Is this normal? 7yr olds obsession with numbers

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I have a 7 year old DS. He's a delight, and sometimes a challenge, like most 7 year olds! Loves football, despite not being from a sporty house, always been very physical, pretty bright but not anything remarkable (obviously he is remarkable because everyone is, and he's THE most remarkable person to me, but yswim 😊).

Over the last couple of years, he's become completely obsessed with numbers. He talks about numbers ALL the time. Likes to do sums out loud as we're driving in the car, finding the hardest one he can do. Spotting patterns in number plates, food orders, colours. Everything gets turned into numbers. Like "you're wearing 6 black things and 3 gold things, so black things is gold things times 2". Not remarkable maths for a 7 year old, but quite an avid obsession and its lasted a good while.

He's a bit obsessed with football (literally constantly kicking something around, on the way to the bathroom for a wee, while watching telly), he loves music and knows all the words to Hamilton/Matilda/every song in Sing 2. He has no other obsessive behaviour, is a good eater, pretty sociable, affectionate, happy go lucky.

Tonight as he was drifting off to sleep he said "I just worked out 1 million divided by 2. Its 500,000." For the first time I thought, is this normal?

I'm not desperate for him to be a maths whizz. We live in a distinctly average part of the UK and he goes to a distinctly average school. I've always wanted him to be well rounded and happy. I'm completely crap at maths and a bit number blind, his dad is a gardener, so I have no idea where this obsession comes from. I don't know what to do with it. I can facilitate music playing, sport etc as social activities (football club, playing music around the house etc) but how do I facilitate maths?

Do I need to do anything? Is it an indicator of something (like him avoiding his feelings or masking or something, I dunno). It feels weird to me that his head is constantly calculating things, it couldn't be further from my own internal dialogue.

Very ready to be told its completely normal for kids to obsess about stuff as they learn and it is of no significance. That would be my preference tbh.

Anybody else's kid completely obsessed with maths? How did that go as they got older?

He sounds amazing but exhausting!

Has his teacher raised any concerns?

I have a 7 year old and I'm definitely going with normal, all sounds like stuff I could imagine her doing. They've been working on division a lot at school since Christmas and mine has been getting me to quiz her on different sums too.

@BallandBoe he is both of those things!😆 I cannot keep up with his brain or his feet!

I sometimes have to say "mummy can't do any more numbers now, my brain is full of lots of things and this is making it hurt".

It's a shame because when he wants to dance, or listen to music, or read, I'm all over it! But the maths? Yeesh.

His teacher says he is very keen on maths, generally likes to please and doesn't like it when he gets something wrong. No overt 'concerns' though.

My DS was the same - with the numbers; no interest in football. He's amazing with sums and maths concepts now, aged 11; gets the Countdown numbers rounds right more often than not - sometimes gets them when neither contestant does (but still not as consistent as Rachel!). We're both quite good at maths, but nothing special.

He's just found his niche and his skill and is excited about it. It will stand him in wonderful stead for his school 'career' and his adult life. The excitement will probably wane, once it all beds in and becomes more 'meh' to him, but the ability will see him at a great advantage for the rest of his life.

The only 'concerns' I'd have would be to make sure that he is challenged properly at school - with extra, harder work. It may be the right thing to get him assessed for SEN provision; it's important for those who exceed in certain key skills, just as it is for those who struggle.

Whatever you do, you don't want him to get bored by being given 'challenges' that are ridiculously easy for him; apart from anything else, this could lead to teachers reaching entirely the wrong conclusions and assuming that he is struggling when he is just very bored.

My DS2 was similar when he was 6/7. He loved very large, squared and cubed numbers. He also learnt all his times tables up to 17s when he was in year 2. I have no idea why he decided to go up to 17s. He is a fairly typical boy who also loves music, football, gymnastics, swimming and reading. I think he is very special and amazing because he is mine. His teachers want him to improve his handwriting and stop getting distracted during lessons. If your boy is happy and appears to be developing well socially, emotionally and academically it does not sound like you need to worry.

Get him some puzzle books. Has he tried Sudoku? Once he's mastered the harder sudoku puzzles there's always killer sudoku. There are lots of little puzzle books you can get on this kind of thing that it sounds like he'd really enjoy. Or even just doing the sudoku in the paper.

@Bradsgoodreally that's reassuring, and sounds very much like my little boy.

I suppose the only thing I'm worried about is whether I should be doing more. I'm permenantly exhausted, cannarely keep up with homework, and maths is NOT my bag. I feel like I might be letting him down.

He is, as anyone might predict, a precious first born AND an only child. Neither by choice. I try to counter this with a good dose of realism and pragmatism. But the maths thing is so out of my sphere of experience I don't know what's normal.

@ironorchids he does the kids quizz in the i newspaper every Saturday and the basic sudoku. He absolutely loves it. So this is a really good idea. Thanks.

He's at that age where whatever they are into they are REALLY into! Just get him loads of workbooks on maths and congratulations btw he sounds great!

We joke that our seven year old has a calculator for a brain. He's always been obsessed with numbers, and loves to do sums for fun - we spent one walk home from school recently with him working out square numbers up from 13 (because he knew that one already, so used it as the base to work out the others). We sometimes give him sums to keep him occupied. He also loves reading and football and Vikings and whatever else he's been reading about recently, and absorbs info like nobody's business. I suspect he and your son would get on well!

