giftedness, speediness, and laziness

[aishamama]

HI everyone, I just wanted to ask if there is any correlation between giftedness, speediness, and laziness. I know that sounds odd.  My son is such a slow poke about everything. He takes forever on everything. He's also quite lazy and drags things out. I've been able to convince him to work a little faster so that he can have more free time to do things he enjoys, but his overall personality and way is so slow.  He has incredible depth of thinking, but getting the work done is a different story.

[whatsnextmom]

I'd say it has more to do with an individuals personality than giftedness. Some are slow, some are speedy, some vary on whatever they are having to do.

[joensally]

Yeah, that may be style/temperament, or it could be that he has a slower processing speed, which isn't uncommon.

[aishamama]

Thanks everyone. Perhaps it's just his own trait.  

[KaliShanti]

My giftie is the same way. Drives me up the wall. lol

[dessismama]

I have one giftie like yours, one who is super speedy, and one in between. All are lazy...:(

[aishamama]

I was just wondering because it's kind of torture to get him to get his classwork and homework done on time. It's difficult to get him out of the classroom for school dismissal on time. He is a major dawdler.  He doesn't even do half of his classwork in school. The teacher has centers and they have to rotate through them during the day. One center is Math, one is Spelling, Reading, etc.  When he brings his classwork home they are hardly ever done. Its not affecting his grades in the slightest or his understanding etc of the topics - so far. Even his teacher tells me he is slower than molasses about everything.  Last year in PreK he was slow and the teacher said he's the slowest kid ever. Totally stresses me out as my husband is the same way and I get the brunt of his dawdling, late for everything, doing his paperwork...so frustrating.

Positive and negative reinforcements don't consistently work. One day I just let him go to work without having done his homework I was 'that' fed up.  I decided he should face his teacher and face that embarrassment. It seemed to help. But the worry only comes the morning of class, last minute stressing out. 

Sometimes I wonder if he gets tired of the work.  Like, being told once this is how you do this type of problem is enough. Maybe the worksheets and homework are extremely off putting?  I'd hate for him to wake up one day and have no idea what's going on. Do you think that's what's going to happen one day from missing all of those math problems being completed or incomplete Lang. Arts worksheets from class?  

Does anyone understand what I'm talking about? 

[Jen Muise]

How old is he, and what grade?  Sometimes reluctance like that can be an indication of a learning difference; is it mostly when he has to write stuff down or do word problems in math that he's pokey? 

[aishamama]

He is 6 and in 1st Grade. He skipped K.  It's just writing, no matter what. He dawdles on everything.

Here is a sample writing assignment from where hew as working on his science project:

This is his best writing as he tried to do his best. It took about an hour. I had to sit with him reminding him each time to give space between each word and to keep the letters of each word together.  I assume that's normal at this age, right?

Originally Posted by Jen Muise 

How old is he, and what grade?  Sometimes reluctance like that can be an indication of a learning difference; is it mostly when he has to write stuff down or do word problems in math that he's pokey? 

[Jen Muise]

idk about not knowing how to space words, my kids seemed to figure that out pretty early.  But that doesn't mean all kids do, i'd ask your gr 1 teacher about that.  If you had asked him the questions, and he had given you the answers orally, would it have taken a significantly smaller amount of time to complete?   From my experience with my kids, I'd guess that either he's developmentally not quite comfortable with writing, and so is overwhelmed and daunted by the task; he has a hard time organizing his thoughts and getting them down on paper; he has some kind of learning difference; he has a relatively large difference between his mental maturity and his fine motor control; or some combination of those that is causing him to struggle with written material.  I'd talk with his teacher and see if you can scribe for him sometimes, or if you can get his work load reduced (ie, do half the questions assigned or whatever - enough to show he knows the work).  In grade one, they really shouldn't be doing more than about 10-15 mins of homework a night.  I find my gr. one dd gets a lot more done if she knows she is going to be able to stop after the timer goes off in 12 minutes no matter what she's got left to do.  And, I'd do my best to stop thinking of him as lazy, that kind of labeling doesn't help anyone; chances are pretty good he's got a good reason for not doing what you want him to do, you just don't know it yet. 

[Jen Muise]

A good book you might be interested in is Mel Levine's Myth of laziness  - here's a review  http://www.nprinc.com/curr/myths.htm

[aishamama]

Let me get an accurate, timed check. Tomorrow afternoon I'll time him on each subject area and monitor attitude and pay attention to any physical distress and I'll write back.  

