Y2 child never having to try

[Grasses]

My daughter is in y2 and taught herself to read at age 2, can somehow already do maths etc, and has never really had to try at anything.

Feedback from parents evening was that she's top of the class (despite being the youngest) but will never ever stretch herself. They mentioned that at school they try to ask her trickier questions or set harder work once she's finished but she just refuses.

Obviously she's still really young but I don't think it's good for her to find everything easy because she will never learn how to study. I was like this myself to a lesser extent and got a shock at university when I actually needed to work.

I've tried her on music lessons to use her extra brain power but she just won't listen or practice.

She's also very good at anything physical (god knows where she gets it from!) so doesn't have to try there either. Also all sports classes are shut at the moment.

Any advice as I'm starting to stress about her a bit now I'm seeing it every day in lockdown learning.

Sorry not meant to be a stealth boast, I'm genuinely worried about how it will hit her once she is out of her depth.

This was also my dd year 2 maths today !

It's strange to think of all of these children all following the same lessons at the moment when normally that would never be the case.

I taught myself to read at 2. My mum read to me every night and I just worked out the link between the words she said and the words on the page.

No advice, but you’re right to be worried. I read at 18 months, and read fluently from before 2. Infant school kept giving me workbooks from the year above. By this time in y2 I’d completed all the y6 work and they recommended a private junior school.
I never learnt to work and never needed/ learnt emotional resilience. It hasn’t helped.

Same. Early reader, extremely
Bright at school and didn't have to try hard to be top of class. As an adult now I still struggle to apply myself to things that need me to put a lot of effort in. Studying for anything is particularly hard because I never really had to. Did me no favours.
I think the advice you've had about incorporating it as part of normal work is good idea. What about cutting down the 'standard level' work, ie if there's a sheet of questions about the same
Topic, do a couple of hem to satisfy yourself she knows it abs then move over to do the more advanced work so she feels like she's not doing more than she normally
Would. Does that make sense?
Good luck. You sound like an awesome mum

What about a fun maths or English book. Colins do them. My son is in year one and is very clever at maths. The teacher said to get a puzzle book as it was fun maths. There are also lots of games on line to play. Also try Twinkl they have loads of fun stuff to try.

You don't even need work sheets. You could play shops and ask her to add up the items. They could get harder as the game goes on. She probably wont even know she is using maths. Mine didnt!

My child is the same. Bright child who was v early to read etc. Loves to learn. I would say she should just be given harder work from the onset. If the class starts at A and then maybe moves through B and C, she should just start at C.

As a side point- it is such a shame brighter children to not get additional resources too. Lump top 5% in maths togheter for ‘maths club’ or whichever subject where they look at different types of problems and thinking. I would say one of the positives I’d take away from the US primary school system.

@Sparklfairy

I was a right annoying little swot as a kid. I was moved up a year and everyone else would get 'page 34 & 35 of the maths book' for homework, whereas I would get 'page 34+' and do ten pages.

It evened out a lot though when I went to a grammar secondary, and everyone was bright. I had to actually work and I wasn't used to it at all. Hardly ever did homework, was in and out of detention for not doing it, and this straight A student hard to work hard to get a B all of a sudden.

You're right to tackle this early on. My brother was the same (even brighter) and really struggled in later school and at uni. Anything that required actual effort we just baulked at. It's taken a long time for me to learn to apply true grit.

Like your DD, I hated getting things wrong. Can you continue to supplement her learning with more advanced stuff and sneak it by her or would the online lockdown learning set up make that difficult?

This was me too. Accepted into oxbridge and then- what?! Suddenly surrounded by people just as clever and above. I felt like I was drowning when I couldn’t just fob off studies and get top grades with zero effort. Dropped out. :(

How does a 2 year old teach themself to read?!

My youngest ds did this. Whenever I read to him and his siblings he would lean over the book and absolutely insist I ran my finger under each line pointing at the words. By the time he started nursery he was an extremely fluent reader. Like the op, I was too busy with other young dcs to consciously teach him to read.

