Reply to Math competitions for Mathematically Gifted kid (7 year old)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If every kid in mathcounts wants to be there and just loves math...why are they predominately Asian?

I’m just looking through my middle school’s team—all Asian. My state winners all have Asian surnames. The 2018 top 50 in nationals. 49 with Asian sounding surnames.

What gives? Do only Asian American middle schoolers love math? Or is this evidence of tiger parenting working?[/quote]

I think that it is cultural. DS loves math, he used his Lincoln Logs to work out multiplication at the age of 4. We smiled, encouraged him, played math games with him and didn't enroll him in math enrichment. We think the math pacing in his second grade class is slow and continue to play games and ask him questions at home but we are not enrolling him in math enrichment. Mind you, we also understand that while the math is easy for him we know that there are other kids who are struggling with it. I wish to god that they would start group work so that they can start differentiating but for some reason this is a very slow process.

He also enjoys sports so he plays a sport each season and does Ninja Warrior once a week. He asked to do three after school enrichment activities at school so we enrolled him in those. They are all STEM based. Mind you, these are his choices. If he said he didn't want to participate, we wouldn't enroll him. He needs to enjoy his extra activities. The only exception is swimming. That is a life skill that he has to have.

I want my child to have a balance in his activities and to enjoy what he is doing. We have math workbooks at home but he whines at doing those if we ask him to. He attends school for a long enough period of time that making him do extra math, or anything, is a pain in the butt. He will do workbooks over the summer but that is how he earns his screen time and when he has spent most of the day outside running around playing at camp.

He would do great in math enrichment, we are well aware of that, but he doesn't want to spend more time sitting at a desk doing math. So we have him help with cooking. We play board games that require strategic thinking and math at home. We have brain teaser books that he enjoys and Sudoku type things.

He is going to do fine in his math classes because he has a natural aptitude but we don't see the value in getting him far ahead of his peers and he does not want to sit down and do extra school work. I don't understand the pressure to have DS taking Algebra in 6th grade or to out pace the math offerings at the high schools.

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