My son, 11 years old, is a well behaved, eager to please kid. Although
he is doing well in school, I hope to push him a notch higher. For
this past 2-3 years, I have him work on EPGY (education program for
gifted youth) math in addtional to the regular school work. On
average, he spends about 40min 4 times a week on EPGY. How can I
convince him to step up a notch, since the course material is getting
more demanding?
What is the best way to motivate a 11 years old? I'm originally from
Asia and I know the kids there spending much longer time in math than
American kids. The problem I have is that he think he is already
spending much more time than his classmates. Any suggestion?

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Request for Question Clarification by journalist-ga on 17 May 2004 04:59 PDT

Greetings Robert0999:

Does he enjoy music?  Music is math.  
"When a musician places a finger on the string of an instrument, the
wavelength is shortened, increasing the frequency. The frequency of a
tone is inversely related to the length of its vibrating string.
Pythagoras noted that musical tones are related to the length of the
string by exact ratios. Certain simple ratios give the most harmonious
intervals, according to Pythagoras, and that is the basis for the
musical scales we use today. By holding down a string at its midpoint
and plucking a free half, the tone produced is exactly one octave
above the tone of the entire string."
From http://www.teachingtools.com/GoFigure/Saw-a-Tune.htm

Also, art contains math regarding perspective and balance, and even
people are math: see explanation of the Divine Proportion at
http://goldennumber.net/life.htm

Do you think this arts/music approach would work to stimulate your
son's interest?  If so, I'll be happy to search and provide more
examples as an answer.

Best regards,
journalist-ga

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Clarification of Question by robert0999-ga on 17 May 2004 15:19 PDT

Wow! Thanks a lot on the trial answer and the three comments. This has
got to be the best internet(or Google Answer) can offer.

jounalist/grthumongous/kapilr - Thank you for bringing up those
interesting point/concepts. I'm sure they could be very helpful for
some situations.

ellie - Your comment is what every hard-driving father afraid of
hearing, just joking :-) I'm often in conflict with my wife on this
very point. She is in your camp. For us, I'm in charge of math and she
takes on piano. I must say that my approach seems better sofar but
long term wise, who knows? My problem is if you're not being
demanding, kids would just spend time on TV/video games. I hope we can
raise our kid your way and be as successful as you are. You have
already mentioned some directions but the path forward is still not
quite clear to me. I'll be really grateful if you could elaborate or
provide more references/insights to your approach. Thanks.

robert0999

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Clarification of Question by robert0999-ga on 28 May 2004 13:26 PDT

sstolle,

Very well said, sstolle. Both your and ellie77's comments really make
me think twice about pushing my son beyond what he is currently doing.
You make me remind myself not to mold my son into someone he is really
not. Thank you.

I want to be a parent who is in charge but not overly demanding. Happy
parenting to all.

---

Clarification of Question by robert0999-ga on 28 May 2004 13:46 PDT

Hi asking,

Thank you for sharing "aleks" with us. I really like EPGY but aleks
looks terrific and it is a lot cheaper! Before EPGY, we tried Silvan
and Kumon (I have another 16 year old son) and EPGY is clearly better.
Now aleks. We sure give it a try after this session of EPGY ends.

Are you aware of any similar program for reading that you would recommend?

Society needs mathematically-focused  people to lead our world forward.
Paralyzed people like Christopher Reeves need mathematicians to learn
new ways to make them walk again.
His country needs mathematicians for cryptography to protect us.
His planet needs mathematicians for Earth Sciences like global climate
and global warming.  No kid wants to see a world without animals and
dolphins.
His parents need him to be able to discover new knowledge about Cosmology.
His future wife wants a smart guy who is part of the Mars program and
some of those astronauts will be mathematicians.

Dear Bob,

It can be difficult to have kids to be interested with Maths at the
outset. However, one approach, which I have found to work well, is to
introduce games and activities that require some Math.

For example, playing baseball with a set of rules that increase your
score as Fibonacci series (1,1,2,3,5,8..). Maybe introducing him to
games like monopoly will be a good idea.

I suggest you to praise him for his math skills in these games and
give him a sense of pride and achievement.

Once he starts taking basic interest in math, you could increase the
level of these games.

