Help! Advice needed re: my 6 year old son's math struggles. Trouble focusing on details. (ASD parents please chime in too!)

[pehp]

I am looking for some advice from seasoned homeschoolers on an issue I am having with my son.  He's almost 7 and I suppose we are at the end of 'first grade'.  I feel like he's struggling right now in math a little bit, and I can't pinpoint exactly what the issue is. He's a very analytical child and will spend HOURS drawing pictures (he's a very good artist), designing sets/backdrops for play, designing and building a small lake with dam/spillway, etc.  He's on the spectrum, which mostly manifests for him in LOTS of talking about his current 'passion'. Uber-focused on the things that grab him.   He is doing well in reading (we do ETC and OPGTR, and he does fine with both; he's also sort of 'taking off' in reading now, finally, which may account for some of his math struggles--his brain is language-focused at this time?).  He enjoys the other things that we do for school.  But math is giving us some issues.  He seems to understand concepts just fine (addition, subtraction, simple multiplication, balancing equations) but at times it's like there's a WALL or a BLOCK and he just can't get around it; this results in wails of frustration or even crying.  For instance, today I asked him (as a preliminary to a problem we were doing) "so, fifteen minus what equals zero?" He totally understands this concept, but it was like he had a fuzzy brain.  He just couldn't seem to figure it out.  He puzzled for a second and then just got frustrated and started to get weepy. He even asked to use his c-rods. It was as though he couldn't focus, couldn't think straight or clearly...on a problem that is fundamentally simple. 

 

I can't determine what the problem is here.  He eats a decent breakfast (maybe he needs more animal protein at breakfast, EVERY day.....).  I'm not sure if the lesson is too long (more on that in a minute)--although he seems to have this issue of focusing at the beginning of a lesson just as much at the end, although I need to pay closer attention to that to be 100% sure; if he's somehow getting the concept but getting lost or confused when it comes to the 'details' (I'm a big-picture person and I am not interested in minutiae, so I sort of get that); if he's just being lazy (he typically doesn't want to start school, though once we get going he's okay); if he's just tired, or what.  I am not sure of the signs of learning problems--I wish my mother were alive because she was an LD specialist and a pro at figuring out children's needs.  I'd give anything to talk to her about this!

 

Today I timed the lesson and we spent 40 minutes on math. I was surprised at how long it took (this was for 2 pages of Miquon, Red book).  So I am pondering cutting it down to about 20 minutes per day for a while to see if we 'perk up' on this amount and are able to handle it better.  I don't want to fatigue him when he's already seeming to have problems focusing.  I also took the pencil and wrote the answers for the second page today; I am trying to streamline it for him so that his job is thinking, not writing (or ERASING--he'll dawdle!).  

 

I bought Muggins Math Knock-Out game and he and I played it last Sunday for the first time.  We loved it and he really enjoyed it (we played 2 games, just the 2 of us)....when we finished the second game he was ready to move onto something else.  But he did pretty well with figuring out the concepts (adding combinations of numbers to get to a number). 

 

I think math is vitally important and it is also fun, but it sure seems painful here lately and so I'm trying to figure out what the issue is and how we can solve it.  Any suggestions would be MUCH appreciated.  TIA!

 

 

[OneStepAtATime]

Sometimes kids need more explicit instruction in basic subitization skills but that instruction is skipped or skimmed and the child is assumed to be picking up those skills intuitively through math exposure.  You might look at Ronit Bird's Overcoming Difficulty with Numbers book.  Awesome resource.  And yes, maybe cut down the workload into smaller sessions.  He may be getting overloaded and unable to think through things quickly.

[Jennifer-72]

Even if he knows the concept he maybe having some trouble generalizing it when it is framed differently. Generalization of learning is nearly always present to some degree in children with ASD. You may want to reinforce the connection for him.

[OneStepAtATime]

Some kids have processing issues when given verbal questions or instructions and cannot easily translate that into visual representations in their head.  

 

Along with that, I know that with DD13 she is an extremely visual and kinesthetic learner.  Asking her something verbally when she has no visual reference or kinesthetic reference to refer to makes it virtually impossible for her to process the question.

 

You might read "How the Brain Learns Mathematics" by David Sousa to better understand math processes....

[Tanikit]

I think your initial thoughts and ideas about how to proceed are spot on - you could even have 2 x 20min sessions per day if 20 min is not enough - it is very hard to concentrate for that length of time - even as an adult they found that 45min concentrating and 15min break resulted in better results than longer periods of concentrating and your child is not even 7!

 

I would also allow manipulatives all the time - especially if he is asking for them - yes it may take longer, but watching a child work with manipulatives also shows the teacher a lot about what the child actually does know and what he struggles with - is it the language, is it the quantity, is it visualising, is it patterns and number manipulation - all of this is easier to see when the child must solve things in front of you with manipulatives because at this age their speech is not able to explain what is going on in their head. Another thing that may help is to let him write down in figures what you are asking mentally (this is a step ahead of manipulatives, but does work for some children depending whether those abstract digits mean something yet or whether quantity is still best seen with c-rods/blocks).

 

If he is totally focused on one topic you could try to focus his math on that topic too - even if this is only for revision, show him how the problems he sometimes struggles with in the math workbook are also present in his present fixation and maybe that will give him a reason to want to know it or to figure it out in a context that excites him.

 

Doing some of the writing for him may also help some - I would not do it all at this point, but certainly some should be fine.

[pehp]

Thank you so much for these tips.  I think that he does get easily confused when I frame a question in a different way or frame it verbally without any visual reference, so I'm remedying that.  I'm also deviating from the page and working through concepts SLOWLY on a dry erase board together which seems to help.  He doesn't have trouble with addition and multiplication, but subtraction feels trickier to him.  However, I am hoping that by slowing way down (I am going to try to work through one page per day *at most* during this part of the book) things will improve.  

 

Thanks for the resource recommendations! 

[Ausmumof3]

I have a 7 yo boy with similar issues. If he asks for cuisenaire rods use them absolutely! It just means he needs some more practice with solid real objects before he can move to totally abstract. Secondly we have concentration issues too. This week I've been doing it until ds shows he can't focus... Staring into space or rubbing eyes etc. then we take a break and so some star jumps, chuck a ball or a 5 minute run. Then we go again. Also you could try throw and catch math facts ... Throw ball or beanbag with question. Kid throws back with answer. Some kids need to move to think. And sometimes I scribe. That way if it's a real struggle ds only has to focus on the maths portion not the writing part.

[Deee]

He's 6. He's very little! Many countries, including those with the best educational outcomes, don't begin any sort of academic work until children are 7. Zero is a pretty abstract mathematical concept when you talk of it as a number not a quantity or 'nothing'. Maths facts will teach him rote learning. This is memorisation, not mathematic reasoning. Memorisation is great till about 4th grade. By high school it's superseded by the calculator. What you really want is mathematical reasoning: that's what makes mathematicians, but it takes time to develop. Miquon is a great program, but 40 mins is too long. Stop at 15. Do it twice a day if you must, but let your son set the pace. When he stops paying attention, move on, otherwise you are just teaching him that it's OK not to pay attention when you are teaching. Relax and enjoy this stage and let him enjoy it too.

D