[deminc]

Aishamama,i just saw this thread while thinking about dyspraxia. Ds1 is slow for writing too. Painfully slow. We had an evaluation done when he was younger for dyslexia and the observation was that the more he had to write/ copy, the slower he becomes. This is not the same for other children. I have sat for 4 hours with him to complete his Maths homework, all of which I know is well within his abilities. I was told that other kids took half an hour to an hour to complete the same homework. The teacher noted that he could answer above level questions orally, but is excruciatingly slow for writing despite working steadily and conscientiously. I got him to do everything without writing words and it was so much better, he was not tired and he did not give up halfway and he was actually exhilarated at the end. So for him, it is definitely a problem with writing tasks. Part of it was putting thoughts into words, part of it is physical difficultiesnwith writing, and part of it is psychological. He is so afraid of getting things wrong and thus having to rewrite, or having to do corrections due to untidiness, that he freezes before the paper. When I gave him absolute freedom on the paper, abundance of draft paper for scribbling workings, he is able to bring his speed up to about half of other children instead of three times slower. Still, pant..... I am going to start him on handwriting therapy while introducing the keyboard. Our plan is to pull him out while working on these so that we can keep up the learning momentum. While we are looking through our options, I have asked the teacher to allow keyboarding for some homework and to mark his maths for answers instead of workings. She has said she felt sorry for ds1 because he is working three times harder than the rest, so I am hopeful that she will accommodate. If you have a good relationship with the teacher, you can perhaps work out something similar with her while sorting things out on the therapist's side.

[rusticity]

I also have a 6 year old in 1st grade (midyear skip from K) who has writing issues.  His writing is way better than hers but I try not to focus so much on getting her "best" writing or about issues such as spacing between letters and between words.  I think that actually hinders the process.  I pretty much just encourage her to "go for it" & do her best.  She is bright enough to either know how to manage the spaces (even if she can't or it's to onerous to do it yet in practice) or she'll pick it up quick enough.  I restrain myself from correcting her (although it can be difficult!) or trying to manage her - I'm thrilled if she writes anything down b/c I know over time she will improve & she has improvde significantly over the past 5 weeks.  At least for my DD, trying to do her best is a recipe for disaster as she has a perfectionist streak that will slow her WAY down.  I try to enforce a no erasing rule - just do it & move on.  Good luck.

[aishamama]

I talked to ds's teacher and gave her a link to check out about Dyspraxia and she said she hadn't heard of these things before but from what she could tell they sound very much like him.  And what the teacher specifically says about him is that he's definitely a very smart boy, but he's slow in doing everything. Slow in writing, slow in packing, slow in getting out of the class, slow in transitioning to his other classes down the hall etc. It's his pace that is the issue.  This is also what his pre k teachers said about him. She did say the alternating feet issue is ok. She said she specifically watched him today at PE. 

I'm waiting on my Peds office to call back. 

[Jen Muise]

That's pretty much the same thing that dd's teachers were saying about her - every report card said things like, 'time management is an issue' and verbal reports were always that she just took a loooong time to do everything.  Her comprehension and verbal skills were excellent tho, as long as she didn't have to write anything down.  And, at that point, she was happy to write stuff down it would just take forever and a day to do it.  She also wanted to erase the whole page if she made a mistake, which was frustrating beyond words.  Unfortunately, it is hard to separate what is typical from what is not at this age, as I guess some kids outgrow it, and because the tests are hard to administer to kids who are still learning to write and generally manage language.  Just because it seems obvious to us that they should be doing better than they are, or that there's an inconsistency, doesn't mean that anyone will be able to measure it yet.  Just because they can't measure it, tho, doesn't mean there isn't an issue or that you can't do anything about it right now.  It's just now that dd is 9 that the professionals are saying that she's got some kind of dyslexia, despite us pushing for solutions since kindergarten and a diagnosis since grade 2.  Maybe your child will catch up and even out as his body and brain matures, who knows.  But, it's been our experience that it is far better to be prepared for them not to because the school system is ponderously slow.  If you wait until you *know* there's an issue, and then instigate testing etc.  you will quite possibly have lost a year or more just to getting evals etc.  I know one little guy who has been waiting more than 2 years now just to get testing sorted.  It's faster if you go privately, but it still takes time to get the tests done, reports processed and then communicate that to the school and get a plan set up.   Idk what resources you have available to you, or how quickly your school can act to help, but you might want to consider this and get on whatever waiting lists you can get on now - it's easy to turn down a spot or get off the list if you change your mind. 

Also, I"m getting the feeling that his teacher doesn't have a lot of experience with LD kids. Is she newer to teaching?  Do you have an LST/ spec ed teacher available to talk to about all this?  She might be able to observe him and pick up on details that others are missing.