:)

I'd also add that your son already seems to be doing a lot extra as it
is - 40 mins 4 times a week is a big committment for an 11 year old,
especially if as you say he's already aware he does more than his
peers. There's a lot of research pointing to the fact that children
pushed too hard too early don't achieve as much as children who are
left to develop more naturally. I'm happy to provide more research on
this for you if you like. However using myself as a case sudy - I
didn't work paricularly hard in school, but aged 19 I had already set
up my own organisation, and since then have won awards such as
'Scottish young achiever of the year', a UN 'youth in action', a
'woman of the year award' for the UK in 2002, and various fellowships
and leadership awards. I wasn't pushed, rather because I was given a
lot of space and independence I had time to develop social & 'people
skills', spending time with people my own age and older, doing
community service programmes, joining clubs, etc. So my advice would
be - support your child in his interests, give him space to become an
independent individual, let him develop normally, and don't put so
much pressure on him that he doesn't know how to motivate himself
independently.

Parenting is a very challenging task. It requires patience, love,
observation and listening. As parents our job is to help and ecourage
our children to strive to maximize their potential.
In order for you to ecourage you son to spend more time in math, you
need to first analyse your son and start helping him find an activity
that he enjoys the most. You can do this by providing him oportunities
to experience different activities. Take him to concerts, sports
venues, view various types of art and architecture. Let him watch
medical procedures on TV or sign him up for speech competitions. Help
him design his own web site or create his own robot.
Once you have found his calling (this may involve many trials and
errors) then you can show him how math can enable him to be a great
success in the field of his choosing. If he likes building his own
robot, show him the mathamatical applications for that field. Then
provide him with all the tools necessary to become great doing what he
likes to do. This will require much of your time spent with him on his
favorite activity. And quite possible a good deal of your money.
Remember he will be successful if he is happy doing what he likes to
do and if he does it well. He will be very unhappy and not very
successful if he does what you want him to do even if he does it well.
Happy parenting

Just a thought, but my son (now 10) also used EPGY, and found it to be
relatively boring - somewhat repetitious and dry.  There are other
online or computer based systems that he might find more interesting. 
Some are tutor based, and some are not.  (EPGY tutor experience can
vary - depending on your tutor.)

We've really enjoyed a program called Aleks - the wonderful thing
about Aleks is that it adjusts to your competency.  It was designed
with some very sophisticated adaptive learning models as the
foundation - so it actually knows what you know (and what you don't),
and adjusts so that once the student has mastered a topic, they move
on.

There are some topic review features, but they are handled very
cleverly, so it doesn't seem to the student that they are just
'marking time' on things they already know.

On the other hand, if the student is having difficulty on a particular
topic, the program is extremely clever at figuring out WHY - it
analyzes the answers (which are NOT entered in a multiple choice
format, but actually typed in directly) to determine what sort of
error the student seems to be making.  It even identifies problems in
areas that are not exactly the topic being taught.  It is quite
uncanny in its ability to spot the real problem area, so it doesn't
simply continue drilling the topic at hand - it diagnoses the problem
and goes THERE, instead.

With Aleks, you could take a different strategy with your son -
instead of insisting on a particular amount of TIME spent (which can
be counterproductive - you really want a certain amount of learning,
not simply hours sat in front of the system, don't you?) you could set
particular learning goals.  Aleks gives the student a pie chart of
various topics they are ready to work with - your son could then
choose what he was working on at a particular time, so he may feel
like he has some control over the situation - that helped a LOT with
my son.

(You get a separate site, where you can monitor what and how he's doing.)

Overall, Aleks has been much more helpful to my son - he has
progressed faster, and much more happily with it than with any other
program.

Aleks is a fee based service, but it's not as expensive as EPGY. 
(Currently, it's less than $20 per month.)  The basic system goes
through high school, but Aleks 2.0 goes into college level.

You can find out more at www.aleks.com.
I hope this helps!
asking-ga
(I have no connection to Aleks, other than as a very happy customer.)

Hi -

Unfortunately, Aleks only does Math right now at the K-12 level.  (I'd
sure love it for other topics, as well!)  They do offer Aleks for
Adult Education - statistics, accounting - all sort of math-y topics,
but nothing like Language Arts, etc.  But, you might well find other
distance learning offerings that interest you/your son on Hoagies.

If you haven't run across it yet, Hoagies is an amazing resource for
gifted/talented students and their families.  It sounds like your son
could benefit from many things on the site.  Here's the link to the
distance learning info, but do take a look at the rest of the site.
(www.hoagies.com)

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/distance_learning.htm

Best of luck!
asking-ga

Hi Robert,

With respect to you as an intelligent and caring Father .. MAKE IT FUN !!!! 