He excelled at primary school but I think secondary was a huge disappointment to him. I think he thought it was going to be a wonderful place where he would learn all sorts of interesting stuff. But he was very bored. His exam results were good - with very little effort - but not as good as I would have expected them to be when he was younger (and interestingly, nowhere near as good as his brother who didn't start to read until he was 6).

@tigerlily20

A 2 year old taught themselves to read?!?

My brother did. It happens when a child with a photographic memory is read to a lot - he literally memorised the sounds, spelling and pronunciation of words. As I was reading a huge variety of books to him and making him do the alphabet (eldest daughter in an Indian household so he was my responsibility lol) plus a lot of films we watched had english subtitles so it all just clicked. But we didn’t know he could read until his nursery told us in the first week- apparently he was sneaking off to random corners to read his favourite books.

He learned maths in a similar way and has found every step of his academic career easy. He has never gotten less than a 98% in any exam ever including his degree. He never pushed himself and never wanted to until he started gaining weight - that’s when he began to push himself physically.

Now he’s a 30 something working in the executive team of a huge multinational because his inherent laziness means he’s really good at cutting red tape appropriately to get shit done.

I would go back and revisit music lessons.

One of my boys was similar to your child. Could read appropriate chapter books, doing year 2 maths and basic but reasonable writing when he started reception.

I made him do piano lessons whether he liked it or not. He needed to learn how to put effort into something. All that not everything in life will come easy.

Once they go to secondary they will come across subjects they don't know and things that they may find hard. Learning how to learn is what actually normally happens in nursery or reception. If a child is to far ahead that doesn't happen. So we have to find new ways to teach them this. It is a life skill.

Yep this was me. I was reading adult books myself when age 4 and coasted all the way through school. Never learned how to work and study because it all just came naturally and automatically. Straight As at A level, sailed into a top uni and then it all came crashing down when I realised I had no idea how to work. Dropped out after failing my first year and it’s left me with a lot of catching up to do in life to learn the work ethic and resilience that most people learn in primary school.

Well done for trying to tackle this now OP!

Mine around 20 months and sounding out words. By two he could read basic books. It is unusual but does happen.

The thing is once they are in secondary you wouldn't be able to tell a early reader from the average child. Just like early potty training. It is what you do to shape their personality and attitude to learning that counts.

A child that finds everything easy will quit when they come across something challenging. Teach your not to quit.

God this is familiar

DS Y6 has always been bored crap less at school. He didn't really get going till Y1 but he flew like an arrow and nailed everything. He reads way above his age and absorbs everything. He is gifted with mental arithmetic and likes maths as well as being extraordinarily good at reading with a vocabulary of a much older child, outstrips his older sister Constantly

The trouble with state school is that they only teach xyz per year. Yes they are supposed to stretch but they don't. DS grasps everything in an instant. Sometimes they might try to stretch but it's poorly executed and he feels he's being singled out or mostly the stretch just ruins the following year. Mostly this is what happens for DS.

He is therefore unmotivated by the system. He isn't very good at academic failure because he hasn't actually faced it yet. On the very very odd occasion it happens he doesn't understand something (and I would actually go as far to say the teaching was poor - I redid with no problems having googled) he falls apart hysterically and beyond his realm of normal.

I've experienced this for 6 years. He's off to grammar in Sept. Fingers crossed.

He is not exceptional or gifted, he is not on the spectrum. He has fantastic social skills - actually these are also highly developed. He is summer born.

He is probably like your DC, a very tiny minority of lucky (he's also bloody gorgeous and so if he doesn't make something of his blessed life then I'll be damned!)

I actually over praise his smarts to tell him well you have the smarts you better make good use of them. Not much point being part of society if you're lazy about it. Put your brain to good use.

I was recognising letters before 2 from watching Sesame Street and worked out how to read from there.
Alas my DCs didn't inherit my talents in that department
A double hinderence in trying to teach a very dyslexic 5-6 yo as I didn't remember how learning to read works.

Anyway, stretching a bright but less enthused child by cutting out the more basic, busy tasks and getting to the challenge quicker is a good strategy. If it's going well, you can back-fill the tasks.
Skipping questions or reducing to a) c) e) rather than a) to f) both work.

