Hes nearly 3 and he can't count to 3.

[Bekki]

Does anyone else have this problem. I have tried every trick/method in the book and yet my son counts like this.... 1...2..........4...8, what is going wrong? Why can't he remember the sequences, he has never said number three, ever. My sisters daughter is six months younger and can count to one hundred and can read 24 hour clocks! Is it possible that being terrible at Mathematics is genetic?

Dear Bekki ...
I can see how your experience of maths as a child has made you worry more about your son's progress in the subject but I totally agree with every one that you should take a little step back on trying to 'teach' him and make him understand. All children are different and all children develop at different paces.
I thought my DS was a genius when he could count to 10 at the age of 2 but it wasn't until he was over 3 that I realised that counting to 10 had nothing to do with the concept of 'quantity' ... I was playing with him one day and we were counting marbles and I saw that he he could tell me that I was holding 1 marble, 2 marbles and 3 marbles but after three he had not a clue. When I asked him to count 4 marbles he got to four and kept going round the same marbles until he got to 10 and proudly announced there were 10 marbles! I decided then and there not to stress and have ever since been fascinated at how he picks up things ON HIS OWN (He is nearly 4).
There was a thread a few months back about teaching pre schoolers to read and I went into one about how I disagree with actively 'teaching' pre schoolers anything like that (I am a primary school teacher and by year 4 I have found that 'average' children are at the same level regardless of whether they learned to read at 3 or at 5) ...
BUT ... someone else on that thread said ... Do whatever your child wants to do - if he wants to learn to read, then do reading, if he wants to learn to count then do counting.
And so that is what I now do with my son. I don't sit him down and say, "Hey, let's do an hour of reading or counting" ... He comes to me and says things like "What does the word 'dog' start with?" and so we talk about the letter 'd' for a bit or he will hold up a few fingers and ask how many there are and we will play a game counting his fingers and toes etc.
I totally agree with kmg1 about the matching games ... that is much more useful to proper maths than counting is ... matching and sorting games are fun and your DS won't feel under pressure at all ...
Also ... I hope you don't get offended by this ... but your anxiety is probably passing itself on to your DS and he will be picking up on it (the fact he will do stuff with his grandmother and not you illustrates this) ... children pick up on what bothers their parents most and are very sensitive to it - for my DS it was doing poos in the toilet ... I got so stressed about it that he did too and we had a vicious circle until a very dragonlike HV told me to get a grip and stop worrying and the problem was cured over night!
Sorry this post is very long .... but I hope it helps a bit ...
PS FWIW ... I had no absolutely formal reading or mathematics education until the age of 6 ... (didn't even know my alphabet) ... by the time I was 8 I was at the same level as those who could read at 4 ... I have 7 O levels, 3 A levels, a degree and got an IQ of 128 in the 'Test the Nation' thingybob (though I think that was a bit of a fluke )

oh ghosty, you should never have mentioned that iq thingy...i was trying to forget it....I think I scored 60 or something pitful like that and I scored almost perfect scores in the national testing in the usa when I was a teenager. Which brings me to Bekki....I think that one of the most important things in encouraging a student to be good at a subject is not their natural ability, but their love and appreciation for the subject. And that comes from having a good teacher and not having a hangup about it. Do your ds a favor and don't buy any books and stop trying to teach him to count. He will do it when he's ready and if that doesn't happen until he's 5 and at school then that's ok too. I think einstein couldn't read until he was 11 (or something like that). My ds is almost 3 and he can only sort of count (doesn't like 8) and it's mostly just memorization of a sequence anyway and he's got parents who are really good at maths.
Please let you ds just be a kid and have fun. He's got so many years ahead of him to have to learn things and compete academically. I don't understand why it's considered ok for your sister to compare her daughter's math abilities to your ds's, but I'm sure if you compared your ds's potty training abilities to her daughter's lack thereof in the same manner she wouldn't be very happy.

Totally agree again. Although I feel that I should say that it isn't a military operation, I am just bringing up the counting thing in everyday situations. I don't push him to do it, I wouldn't dream not after my experiences as a child.