All of which is to say your son sounds pretty normal to me!

@Wavescrashingonthebeach aw, thanks. I think he is! Love him buckets.

Exactly the same with my son. Aged 8. He gets obsessed with things - football is a constant obsession. The scores, who plays for each team, who they played for previously and he watches the same matches and clips over and over.

But then he'll get obsessed with something else - birds (this is our current one). Sits for hours watching them. Talking about different types and looking up facts and reading books etc. Then one day it'll become something else - once it was stars. He learnt all the constellations, spent hours looking at the sky, telling us facts etc.

He seems unable to just 'sort of' like things. It's all or nothing!

I don't think you need to do anything.

It sounds like he really enjoys maths, but isn't 'gifted' in it, so you don't need to push him or provide more.

It's also possible that he has some form of OCD/obsessive thinking.

When I was young, I used to try to pair everything; street lights, shoes, people, trees. I'd always be marking pairs and noting odd ones out.

I would just keep an eye and hope he continues to love it.

Calculator is a lovely idea - I’m sure he would love it!! There are lots of Maths puzzle books around I think? Mine had Minecraft colouring books that were a bit like colour by numbers but with times tables.

Games?

Music is supposed to be really good for Maths too.

Perhaps consider a membership to something like Busy things which has fun Maths games?

This was me as a kid ;-) (bar the football!) I still count things when bored ;-)

I also found I really loved logic puzzles, and things like choose your own adventure books. He may be a little young atm but as his reading improves they might be interesting to explore. And yes, kids puzzle books!

Ds1 was exactly like this at 7.

Totally obsessed. His idea of fun was me writing a list of sums for him to do. Also the same with car journeys, always 'mum can you ask me sums' until I could have screamed with it.

He's 15 now and his brain is still number driven. He likes to know the cost of everything...he loves looking over a bill in a restaurant and I just know he's adding it up in his head to check the total is right 😂

He's a very keen baker and does all sorts of random percentages whilst he's adjusting a recipe, working out what an 8% reduction in the flour would be and other in depth mathsy stuff that seems way ott for what he's actually trying to achieve. The Covid updates a couple of years ago were fascinating to him. Every time we heared '600 more cases today' he'd be telling us the percentage increase from the previous day, breaking it down into a '1 in every x people' figure for the population of the UK, telling us how many square miles would be filled by people who'd had Covid to date. We've had to have several conversations with him over the years about not bombarding people with numbers because they're just not as interested as he is and he has improved massively in that.

Now, he excels at maths, computer science and Physics and he's doing his GCSEs a year early in those and predicted A*'s. But he's 'only' at the high end of average for everything else.

He sounds great. Get him a maths puzzle book or two for home

I have no idea if it's 'normal' or not, mine did this for a while but he's autistic (nothing else you mentioned sounded like this was that likely tbh)
Mine really likes doing puzzles online because he likes the instant feedback. You might want to try the ny times new daily puzzle called digits, there's a wordle type numbers game called nerdle and the countdown app has a feature for just playing the numbers rounds (there are also websites with countdown numbers games). Also nrich maths games has lots of interesting maths challenges.

He might enjoy chess too. If there is a club nearby.
There are also Maths challenges online but only do them if it's fun for him.
Hit the Button does all the multiplication/ division/ square numbers and he could beat his own score.

Oh yes, second the chess suggestion. Ds1 is really into chess and has taught both DH and me to playagainst our will

He sounds fab and a lot like mine. He's just turned 8. He is autistic, but I'm not suggesting yours is. While mine has a calculator in his head, he also has a lot of difficulties in other areas. He loves sudoku, times tables, any sort of number puzzle, and has a tendency to try and test me on the 64 times table when I'm trying to negotiate the M6. Life is never dull with him around.

And yes to chess! And dominoes. I can't beat him at either 😂

I was like this as a child, still am to a certain extent. I went through a phase at about 7yo of sending myself to sleep by starting with a number and then doubling it until I couldn't go any more.

I think my focus on numbers could almost be considered like OCD intrusive thoughts as I cannot help but calculate things, notice patterns in numbers, memorise number plates etc but as its not detrimental I've never really worried about it.

As a kid I had a fantastic teacher who pushed me to do logic puzzles and set me maths related practical projects such as creating a certain packaging with the least amount of waste. I later did the maths olympiad (not sure if that's still a thing?) and eventually further maths A level. If your DS enjoys it, there a tonnes of maths nerds on Instagram you can follow to get ideas of how to challenge him that are a bit outside the box.

I work with numbers now and get very well paid for being good at pattern recognition and identifying errors but other than that am mostly very normal and bog standard. Except for being a bit overkeen on countdown and the gchq puzzle books.

So many brilliant suggestions here! Thank you for helping parent a child who is very different from me.

I was all prepared to have a bookish, ginger, dorky kid who needed defending in the world and loved humanities. Somehow I have a swarthy athletic maths nut. Parenting is wild!

Sounds like he can see the patterns and relationships in numbers. I remember realising this when I was about 7, it all made sense and I could see why and how the older kids in school did maths. Sadly it didn’t last ☹️ I was only ahead in primary school and in secondary was barely scraping average. Let him enjoy it while it lasts.