just knowing maths answers

[mrswormwood]

Does anyone else's child just know maths answers? Ds is reaching the end of reception. His maths is ok, not as strong as his reading (he can read Harry Potter, The Hobbit etc). His report said that he exceeded expectations. He picks up concepts easily but we haven't done much at home and at school they have focused mainly on phonics. He has done doubling and halving at school and can do that confidently (eg. he worked out that 32 was half of 64 so he was half way through a book).

Then there is the wierd stuff. I have NC as this could out me with his teachers! Sitting in the back of the car, randomly announces that if he was a cat he would be 35 (dd1 is cat crazy so he would know that 7 cat years approximates to one human year). Coming down for breakfast he sees on the microwave that it is 7.00 and announces that means that they can each (3 children) watch 30 minutes of TV before we have to leave at 8.30 (I haven't taught him to tell the time). Talking about years says that he will be dead by the year 3000, I say yes, but he might make it to 2100, he says yes I will be 91 (born in 2009) - ok so he will turn 91 in 2100, but we didn't specify the date.

Each time that this happens he denies having worked it out. He just 'knows it'. If I ask him directly what 7x5 is then he can work it out (I can see him doing it from his face), but he doesn't know it. I realise that it could be chance, but when he does this 'thing' it is always out of the blue and he is always right first time and without apparently working it out. I realise that the calculations aren't tricky for a competent 9/10 yr old, but it is the apparent lack of calculating that seems wierd, and that if given them as a straight maths equation he would work them out. He could be planning these events - certainly with the cat age, but the other two seemed completely spontaneous. Other than being ahead of his peers he seems to be developing normally. He doesn't seem to be on the autistic spectrum. Anyone had any experience with this sort of thing?

DS is like that - he works things put very quickly in his head. We are working on him showing his working out and we are getting there!

I'm the same - how I do it is I see fractions, percentages, numbers etc as "blocks" that whizz about like tetris and fit together. Its weird but I'm quite visual.

Dd did the just knowing. I think it isn't that they don't know how to work it out, I think it's just more it's so obvious to them and it's hard to explain that at a young age. Dd never understood why people talked about learning your times tables, because in her head you just worked it out as rapidly as saying it. Particularly when she was younger if someone asked 'have/ where did you learnt that?' about some maths stuff she'd get confused because she didn't understand why people would learn something she thought was obvious to everyone as it was to her.
She can show working for more complex work, but only as she's got older and needs to, either for her calculations or marking. And even now if you ask how she knew to do something a particular way she'll often say she just did. Even though I actually know what she means is she's taken a very simple concept and unthinkingly built on it to use it in a complex way.
However I remember being the same as a child/early teen and being confused as to why teachers explained things when I thought it was self explanatory or why people would write out lines of workings when the answer just was. Even at a-level I remember sometimes thinking 'why would you complicate it with all that long winded bollocks when you could just do a,b,c.'

I remember a parent-teacher evening in November of year 2. I'd been flagged up as a problem parent a few weeks earlier when I'd (naively) asked for harder work. So, the HT was there too.

I raised the matter of Ds2 finding the maths too easy again.
The teacher responded with saying he should slow down and show the working.
I flicked to a random page of his book, it was a page of sums which he'd got 100% on, but there were no workings. It was questions like 5+2=?
I asked what possible workings could he show for such easy questions?
The teacher told me it should look like this +=
DS2 sats beside me looking pained.
I replied that since DS2 could accurately add in thousands in his head, maybe this was too easy?
The HT gave me an appalled look, like she was looking at a disgusting bigot and interjected that its only me who thinks its too easy, and that it was appropriate work for a 6 year old.

Anyway drawing dots and then counting up the dots is what constitutes showing workings in the early years.

Ds2 continued to ignore the instruction to show workings until about year 5 when he finally accepted that it wasn't going to go away and started to put them in retrospectively after noting down the answer.

I must admit that with ds I do view school at the moment as free babysitting and social skills training . At least they have been happy for him to go off the book scheme, and they don't seem to mind that we do more with him at home. My concerns are that as they move into yr 1 and do more structured work that he will be bored if he has to do yr 1 work. Having said that he has quite happily sat through phonics this year, he is fairly placid (most of the time).

i was like that when young, as were the rest of my family. theres a lot of asd in my family, altho we are all bright too, so i couldnt say which it is .aspergers is often not apparent until they are older though.

I remember being utterly appalled during a pub quiz that nobody seemed to know the answer to the square root of 729 including a medical student. I mean isn't it obvious? it made me think doctors were perhaps not worthy of the pedestal I'd previously put them on.

I should have added neither dd nor I have any symptoms of autism at all or any reason to suspect we are remotely on the spectrum. She went through the common toddler phase of eating habits that on the surface appeared similar, and even now we both have certain fixed ideas about some foods (either texture, taste, combination or presentation). But the idea with us is 'that looks/ tastes unappetising/ disgusting, therefore I don't want it', which is very different to someone presenting with an asd type eating symptom. And not remotely connected to our intelligence or academic ability, just sense of taste.
I don't think 'just knowing' is a symptom of any form of autism in itself. I think its more that if someone is clearly bright but massively struggles with stuff that from intelligence and background should be simple, it can be a clue there is something more than just not understanding going on inside.

Is ASD to do with opinions about food?? I thought it was all behaviour.

Lots of people with ASD have restrictive food likes. It is to do with the sensory experience of food, colours, textures, different goods touching etc. Although one of mine has severe ASD and will eat anything and everything so clearly the food issue isn't present in all cases of ASD. ASD is a spectrum disorder so different people present with different symptoms.