All of your replies go completely against what I have been told before by parents and I'm quite relieved actually. I felt that there was a lot of pressure on me to make sure he reached these learning goals and I was worried about how people would perceive me as a parent if he couldn't achieve them, I wasn't thinking about ds enough though. It will be more relaxed now.

Codswallop I failed nearly all of my G.C.S.E's due to my hatred and fear of maths. I decided to retake my maths exam two years ago in a hope that it would boost my self asteem and to help me to get a place at uni. After a year of stressful study I knew without a doubt that I would fail the exam and so I didn't take the test. I couldn't have handled another failure. I just can't remember numbers, I can't do mental arithmetic and thats something that i can't change but I just hope that my kids don't have the same stress and embarrassment about their mathematical skills as I do. It wasn't a complete failure though thanks to the open uni I can still get a degree even though I don't know my times tables. Thanks for the advice its made me feel alot calmer about the whole situation.

SofiaAmes I only managed 95 and I'm sure I cheated on some of them. My dh was so impressed with his 128 he went on and on about it I felt like such an idiot. Apparently I have nearly the same IQ as George Bush, America should be scared.

B next time make yours up!! Make it higher than his!

Bekki - have you murdered your competitive sister yet?? Now on child number 4, I honestly can't remember who did what when in anything more than muzzy detail, but do remember being worried because ds1 flatly refused to count out loud for us at around this age. He's now 6, and in a recent neuropsychological assessment scored at a 12yo level for number recall!
So I agree with all the others - stay away from it, and play to his and your strengths - you'll both have much more fun, and the numbers will come when he's ready.

Bekki, agree with all that been said about playing to his strengths. I'm a complete dimwit when it comes to sums, so will be pointing ds (3.6) in the direction of his Dad when he brings me his algebra homework in years to come ... all I've done so far counting-wise with ds is sing lots of songs (e.g. 5 currant buns in a baker's shop/there were 5 in the bed...) and we always count stairs/steps when we go up or down them when out and about.
DS always seemed very behind (to me anyway) with walking and speech compared to 2 of his friends, (the usual comparisons were made - grrr) but boy did I have a secret gloat to myself when he gave up nappies at night in the summer and they are still wet - ha!

I honestly think learning 'goals' have no place in the life of a three or four year old. As I said before there is evidence that children who are 'taught' things when they are very young often find themselves behind their peers instead of ahead of them by the time they are eight - this is usually if they are pushed into early learning. Play is the best form of learning at this age, and children raised by normal, loving, interested parents do 'learn' all the time without any instruction - they can't help it, their brains are just made that way. Read them stories, sing them songs and chat to them and play with them and that's all they need. In the rest of Europe there's no formal education until age six or seven and they very soon outstrip their British counterparts.

Also, do you know ANY non-learning disabled adults who can't count to 100 or tell the time? It will come in time.

It's funny isn't it because my 3 year old daughter is learning disabled but can count to ten or more and yet can't talk in sentances, dress herself, feed herself without getting in a mess......I could go on but I wont..

Please don't worry it is normal and he sounds like he is doing really well

I agree with other posters. Don't worry. I never taught my DD anything. She taught herself. Children naturally want to learn and will pick things up themselves when ready. And maybe he really isn't going to be good at maths. So what? I am terrible at maths and barely passed it at school, but I have lived a perfectly happy life and have got 2 university degrees behind me

Beki - it does sound like your onw problems with maths are shading your thinking about your DS. My own DS is 2.8 and he can count to about 12 but thats only like he can do "twinkle twinkle" - ie he recites them both. He can actually conceptually only count to two. He knows if there is one of something, or two of something but after that he will do what Ghosty's DS did and count round in a circle until he's run out of numbers. Also he does what your DS does and labels items with a number. So we give him grapes and he counts them. The he eats one and two but thinks he has four left because he hasn't eaten three or four. Unlike you though I thought this was a fairly normal stage to go through and wasn't concerned. I agree with everyone else that you should really lay off it as far as possible. I know its hard to do but you've got the evidence from your MIL that he is OK.

God I spend my entire time trying to stop ds2 counting (22 months). (He likes it). It reminds me too much of ds1 counting everything obsessively and screamily until we removed gluten from his diet. Like Fio's dd ds1 could count and identify numbers way before he could talk (actually come to think of it he still can't talk but he can count). I always think of counting things as being a bit autistic- along with lining things up and being particular about the poisition the hoover is in.

