical in the brain issue and cannot be remediated. The solution is individualized program that just goes way slower, or spends way more time each day on math (like 2 hours). The kid I worked with was able to get through calculus, but had to do double the time of a typical student, so like 2+ hours a day 7 days a week. 3. Poor working memory. This is a kid that simply cannot store anything in the brain at all. You especially see this in geometry, where kids often 'see' things, but it is actually a big picture thing they see with some sort of leap. Kids with poor working memory are terrible at geometry because the big picture requires working memory. But they can often be taught algebra because they can simply write every single thing down, even the smallest steps. This will however slow them down. 4. Poor language skills. A lot of math has reading in it. I taught a kid who at the age of 14 could not tell you the answer to "you have 3 apples and I give you 5 more, how many apples do you have?" She did not know if you add, subtract, multiply or divide. However, she could do 3 by 3 digit multiplication and division by hand, and could divide 2 and 1/3 by 5 and 1/7 by hand. This required us to go back to first grade problems and just do LOTS and only slowly build up. By 19 she was taking Calculus. She is now in actuarial science. 5. "true" dyscalculia. This is a kid that has no number sense. I had a kid who had been tested with dycalculia, so I wanted to see how bad it was. I asked her to add 9-7. Using a TALLY CHART, it took her 2 mintues to get 3. Yes 3. She, however, was amazing at language. So I got her through 2 years of statistics with a calculator. She could not pass algebra because she could not understand numbers, but she could USE math to solve problems because she understood language. She just needed a calculator.

LOL. 65sq meters is about 650 sq feet, so I got my unit wrong! I have, however, lived in 200 sq feet with my dh and a baby. Now that was a bit tight.

I always find it so interesting that most people on this board are either rural or suburban. There are some city folk like us, but not many. I really feel for your transportation issues - it is just such a huge issue for so many of you. My younger boy had 9 activities per week because he loved loved loved being out and engaged in the world. But starting at the age of 12 he walked or bused to all but one. So while he was gone in the afternoon, I picked up tutoring for high pay and squirrelled away some money. City living is expensive, and we lived in only 65 sq feet with 2 children, but from the point of view of transportation, it was worth it.

Sometimes it just takes longer for some kids, and sometimes kids do better as they get older and their brain matures. I totally get the secondary math being frustrating thing. I am in the camp of doing math that is useful for kids like your daughter. Qualitative statistics would also be a good choice.

I did not implement the writing program that I laid out. Instead, I did what you mentioned above, I used bits and pieces from all the curriculum that I had read and taught it on a need to know basis. Basically, by reading all the different programs, I now knew how to teach writing and didn't need to follow them as written. LToW: Agreeing with Cintinative, you can use the ANI chart and the 5 common topics without getting buried in LToW Writing across the curriculum: this is done exactly as you described. You use the topics your kids is learning about, and teach them how to write with those topics. It is much more efficient and usually more fun than a separate writing curriculum. So on the first essay, you make sure they know the 5 paragraph essay style and have them focus on that. Then you read it, and make 3 suggestions for edits - maybe one structural, one gramatical, and one stylistic. Then you start the new paper. You pick something to teach, maybe the hook and have him focus on that. Now you expect the essay to have both the 5 paragraph structure and the hook. Then you pick 3 things to edit on that paper and move on. Rince and repeat. Oral compositions: Have him orally write a paragraph. So if you are working on the hook. Have him say to you in 'written language' not casual oral language, a hook for 3 different topics that he is not going to write down, but is just practicing orally. We also used to play an oral game called 'the best' that I made up. As fast as you can, tell me why the color paint used on my wall is the best. Next time it could be 'tell me why this style of heater is the best', "Why is xxx character in xxx movie is the best?". Whatever you want. First they list the 3 things. Then they have to orally write a very short 5-paragraph essay arguing for the best. You do it too, where they pick the topic. It is a fun game, and you can make it harder and harder by picking things that the kid knows less and less about or that are more and more silly. 'why are those clouds the best?' 'Why is the drain outside our back door the best?' Anything you want. Really helped my kid get faster at thinking and writing the basics. Grammar: if you love it, do it! My older boy loved it and did heaps.