And just adding I'm a broke single parent. I'd love to stretch him with music lessons but there isn't the money.

I'm hoping he gets selected to do Latin at secondary - that should be a challenge he may finally need to learn how to actually STUDY to achieve.

It's a hard situation for your DD to be in and I imagine she may well worry about not being able to do something, especially if she feels as though being good/top at everything is who she is. I wonder if her teacher would be happy for you to set alternate maths activities that may offer a different challenge? Nrich has lots of activities, problems and posters that fit the 'low threshold, high ceiling' description i.e. very accessible at a basic level but can be taken in all sorts of different directions by children whose problem-solving and strategic thinking is more sophisticated.

Music lessons may not be her thing, perhaps you could take up geocaching or another activity that doesn't have a definite outcome that can be controlled by the person doing it, or challenge her to a 'new thing duel' of her choosing be it learning to play happy birthday on the bongos whilst simultaneously putting on your socks, embroidery, sorting out a cupboard or learning the words of a long and complicated song. Help her to break the duel into small steps for you both, identify strategies you might need to use when you get stuck, discuss how you'll know when you've achieved your goal as well as deciding what to do if you feel like giving up. It may well be that a sustained project such as taking up an instrument feels too big whereas both joining a YouTube 'draw along' event might be tolerable if you're doing it together. The phrase 'what's the worst that can happen?' can be a useful one to encourage children to use. By the time they've worked through the many things that may go wrong, they may decide the worst isn't actually that bad. They may, of course, decide the worst is truly horrific and resist it even more but being able to identify whether or not there's anything they can do about it themselves is another useful strategy.

I think that kids that are at the top of the class at a young age are not stretched and are not used to having to "learn". Additional challenges often set are still within easy reach. When something is then set that is challenging and they know it's in addition to what has been set, it's not the same. It's very new and a skill she hasn't had to use in her past two years at school. She needs the challenging stuff as her actual work, without wasting energy on the stuff she clearly comfortably knows.

I have similar concerns with mine - spending a lot of time doing a lot of work, but not much of it is stretching them. It is one of the reasons why everyone catches up in the end and "bright" children get a shock when they have to learn like everyone else - a lot of their learning has been put on hold going over and over stuff they already know (eg letter sounds and minor blending in yr and ks1 to kids that can already read, number bonds to ten or maybe twenty as a challenge, when they can already comfortably do both etc) and they have to genuinely learn how to learn in a classroom setting tailored to the class much much later than their peers.

It's great that school are setting your dc challenges- many don't - this should be instead of the stuff she already knows.

Dd wouldn’t do additional work either. It’s not fair to be assigned extra, the work needs to be a replacement for the original assignment.

This is written into DD’s special needs (gifted and ASD) accommodation.

The school paid lip service to this in the lower grades, but rarely did it.

Now in year 6 she does often get real, meaningful alternative assignments in several subjects and others naturally lend themselves to her being able to work at a different level. We are still begging for a better math class. She gets alternative assignments every couple of weeks, but the regular class is still torture.

And absolutely you have to find a way to have her learn to learn. I didn’t hit the wall until I was working on my phd, but boy did I hit that wall hard. I don’t think teachers really understand the disservice being done to letting bright kids coast.

@chuffedasbuttons

And just adding I'm a broke single parent. I'd love to stretch him with music lessons but there isn't the money.

I'm hoping he gets selected to do Latin at secondary - that should be a challenge he may finally need to learn how to actually STUDY to achieve.

You can get free apps to learn the piano and they are often available free online if you can make space for one.

I agree with the PP who mentioned Growth Mindset. Lots of children (especially girls IME) get hooked on getting things right and the resulting praise. This makes them less willing to take risks in their learning. If we praise effort rather than innate ability, this makes them into better learners.

There was a famous experiment where two groups of children were given a test. One group was praised for their ability ("wow, you are really clever") and the other for their effort ("wow, you really concentrated" or "you worked really hard"). They were later retested with a harder test and the performance of the first group went down, while the second group improved.

More info on Growth Mindset here: www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/

@GrumpyHoonMain that's really amazing, I never even knew it was possible