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?

Possibly on autism/aspergers?

• spectrum

My ds was also like this when he was younger & loved nothing more than me writing him a load of maths sums for him to work out or him setting his own. When he had just turned 9 he worked out 1 million ➗ 57. When I asked him what made him decide on that sum he told me he’d been thinking about it for a year & decided he could do it now. He also loved changing miles to km & working out how long it would take to travel to places in minutes or seconds based on different speeds.
He also loved football, computer games & hanging out with his mates.
Enjoy your ds he sounds wonderful.

Very similar to me as a kid and I’m autistic and have ADHD. The social struggles came later with nasty girls in high school and being left out. However, my sister was obsessed with the titanic and she’s neurotypical so he might just like maths!

I was late diagnosed and got to 23 ‘undetected’ so I’d just keep an eye and make sure he’s happy and maybe get him some work books

Sounds like my boy.

He's 4 and absolutely obsessed with numbers. All he wants to watch is Number Blocks and will draw them over and over again. He knows his times table, square numbers, cube numbers, etc. He talks about googolplex and infinity. Counts everything and wants to know how many seconds things will take. It's amazing but exhausting. Before numbers it was letters.

He has autistic traits. He eats mostly beige foods and is put off by different textures. He doesn't like too much noise and it's a source of anxiety for him. He also flaps/stims.

Otherwise, he's loving, affectionate, and enjoys playing with other kids. People have said they think he's too sociable to be autistic but his school say he's ASD but "high-functioning".

It’s not a badge of honour to be bad at maths, as you seem to keep pointing out your own aversion to numbers.

He has a natural talent, nurture it. Rather than making it sound abnormal. And making your own lack of interest in numbers the common denominator - pardon the pun.

Why are people so obsessed with being armchair medics, diagnosing everyone with ADHD and autism. Some kids have strengths. Unfortunately we seem to live in a society now where mediocrity is celebrated and being above average brings out the all the wannabe doctors to psychoanalyse children.

No one had diagnosed anyone with anything? Is suggesting the possibility wrong?

He sounds like DS1, also 7 - always on the go, loves football and maths. I'm constantly telling him off for kicking balls inside.

He might like soduku? (And hopefully it would make him sit still for a while). Or coding (DS1 is learning at the moment)