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Original poster

god sometimes I just think my kids are really really thick

156 replies

Twiglett · 31/12/2007 09:51

my 3.5 year old just can't count

she just can't

1,2, pee ummmm pour 8 pie ten

and she wants to do these stupid letts study books because she loves them

but she's driving me mad

how difficult is it

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

OP posts:
Blandmum · 31/12/2007 14:31

I have taught some children who were NT but so slow on the uptake I couldn't quite believe that they could stand upright and talk at the same time. I kept expecting them to collapse, or be rendered silent from neuronal overload.

To my credit I have only once run out of ways to explain something, and at that point the child still didn't understand but lied and said that she did. For both out well-being I accepted the lie.

I could never teach my own kids.

Teaching other peoples is easier...you just blame the parents

PrismManchip · 31/12/2007 14:42

I love this thread
I have taught illiterate foreign people with learning difficulties to speak another language but I could never teach my own child anything and do not plan to try

becklesparkle · 31/12/2007 14:42

Hehe! I remember teaching DS1 to count he always missed 8, I used to correct him and he ended up counting

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,miss8,10

He is now 7 and also got an Intendo DS for Christmas. Also, for some reason, we have an exservatory on our house!

DS2 starts school on Friday and I am dreading the whole helping him with his reading thing. Hopefully his attention span and ability to remember a word he has already read 3 times on the previous page will be better than DS1's was!

Blandmum · 31/12/2007 14:46

At the age of 8 my dd went ape shit crazy (and I do mean that) because she wouldn't accept the definition of a prime number.

The conversation went like this

'Mummy what is a prime number'

'A number that can only be divided by itself or 1'
'Noooooooooooooooooooooo it isn't, it ,isn't'

'Yes darling, it is'

'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO its ISN'T'

'Yes it realy is'

'WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGG'

Me to dh' 'you deal with her, this is your fault'

I went out to meet up with some students who were woking at the school with me, and seeing my ashed face asked me what the problem was. They pissed themselves laughing and one said' Well, normal children are greatly over-rated'

melpomene · 31/12/2007 14:51

Becklesparkle, we had a servercuhtry on our house until recently.

Lol at jigsaw conversations. When dd2 is doing a puzzle and I suggest "Try turning that piece round" she will turn it face down. Or if I say "Put it a bit higher up", she will lift it into the air. I think she's deliberately winding me up though.

brimfull · 31/12/2007 14:53

I have periodically been trying to teach ds to put on gloves.

I always end up hollering at him ,I mean how hard is it ffs!Spread your farkin fingers!

He's pretty crap at mittens as well..beggars belief!

ohcomeALYefaithful · 31/12/2007 15:10

This thread is both hilarious and reassuring.

I can relate to so many tales on here, particularly the 'but you read that wors two lines ago'.

Crunchie at vast expense and work we keep 2 rescued (free) native ponies in our field in the vain hope I could teach my dd to ride, I was so looking forward to taking her out with me, hacking around the beautiful countryside.

After 2 years of screaming, crying and throwing herself on the ground I am now paying for private lessons. Two ponies free to a good home, anybody???

MrsWeasleysmagicmincepies · 31/12/2007 15:12

keep this thread going for ever PLEEEEAAAAASSSEEE its BLARDY PRICELESS I havent LOL so much in ages and my DD just said to other DD "I think Mummy is having a breakdown" then carried on playing with the Wii ROFL

fpesha · 31/12/2007 15:14

OMG children and gloves are a nightmare! Ds1 always bmanages to get three in one finger and loses his thumb entirely. And his little fingers! They always manage to escape by the time I've got the rest in!

DD (yr 2) had some Maths homework the other day to teach them doubles. Dart board, 1-6 in centre and doubles round the outside. Throw 3 darts to add up to 24 in 9 different ways. She was so lost, kept saying she understood it then 5 seconds later obviously had no idea. We gave up at 6 and tbh I'm not sure she'd even understood that.
1 of the other parents at the school had decided it must just be scrap paper because it seemed so beyond her dd!

