[skyde]

Can you give more detail on what you mean by it can be a valuable experience with the right people around to help.

My son (7 years old) is gifted in Math and as a parent I find it extremely hard to decide how much I should push him (register him to math competition, weekend math club ...) and how much I should just let him get 100% on exam and not accelerate the learning.

[tippytippytango]

He needs to learn grit and how to ask for help. He needs to learn some things are hard and that he can’t always lean on his intelligence.

The best way to guarantee a gifted kid wastes a lot of their potential is to be in an environment that is too easy. It creates a devastating mental habit that won’t trigger until later in life, like college. Whenever they try to do something that doesn’t come easy, their brain will try to shut down out of a kind of frustration. They won’t know how to overpower it. It will cause depression, anxiety, shame and low self worth later on. Because the gifted kid will know they are wasting their potential, but blame themself for not being good enough to deal with it. It feels like being broken.

All of this is created by being rewarded for maxing out the rewards of a trivial environment. Someone needs to patiently and compassionately teach them to value overcoming appropriately sized challenges. To find and operate on the edge of their potential and ask for help to operate beyond those limits.

So yeah, grit and asking for help. Intelligence is mostly wasted without it.

[GardenLetter27]

It's just like exercise - if you just stay lifting weights you can manage easily, you never really progress, even though it still feels easy.

[theodric]

Hey, stop describing me accurately, that's mean.

[shermantanktop]

I faced the same problem. Some analysis in retrospect, having kids who have now graduated college:

- your child has a wall. At 7 he is not hitting that wall.

- that wall is probably mostly related to the pure math concepts, and probably less to his actual age when he encounters them. This is my assertion and I cannot prove it but let’s assume it is true. Precalc or calc is a typical wall moment, but for others it might be geometry or trig.

- one response to an eager math learner is to move them through the curriculum faster. They are happy, because everything is fun prior to the wall! You get to be the parent of that kid who is great at math! Let’s put the pedal to metal!

- what acceleration means is that your kid will hit the wall at 13 instead of 15, or 14 instead of 16, etc.

- those two years can make a big difference. Accelerating might be positive, in that they hit that at an age where you can support them better. It might be negative, in that they now have a crisis that their peers can’t relate to. Not accelerating might mean that they respond to the wall by pouring their energies into age-appropriate activities instead, like listening to loud music or being grumpy.

So no easy answers here. We did not think ahead clearly, and pushed forward, and had some decisions to make later. In retrospect I think it turned out fine, but I wish I had known that I was pulling the wall forward in time.

[zozbot234]

If you're hitting a hard "wall" either some concepts are not being taught effectively, or there are some undetected gaps in your previous learning that make some things difficult to understand for you. There's nothing specifically about precalc that makes it inherently harder than, e.g. Algebra II or whatever if the teaching is effective. So being able to access alternate sources of understanding, such as Khan Academy or the Math Academy OP talks about, can be especially important.

Moving through the curriculum faster is a common approach but it's also risky, because that's how the gaps are created that can then hinder your understanding later. Of course if you have reached true mastery of a given topic, moving forward is preferable to being bored to death, but assessing whether that applies can also be difficult at times.

[dbcurtis]

In my experience as a parent, you can provide the resource but don’t need to push. Love of math will happen if it has the right environment. For a 7yo I might suggest looking onto Epsilon camp, and Art of Problem Solving (which is on line).

My own kid went to MathPath (middle school camp by same people as Epsilon Camp). Loved it. “Yes, dad really, I want to spent a whole month of my summer doing math.” The social experience is great for kids to be with other kids that like math.

[gunian]

rich people stuff is so fascinating to me my family went on one vacation my whole life i wonder why jesus made us poor because i loved school so much

[erikerikson]

The gifted programs we have liked most focus on depth over acceleration. Finding someone who can open the deeper views of things might be more supportive of his joy and longevity in the subject.

[thfuran]

I guess how easy it is to do depends heavily on the district, but why not have him skip some math courses and leave extracurriculars for if he's really interested in it rather than just good at it? I ended up skipping three years of math by the end of high school, though I never did any club or competitions.

[thechao]

My youngest is not gifted in math. She's still in the top 1/3 of her class, through diligent study, repetition, and review. Over the last year she's gone from dreading to loving math. Please keep an open mind about your kiddo's interests and don't push too hard.

[sebg]

It really depends on how much your son wants to do math.

As you can imagine, there is a whole world of kids like your kid who love math and want to do nothing more than math.

If you're interested I can chat with you or recommend resources here if you decide to help your kid do more math.

[moi2388]

You shouldn’t push him. You should encourage him.

If he likes to do math you make it available, if he would rather play with legos instead of doing math you let him do that in his free time.

You can encourage learning and problem solving without it having to be math, or pushing.