Bright but 'different' child unable to grasp days of week

[PosyPetrovaPauline]

DS3 is 7 and a lovely boy. He is our fourth child and is very different academically to his siblings. He learned to read without problems and writing has been slower but ok - this year with work - bis writing has gone from huge and illegible to very neat.

Spelling is dreadful but a wide vocabulary

He is also a bit slow with maths....

This is all new to us as his older siblings were top of their classes by this age.

He is a delight and happy although less popular at school than we would hope ( more popular with girls than boys)

Recently we have noticed he seems incapable of learning the days of the week. We casually noticed he did not know them and started making a bit of an effort.After a couple of weeks m- mentioned it again - no better....

A real effort made - writing them etc but still no progress. He is not stressed by it ( laughs!! ) but suddenly dp and I were looking at one another saying ' Is something else wrong here?'

Any experience? Should I go to school?

dyscalculia? Some of the symptoms of that are sequencing difficulties. DD1 has several of those type of symptoms (dyscalulia covers a wide range of issues) one of which is finding dancing hard (not being able to remembr what comes next) - one of the things her dance school does is say the moves as they do them (so all tap goes "shuffle... hop hop hop... stamp stamp.. swish in time with the actual steps ifswim).

Can you make the days into a little song, something like that? FWIW I count days based on my primary 1 teacher's poster on the wall which had the days listed in an oval, and I still count round the oval.

Maybe just a case of finding what style of learner he is and going with that? (DD1 who is nearly 17 still struggles with left and right, and telling the time, but has lots of coping strategies - am hoping the L and R ones work as she's about to head of on Gold D of E and is apparently in charge of map reading )

Your ds sounds very like my dd2 who is dyslexic. She also struggles mainly with spelling and maths and has never learned the days of the week or to tell the time (she is 9). She is also bright - IQ of 120, interested in lots of slightly odd things such as black holes, reptiles and bugs!
Perhaps it is time to have a chat with school about getting an Ed Psych assessment.

the things you are describing sound similar, but milder, than my ds2 who has dyscalculia / dyspraxia.
However your ds3 is still very young, only 7, so this may just be immaturity and it will come when he is ready.
Also you must be careful not to compare to his siblings, particularly if they are more able .
Is he yr 2? Have you had his SATs results yet?

Thankyou both so much...

DS is bright and interested in loads of great stuff ( architecture/rocks!) and I alternate between thinking he is a bit 'proper' clever but sometimes shockingly not so!

I was - however- a bit stunned when school said they had put him in an assisted maths group

Will try some other sequencing things and see how he goes.

Reading as I have said is good though - no problems...

Shrinking - yes a friend suggested he could be a kinesthetic learner ( goes to google it!)

Ingles - thankyou. He has just done sats and not had results yet.

We do compare to the siblings in so much as being the fourth - he does stand out as being different academically although intellectually I would have said brighter

Luckily there are 7 years between him and the next sibling up so not really an issue in many ways.

The next sibling down is 3 years younger and when we ask him days of the week he knew them....

We've just had a similar discussion at school about DS2 (nearly 8) and he has been informally assessed as having slow processing and poor short term memory. He is also bright, but has problems completing tasks on time etc.

Not sure what we do now - probably need to research a bit more and see if there are any 'strategies' that could help?

thanks officebird sounds interesting

he read a book tonight it was ORT only stage 20 but fireflies which seem eons harder than the other. He decoded in brilliantly and at the end showed great knowledge of the text including 'mosaic' etc

I am starting to stress a bit.

asked him days of week again and he happily recited them ( wrong) but i did not say

muttered brightly 'next months of the year' but he did not look eager!!

not the right time of year to start broaching issues...

Did you mean ORT 2 (don't think they go up to Stage 20...thank god!)

You might just need to find a 'learning style' which is right for him. I went to a great school meeting all about learning styles, and they made the point that some children are very visual and like to SEE things, some are very aural and like to HEAR things and some are very MUSICAL and like rhythm, other are kinesthetic and like to DO stuff in order to learn.
Certainly my DS is AURAL & Musical. He can remember songs and poems, but not lists of e.g. name, months etc. He loves mnemonics though like 'How to spell 'because' Big Elephants Can Always Upset Small Elephants .

eeek!!

10 stage 10 how silly ! Yes you are right - thank heavens for small mercies!

we had a dyspraxia thread going a while ago Pauline, have a look for it
your son would fit in a treat, all the boys were oddly clever. mine's a total history buff and what kept me pushing was knowing that ds2 was brighter than my G&T Ds1
Don't be worried or shocked by assisted maths groups though, especially at yr 2. You would be amazed how many children have booster groups or extra help for al sorts of things, from social, to academic and everything in between.
My son has Fizzy (motor skills), units of sound, springboard, various other extra groups but is well above average in literacy.. but al these things help and give him more confidence and from worrying myself stupid when he was in infants about all the extra help, these days I'm grateful and pleased for him to receive it.

ingles thanks so much for that reassurance......will search the archives

This post reminded me of dd who is bright but very definitely different. She had immense trouble learning days of the week when she was younger. She's now 14 so I asked her if she knew them now & she recited them (wrong - but I think that was intentional) - then she told me she remembered it taking her ages to learn to spell her own (quite straightforward) name; that she still needs to run through all the months of the year in her head to know which one comes next and that she still doesn't really completely know her alphabet (though the song helps)! I really don't think it's a big problem - she's doing well at school, some childrens brains are just wired a bit differently.

Snorkie - thanks for the reassurance and I already like your daughter

Maybe I am looking at this too hard

a song might help?

(sung to the theme of the addams family)

there's sunday and there's monday
there's tuesday and there's wednesday
there's thursday and there's friday
and then there's saturday

days of the week < clap>
days of the week

thanks for that Bees

will try it , I am sure he will learn in time but confused as to why it appears to be such a challenge