Hoping for some advice please…
For context, both DDs go to grammar school and are generally happy, smart, rounded girls.
My younger DD (11) scraped in to the school due to a criteria in their admissions policy, rather than her own academic achievement. We always knew that she would be surrounded by much more academically gifted children and do not strive for her to be the best in the class, as that probably wouldn’t be possible for her.
My DH and I encourage her to try her best and whatever she achieves, as long as she has tried, we will be happy with.
The problem is that she just doesn’t seem motivated to try! This isn’t a new thing - to a certain extent it’s her personality, but I’m starting to question whether there is something more to it. Whether there’s something preventing her from concentrating/trying.
My DH spent hours going through Maths work with her yesterday. She was demonstrating that she understood the technique and could work out the solution multiple times, but then moved onto the next question and guessed rather than using the techniques she knew. We don’t know if she didn’t try or didn’t remember what had just been taught.
At parent’s evening last week, a lot of the feedback was that she is very engaging in class and works well at school, but needs to slow down and think through her answers when left to her own devices. She rushes and doesn’t think things through deeply enough and sometimes struggles to retain information.
She is also quite emotional and impulsive, so I’m beginning to wonder whether there is some neurodiversity issue which is accounting for the hastiness or inability to remember? No teacher has ever raised this with me, but she is a good girl who would have been at the higher end of ability in primary school.
Does anyone have any advice or techniques to help? When we sit to go through work with her, she will happily let us teach her, but struggles to challenge herself enough when she works independently.
Thank you.