As everyone else has said - counting has very little to do with maths development. I rustily remember reading something about think years ago and apprently counting is the last thing you should teach- you should start with the concept of more and less.

I don't think counting has anything to do with being autistic. Nor has lining things up or positioning of hoover. These are all normal toddler past-times (before you get some parents worried.....)

I am sure you are right. I was just pointing out that it is also completely normal for children who are not remotely autistic. (I am sure that's not what Jimjam meant either BTW).

I find some of this thread very amusing. My ds also loves to 'count' - but pretty much no matter how many objects there are he will count them '1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9 and then very triumphantly, TEN!!'

This thraed reminds me of a conversation we had with MIL over the summer. DD was very seriously counting some books and MIL said "X (favoured, younger grandchild) can count to 15, she (meaning DD) is a bit slow, isn't she?"

To which, I loftily replied "you mean X can recite the numbers one to 15 in sequence, quantative appreciation develops later" DH then bored with a description of neurological development. Sometimes having a PhD in Psychology is so useful

FM- I just meant in my household that when ds1 starts counting I say "oh for god's sake stop that" becuase for my autistic son that was one of his early autistic things - and a very irritating one too. (I was trying to reassure that counting really isn't very important). I say the same when he starts walking on his toes. The person who lines things up in our house is my non-autistic totally NT ds2. Autistic ds1 has never lined anything up in his life. And I am afraid that the fussiness that ds1 shows over the hoover is nowhere near the league of normal.

Having gone through hell wondering whether my son was autistic I wouldn't come on here and say "your son counts, huh must be autistic then". I was responding to fio2's post. Together with dinosaurs I think they all show that an almost 3 year old not counting is nothing to worry about- and its far more important that they can do other things like talk.

LOL @ marialuisa

And no walking on toes in isolation does not indicate autism eitehr. Can't really remember ds1 walking on toes. The thing is when you have an autistic elder sibling you watch the younger ones like a hawk for any "signs". The "please stop that counting right now" conversations are actually said as light hearted jokes in our house.

Our dd1 would tell everyone she could count to 100 when she was about three - 'one,two, miss a few, 99, 100'!

Bekki, I'm sorry that you have been so traumatized about maths. I'm sure you must have had a really bad teacher somewhere early on. Maths was my very best subject at school (I was doing calculus at 16), but I can't do mental arithmetic to save my life and I can't remember numbers at all even though I have an extremely good memory for other types of things. (I have trouble remembering dd's birthdate and she's only 1.) I would suggest getting a tutor for yourself. A good one should be able to put you on the right track in just a few lessons. Are you in London? I'd be happy to help if you are. I believe that everyone can do maths AND love it.

Ds's current party trick is to tell everyone that his birthday is on November 15. People are suitably impressed that a 2 year old knows when his birthday is.....I don't disillusion them by pointing out that it's actually November 18.

My ds is the same as yours Bekki. He can't count fully yet (2y 3m) but can tell me how many items he has on his highchair. Everyone is right about the counting - it is a learning by rote thing, and takes a while to appreciate the substance behind the numbers.

I have been worried madly about him not talking, but, in the last month, the words have started spilling out. He is terribly 'behind', as he has only just started linking two words together ('yellow car' ), but then he has known his colours for ages. I keep trying to remember that each child is different. His comprehension and understanding has always been excellent, so why should it matter that he does not talk? I realise now that I always saw it as a reflection on me ('I'm intelligent, so why is my child not talking...it's not as if I am not pushing him enough' ) Wrong, but understandable.

I feel a bit hesitant about adding to this thread but here goes. My DS1 is almost five and can only count to four, after that it is a bit sketchy. I haven't read all the replies so apologise if I repeat anything, I personally think that it is because numbers above four don't mean much to him. My DH (accountant so interested in numbers) helps him with a maths workbook designed for his age and he seems to do really well and I know they do counting at his nursery but for him reciting the list of numbers from one to ten seems beyond him. I agree with whoever said to count things, stairs, buttons etc as I think they do better with a visual aid. Personally I am not worrying about my DS1 (perhaps I should be) as I am sure he will get there in the end.