MrsWeasleysmagicmincepies · 31/12/2007 15:15

TWIGLETT I just wondered who started this fantastic thread and clicked on your profile. I have sprayed coffee all over the computer at your family tree

I think I love you

PrismManchip · 31/12/2007 16:03

Twig I have just remembered - you need this Youtube video.
Worked with DS
He now misses out fifteen
(I am Pruni btw)

Original poster
Twiglett · 31/12/2007 17:11

psychadelic pruni

OP posts:
wrappingpaperBOwZZAndribbons · 31/12/2007 17:25

Twig you need to do what I have done. Keep your DD up late for several nights and then take her to a pantomime where she uses up tons of nervous energy being scared of Captain Hook, Nana, the Crocodile, the orchestra etc. Then let her fall asleep on the way home, and on arrival when your DS wakes her, ask in a nice, concerned mummy voice " would you like a bit more sleep in your bed, darling?". And that is where she is now....

And DS is sorted with a DS (know you disapprove of them but they work ).

So peace until our 7pm table at the local Indian.

twentypence · 31/12/2007 17:39

Ds picks up most things marvellously - unfortunately this intelligence is rather ruined when he says;

"when I go to stool I hope they have hard maths"

He is gutted that the one sound he can't say is part of the place he is so excited about going.

On the subject of counting if you sing up a scale while you count you don't get missed out numbers (it only gets you to 8 though). I've heard lots of children do 1,2,8.

peanutbear · 31/12/2007 17:40

I am laughing my head off at this thread and y 9yr old ds has come in read the op and said "god mom she should meet ds2 (aged4) that maks him look clever" !!!

obviously low tolerance for others learning runs in the family ds1 gave up trying to teach ds2 anything ages ago since he got a shoe thrown at him for his trouble

Fubsyinapeartree · 31/12/2007 21:38

Oops - I have thrown out homework sheets because they came home with a drawing on the back, and I thought they were scrap

DoesntTheFestiveSeasonDragOn · 31/12/2007 22:33

Snort. During craft activities I actually have to sit on my hands (if I am unable to leave the room entirely). Handwriting books were a challenge ("Just join the farking dots up!"). Jigsaws... [quiver] Reading [blanch]

On a reassuring note, however, at Ds2s (Y2) recent parent consultation, his teacher admitted that sometimes he explains maths concepts to his peers better than she does.

Fubsyinapeartree · 31/12/2007 22:43

I really, really hate getting DD to write Xmas cards. She wants to send cards to the whole school (it is smallBTW, about 45) then spends an hour making and decorating one card.

Eventually I broke under the strain and bought her a pack and said just write their names, no pics or decorations!

So what doesn she do?

Leaves them in her book bag, so they come home on the last day of term and no teachers got a card from her, and they didnt get the one I gave her to give them from me.....

hunkermunker · 31/12/2007 23:04

ROFL!

DS1 (3.8) can count, but jigsaws... And drawing - he scribbles like your basic 2yo.

(Avoids mentioning that 23mo DS2 can count to five )

MrsWeasleysmagicmincepies · 31/12/2007 23:28

LOL

twentypence · 01/01/2008 06:31

Ds draws like he has had his fingers broken. He can draw one thing - a person, a bald person in the nude with enormous ears and a massive neck. If you question him on the nude thing he draws a shower head above the person to explain the nudity.

NomDePlume · 01/01/2008 13:48

twentypence, that is brilliant !

DaisyMoo · 01/01/2008 13:54

Perhaps we could have our own forum as an antidote to G&T? See you on the TAPS forum (thick as pig shit)

foxinsocks · 01/01/2008 14:00

lol at these

My dd defies belief when it comes to homework . She had maths a few weeks ago, something to do with doubling/halving (yr3) and she said she wasn't sure what she had to do.

Now we are completely hands off with her homework because she drives us so mad so she does it all by herself but she asked me to explain one thing she wasn't sure of.

Took me about 20 minutes, I drew pictures, I illustrated the point by cutting up a pizza - she nodded throughout and I thought we'd had a lovely bonding moment and I was privately preening at my ability to explain to her.

So I thought she'd find the homework a piece of piss. First question, 'what's half of 20?'

She looks at me and says '4?' then seeing my face '5?' '6?' '7?' arrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

On being asked to write about 'why Christmas is special' (teacher expecting a page) she wrote 'Because it just is' .

Nightynight · 01/01/2008 14:18

oh god how much I can relate to this thread.

dd2 (just 4) insists on 1, 2, 3, 9, 10 despite me determinedly ´singing 12345, once I caught a fish alive about a billiion times.

ds2 (8) reads soooooo slowly and still confuses the ds and bs.