My own 12 year old daughter gave me a 2 hour French lesson a few weeks
back. I can now count to 3 and name most of the colours. Slow Dad,
fast daughter!

Her teaching skills were fantastic (Ca Va Fantastique!) .. she pointed
to various articles and shrubs in my garden to draw my association to
reality by asking me to name the colours of each.

The best way to learn I believe is to explain the information to
someone else. Good luck with your son, I hope that your aspirations
for him match his own wants and abilities.

Kind regards.

Robert ..

p.s. Replace your word "push" with the word "entice". As in, lead the
horse to water.

Regards.

you should be careful of pushing too hard and causing your child to resent you.

or you could lock him in his room until he works as hard as you require.

Hi asking,

I have really enjoyed the hoagie website since you mentioned it last
week. Although my son is really not that gifted, I have found many
places in the site to be quite useful.

I notice that you're one of the google answer researchers. I welcome
you to answer my question (no more new info needed) and claim the
money. I feel like I got my money worth from you and more. I hope you
get this message before the question expires.

Thanks, Robert

Robert,

I couldn't resist commenting, especially since you seem to have a
healthy view of what you're trying to promote in your son (your joke
to ellie made me laugh).

I graduated with a math degree from Cornell University (cited at my
time as #1 in theoretical math in the country) and was very gifted in
math all of my life.  For me, it came naturally...I enjoyed learning
more math, simply because it was fun.

And as I thought of what made (makes) me tick, it's the fact that
learning is fundamentally fun.  Put in another way, playing is
learning.  Play is the way that children learn, and the more that your
11 year old son 'plays' at math, the more he will learn.  Certainly
there is a needed discipline that should be increased as he grows
older and matures, which is what I think you're struggling with.  How
much is too much vs. how much, regardless of what 'other students' are
doing, should your son be doing.

I would remind your son that what other kids are doing is not really
of consequence.  My parents raised me to be unique and to ignore the
status quo of other students...to be a 'leader' not a 'follower.'

If math is your strength, then I suggest talking about interesting
mathematical things with your son...tell him neat anecdotes, let him
see programs on TV that are mathematically interesting.  Make it
enjoyable.  Help him to play.  You may even find yourself learning
more as you play with things.

But most of all, don't force it upon him.  Continue to encourage him
and push occasionally to reach beyond his current level (which is what
you're doing)...but not so hard that he resents it or you later.

-The Grammaton Cleric

p.s. And...let him play video games from time to time, as long as they
are challenging and not mind-warping...they don't have to be
'educational'...did you know that this current generation of kids have
super-impressive hand-eye coordination and quick-decision making in
part due to video games?

There has been a lot of great discussion about this topic aleady, but
I just wanted to make one additional suggestion.  As a math teacher,
tutor, and mother I know how difficult motivating students can be. 
Especially at age 11, the focuss needs to be on exploration, discovery
and connections.  One of the importnat things about math is that it
teaches/requires us to think logically.  There are lots of
non-numerical activities that teach logical thinking skills in very
creative ways.  I would suggest The Incredible Machine:  Even More
Contraptions (a great PC game made by Sierra) as a terrific suppliment
to your other activities.  The game is based on making Rube Goldberg
machines (complicated devices to accomplish simple tasks).  The game
is so fun and challenging that your son will almost certainly ask to
play it.  As your son tries to use gears, pullies, switches, balloons,
etc to accomplish the task he will aslo be learning many important
skills along the way.  Both reasoning and mechanical skills will be
strengthened and you can expound upon these activities based on his
interest.  Also classic games such as Chess stimulate logical
thinking.  I would also look for ways to spice up traditional topics. 
I once did an activity with M & M 'bugs' to teach about sampling and
proportion.  The kids loved it (they were 6th graders) and were much
more attentive subsequently.  Good luck with everything, and remeber
to push less and provide engaging oportunities more.

Take questions out of IQ test books that are designed for your child's
age, and give your child a question.  Give your child a new one each
time they finish a question, and promise them a big reward if they get
all forty questions.  In the long run, though, the happiest children
are driven by passion- find that child's passion, and foster it.  I
took four years of advanced math in college,because I excelled at
math, and all that did was push me into a vocation that I disliked. 
You only become great at that which you love.