How can I help my dd (7, Y2) speed up?

[souvenir]

Message withdrawn

No advice really just feel sorry for your dd, my ds was exactly the same in year 2, always having to miss playtimes.It did work though, by the Xmas term, he was speeding up considerably.

Now he's in Y3, and his new teacher has just said to me' he's very slow at finishing, isn't he-I'm thinking about keeping him in next week'

Both my DD's are similar, but since the advent of their new teacher, both have improved. He has very high expectations and any unfinished classwork is sent home to be done that evening and handed in the next day. The kids don't want to spend every evening doing their classwork and so have bucked their ideas up at school.

Perhaps you could suggest to her teacher that she sends home any unfinished work to be done at home. That does put some work onto you but maybe if your daughter has to miss her free time at home to do classwork, she may try to speed up a bit.

good idea, fernie, I'm going to suggest the same for my ds.

Just out of curiosity - are other children who are slow to finish work at school also slow to do other things?

We always joke that my dd lives in dd-time. She takes ages to do everything! She also has a problem finishing work at school although what she does is very good the teacher says. As much as having a problem finishing things I think she has a problem starting something, she thinks it through too much and daydreams, loses the plot, returns to it but without much time left to actually do it.

Yes, that sounds just like my dd. Not just school work, but anything and everything. On the positive side, she can be incredibly focused and concentrate on the same thing for hours, quite literally - so long as it is something that she is interested in.
She also struggles with changing between activities for just this reason - if she is very absorbed in something, then she finds it hard to move on to the next activity without plenty of notice and time to change track. Unfortunately school is full of random changes of activity (at least it must seem so when you're small).
I don't think (after much painful experience) that it is possible for her to do things quicker - essentially punishing her by keeping her in at break (which fortunately her teacher gave up on quite fast) is a bit like punishing a child for finding sums or reading difficult. They can't suddenly be able to do the sums - and dd can't suddenly be able to do things more quickly. Even worse, in her case, not getting a break outdoors made her even less productive in the next lesson.

That's interesting Takver. My dd can also concentrate better than any of her friends on one activity. In fact they get very frustrated that she's still drawing a picture / writing a story when they got fed up with it ages ago.

In a way I'm proud of her that her work is good even if she's not very prolific. Her writing is lovely as is her drawing. It just takes forever for her to do it!

You know, I wonder if this isn't a common problem? I also have a Y2 dd who struggles to finish things. She's a very strong reader with an impressive vocabulary who finds it difficult to start tasks, let alone finish them. I think she has quite low self-esteem combined with high expectations. She can't live up to herself, she's filled with self doubt but is also a perfectionist.

Yet, like others have said, once she's doing something she concentrates and focuses very well.

But what I want to know is ... do they ever grow out of it? Can you do anything to spur them into action?

Very familiar, imaginaryfriend - I remember years back when dd was doing painting etc with other toddlers she would still be happily painting away long after all the others had given up & gone off to other activities.
I was on a thread ages back along similar lines (not school work, but fairly extreme slowness and vagueness), and I do remember a few posts from at least one MNer whose DH was just the same, so I have a suspicion its just a personality thing. IIRC he had a PhD in physics, so it didn't appear to have hampered him too much in life.
violetbloom in many ways your description also fits my dd, she doesn't have low self-esteem but she is a complete perfectionist and hates to do things that she thinks she'll do badly.
Also ditto a strong reader/big vocabulary, in fact given the chance she would read all the time & just live in her own world I think. Sadly for her she has real shortsightedness problems that are getting worse so we have to really limit her reading time which I hate, as it is something that she loves.

Oh, that's tragic that she can't read as much as she'd like. My dd would read all the time too given the chance. Funnily enough dp was saying to me the other day about how slow he always used to be at everything but he went on to get a PhD too. I suppose when you work at that level you can sort of take your time and go into things as much as you can.

Maybe we've got a group of little future researchers on our hands!

Having said that I did have a word with dd this morning before school to really try and listen hard to the teacher and start her work more quickly so she can finish it in time. I said I would be very proud of her if she did it. I probably won't happen but you never know!