Being Amazing and Math Discoveries

My dear older daughter is amazing. I'm glad I can think that, and say it in all seriousness. She was a screamer as an infant, difficult as a toddler, and let's just say that many people who know her now would not be surprised to hear either.

So I have been less in touch with her amazingness in various phases of her childhood. (Other words I might have used to describe her were high-need, moody, difficult.) Some of those words may still apply, hence my gratitude to ALSO know she is amazing.

I homeschooled my oldest son because I wanted to keep him close. If my older daughter had been born first, I might have been relieved to send her away, but knowing now how homeschooling can meet the needs of a broader spectrum of personalities and learning styles, I was delighted to keep her with me too. I always said if she went to school either she'd break them (and I didn't want her living with the labels those who buck the system, even of a kindergarten class, sometimes get) or they'd break her. And that would really be the greatest tragedy of them all! Because she is amazing!

So I'm back to the thought I began with. Most recently I've thought this as she rattles off to me math facts she is computing in her head. Before you are too impressed, you should know they are basic addition and subtraction. Nevertheless it is amazing to me for a few reasons.

First, these math fact rattling sessions are entirely initiated by her. One day she happily announced, "Mom, 5+5=10."
"Very good." I encouraged, assuming it was a random and singular announcement.
Then she told me, with growing enthusiasm, "And 5+6=11. And 5+7+12, and 5+8=13...." (she went on for a few more facts.)

I was amazed that she was right, in the first place. (This is a girl who may still not count to 20 in English without a mistake - she does better in Chinese, oddly.) I was amazed that she was computing in her head, simple though the computations were. And I was amazed, mostly, by how excited by all of it she was. It was like she was experiencing some thrill of cracking a numeric code that, perhaps, hadn't been cracked before.

This was weeks ago. These math fact rattling sessions continue. Always because she brings them up. Always lasting until she is done impressing me. She has done subtraction. She has added and subtracted by more than 1. When I ask her how she knows so much, she explains her reasoning and it is sound. I'm more astonished that it is hers entirely. I didn't ever explain that if 5+5+10, then 6+6, adding one more to each five, must add 2 more to the answer, and therefore be 12. But this is what she explained to me, just last night.

So not only am I marveling at HER, but that the idea of genuine, spontaneous, child-led learning DOES occur without the poking, prodding, and pleading of an adult. I'd read that this was so. I'm so glad I believed it enough to step back, this time, and trust the theory. And I'm relieved that by so doing, she gets to experience the thrill and joy of figuring "all this" out by herself.

With her older brother, we were drilling math facts by her age. Before I gave up. Before I thought, "he doesn't get it, or isn't interested to know that 2+4 will always be 6, and so why am I making the both of us miserable trying to convince him?" (He did get it later, and is doing fine on his own math journey.) She is the personality that wouldn't even tolerate the attempt to drill and grill, so we never went there. And yet, without patronizing rewards or instruction, she is driving her own discovery and understanding of math. That is amazing to me!

(As a final humble note: my older daughter is almost 7. She would have completed first grade if she were schooled, and therefore, none of the facts she is "discovering" are beyond what she might have already been told and tested on in school. But these facts, these ones she can't wait to tell me, they are HERS. She owns them. They delight her. She has residual excitement about them - that if she can figure out this much, the rest of the code is likely within her grasp. Of course, she hasn't said those exact words, but that confidence is in how she shares these facts with me. THAT doesn't necessarily come with an A on the year-end test. But I'm so SO glad it's hers.)