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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The race to nowhere[/quote]

It is not a race, it is trying to engage your child at a level that challenges them. Do you feel the same about travel sports? DS loves math and is good at it. The math taught at his school is not challenging for him. He needs more then what the school can provide. I can let him be bored and lose interest in math because the work isn't challenging or I can find ways to engge his interest. [/quote]
Work on breath: music, chess, strategy games, art, science, another language.  Many of these kids also struggle with social situations, so find a way to encourage social and team skills.  He can do advanced math too, but it's not the end all be all.[/quote]
Generally, these kids already are.  Do you really think that there are tons of parents out there pushing their kids only in math and not having them participate in any other activities?  My kid does supplemental math.  He also does a sport, plays an instrument, is learning a language, enjoys strategy games and so on.  This is typical for many math high achievers.  [/quote]
There's a kid up thread who does math, rec sports and scouts.  Adding an instrument or language would push his brain to add another skill.  It's not a crazy suggestion.  [/quote]

The kid already sounds well rounded enough.  Just how many activities does a kid need to be in for you to deem them sufficiently well rounded for supplemental math?  Why is it better to force a kid who is interested in math into "math adjacent" activities rather than letting the kid do more math? 
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Because specializing at age 10 isn't appropriate.  Being good at math is extremely one dimensional.  For a kid who is as gifted as stated here (i.e., in the 0.01%) then they should be doing other things to find an intellectual challenge.  If not, they will be bored.  Sports and scouts are great, but just don't have that level of intellectual challege.

The smartest guy I ever knew studied math at Harvard, followed by a PhD at Stanford.  In addition to publishing papers in math journals with an MIT professor as a high schooler, he also won several national poetry contests and was fluent in a couple of self taught languages.  By contrast, nearly every guy in my engineering program was good at math and liked sports.  Nice guys, but far from exceptional.  If you just want to be one of those guys, there's zero reason to take Algebra in 4th-6th grade.   If you're so damn smart that you're exceptional, then you should expand your horizons or you will be bored.  [/quote]

Doing 4 hours per week of supplemental math is hardly specializing.  It would just be a hobby, and it's completely age appropriate for a 10 year old.

You're also getting posters confused.  Mine is the 99.99th percentile type kid who also is doing music, language instruction, etc.  My kid probably spends more time per week practicing his instrument than he does with math, but I bet you aren't bothered that he's too young to specialize in music.  If he did the high level orchestra that would require a time commitment of 10-15 hours per week, I bet you wouldn't bat an eyelash at that even though you seem to be clutching your pearls about a few hours of math enrichment.

There is no reason to assume that PP's kid isn't sufficiently well rounded.  It's also not intrinsically superior to force a math oriented kid to do an instrument or play chess rather than do math enrichment, especially if the kid is more interested in math than the other stuff.

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