Sorry var I didn't mean to imply it was, it is behavior. Just that as super says sometimes that behavior can also be about eating/ food. I meant the exact opposite, that dd and I have, or have had, eating habits that at a glance appear similar to one of the symptoms some people have of asd. But they aren't actually the same because it's down to simple taste not behavior, the thought process is completely different. Therefore linking just that to 'just knowing' doesn't correlate in anyway to possible asd.

heading a bit off topic now, and not implying anything here ! , but just to say 'that looks/tastes disgusting' can be an asd type response as much as an nt response

which is not really connected to maths in any way

heading a bit off topic now, and not implying anything here ! , but just to say 'that looks/tastes disgusting' can be an asd type response as much as an nt response

which is not really connected to maths in any way

I'm fairly certain that he doesn't have asd traits. He doesn't have sensory issues, although dd2 does. He has a vivid imagination, he is very empathetic, and spontaneously polite - for example he will often say to TAs etc how much he thinks that he likes a top they are wearing or that he likes their hair cut. I really don't know where he gets that trait from as someone needs about 10cm off before I even begin to think that they look different. He is slightly obsessive but only in comparison with everyone else (he seems to be the only one of our dc who spontaneously realises that rubbish belongs in the bin). I know that some people with autism are considered to be 'human calculators' which is why I mentioned it in my op. It has been really useful to hear other's experience. Will definitely work on getting him to show his workings.

Oops nc fail!

san sure it can be but for us personally, comparing our reactions/ behavior to asd would be making light of some people's symptoms.

I'm interested to see this thread. we have had the exact same problem with DS just knowing maths answers, and as a result really struggling to show workings out. The school have been working hard with him to improve this.

What I find odd though is that they don't seem to give him the tools to work out more complicated sums. When we went into school recently to see what they were being taught, and they were expecting them to divide, for example, 133 by 7, by putting dots into 7 circles, until they got the answer. I can't imagine many 7 year olds having the patience to work it out that way, especially when they already know what the answer would be.

I wonder if he has a visual representation of maths. I 'see' data in my mind, it has a colour, volume and shape. When I add or multiply it's like putting a puzzle together, the 'shapes' fit together to make a total. Similarly for dividing or subtracting the shapes break apart, like a chocolate bar that is divided into squares and can be taken apart in different shapes. I was an adult before I realised that was what I was doing, and I couldn't have explained how I worked things out when I was a child.

I did go on to do a degree in maths, and then worked as a statistical analyst for a market research company, so being able to visualise data was hugely helpful to me.

Is he generally a visual child? I was always very good at mentally manipulating objects, so anything that was to do with shapes like jigsaws, puzzle blocks and rubik's cubes.

His idea that 7:00 to 8:30 means 30 mins of TV each, shows he is taking a purely numerical view rather than a real life view. I would ask him to explain it to get his reasoning, is he just "playing" with the numbers for the fun of manipulating them? Does he get that it's wrong because of course they could all watch 90 minutes of TV.

Haven't read full thread but about to be turfed off and want to put my tuppence ha'penny in!

It does seem to be mostly boys, but I used to do this. I was the only one of my siblings who could.

As I grew older and was squashed into doing all maths by the book and not by inspiration, the habit faded somewhat. However I still occasionally just 'know' what some arithmetical quantity will be, scribble it down, then think 'I better check', and find that I was spot on.

The skill is very much associated with making mental 'shapes' and cutting them into portions. That's the best way I can describe it.

I'm fifty now, and date back to a period when Gifted and Talented hadn't been invented, at least not in old fashioned girls only prep schools... I often wonder what might have happened? Would I have ended up doing maths/science as a degree path instead of History?

We do have ASD in the family, my father would certainly have got a statement, one of my daughters did get a statement although it has never really been needed in the end, and one of my nephews is profoundly autistic.

You sound similar to me AlpacaLypse, including almost the same age, except that I changed from my all girls school to a mixed school in the middle of secondary because the mixed school offered a wider range of maths-related subjects.

cdtaylornats his reasoning was based on real life as they take it in turns to have a choice. To him it's not watching TV if it is a Junior bake-off re-run! Getting all three to agree on 90mins of TV - now that would take someone truly gifted!

His latest party trick is being able to tell you a chapter title (e.g. 11th Chapter First Harry Potter - Quidditch) if you tell him the chapter number, even if he's only heard it read to him once months before. I would love to know how his little brain ticks

It's a double edged sword though.

My DS was exactly like the OP and sailed through primary school with Maths, never having to work at things. He could just see the answers so never bothered to learn the long multiplication and long division techniques - he could do it in his head! Trouble is, now he's at secondary school, and he's constantly losing marks because he's making silly mistakes everywhere now that the numbers are bigger and calculations are harder. He's too lazy to write down "simple" calculations, so he gets stuff wrong.

We've spent this last Summer making him get back to basics, teaching him long multiplication and long division, and giving him endless worksheets of basic calculations to make him do things on paper rather than try to do it in his head. By making him write even the most basic things down, it's slowed him right down and he's a lot more accurate now.

Instant recall of timestables and number bonds is high focus with the government too. We have used a mobile game (use on any Apple mobie device or non apple Android such as samsung) called Maths Rock, you can download it for 79p from www.madrocksolutions.com. We like it because unlike free games, it does not charge for add ons, advertise or link to other social media sites. Using this game for 10 mins a day has meant that both my children can really all 12 x tables since the school holidays, and their adding, subtraction and division has also improved . This is all instant recall though and not related to "working out". Just wanted to share our success in using this fun app which also has a Bingo game - all kids love Bingo!