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Pretending to "forget"…HELP!
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I am not one to usually publically say something negetive about my children but, I need help! Does anyone elses kid pretend to “forget” things on a consistent basis? My almost 7 year old does and it is really getting old and driving me to the point of great frustration with her. Today for example, I gave her some money to sort and count. This is nothing new! She works with money every single day that we do scool. She has a coin cup and I either tell her how much to put in using as few coins as possible or I’ll tell her the specific coins and she has to count how much. We have been doing this for over 4-5 months now. She has known how to sort since she was 3!!! Nothing new! But today, everything was going well and fine and out of no where she gives me an attitude saying she had no idea what to do because the coins were all mixed up. I showed her again and told her to sort them into piles. NOTHING NEW! Still prending to not know! I said show me the nickle. And she acts “dumb” (I am NOT calling her dumb…she is VERY smart actually) and she said “I don’t know! This???” as she points to a dime. Why is she doing this???? I really lost my temper with her (which I’m not at all proud of). But I just don’t understand where it’s coming from. She usually loves math and again…this was not new so I know I’m not pushing her to do somehting she is not ready to do. I just don’t get it!!! How do I address this. (It’s not just today…she has been doing it more and more. Always claiming that she forgot things and I KNOW that’s not the case). She is in there crying and screaming saying that she is telling the truth and that I don’t believe her. I’m so exasperated I just don’t know what to do!
Well, Off the top of my head, I can think of 2 possibilities….
– either she doesn’t remember… that does occur on occasion where kids seem to totally forget what they knew or…
– she knows it so well she is bored at doing it again….
I’ve seen similar, but slightly different response, and been a part of it, in high school…. when we would have a substitute or student teacher trying to teach us something so basic… everyone just stared instead of answering the too easy question. That tended to start a cycle where they would explain stuff we already knew, which would bring less response…..
I recommend taking a break then moving on to new stuff.
This is hard and scary for me, but after mulling this over and debating, I’m going to throw this out there. I attended the CMI conference again this year and listened to a plenary given by Gladys Shaefer that totally BLINDSIDED me. I have fought off and on with one of my children in the area of math. She seemed to understand something – something she’s done since she first learned math, then suddenly she couldn’t seem to remember how to do it. Gladys talked about people who have this issue… it’s called dyscalculia. All this time I’ve been working on attitude and behavior, berating myself in my head for my inability to teach this child who is amazingly gifted and capable, and had never heard of this aspect of dyslexia. When I spoke with Gladys later on telling her that my child seemed to understand and even be ab le to do some of the things effortlessly and then hit a wall where she couldn’t do remember, just couldn’t do it, she said that is not unusual. So now I am rearranging my expectations; I will be watching and working with this child to rebuild her competency and our relationship.
I am not saying that this *IS* your daughter. I am only saying that I had a similar experience, and found the answer to a question that I didn’t even know to ask. We are also working on allergies which I think make this more pronounced in my child, so there is that as well.
There are tests online to help you determine if this is an issue. I bookmarked them, but on a different computer, so I will have to get back to this thread with those.
If this is truly a character issues, then sit down and talk to your child at a different time when you are both calm, and apologize to her about yelling, etc. Sometimes, humbling of ourselves serves as a greater impetus to change than anything else ever could or would.
Hugs to you as you try to figure this out,
~jacqleene
You say she pretends to forget things consistently. What other things does she pretend to forget?
For the example you gave of math today I would think she has had enough of something she can do easily. Is it time to find some more challenging math activities? My ds5 does the same thing when I ask him something he obviously knows – in math today I skipped over a short review section just to avoid the ‘playing dumb’ game.
I have the impression that this occurs outside of math, so I would think it is a behaviour issue, rather than a learning issue. It could be that at times she may feel frustrated or overwhelmed and can’t think straight, thus she feels that she forgets.
My son has done this and it was/is very scary and frustrating. His problem areas where this comes up is math and spelling. For ath I found that having a spiraling curriculum rather than mastery based worked better. He would “master” a concept and then forget it completely if he didn’t see it often. He seems to do well with short term memory things, but it never moves into his long term memory banks. This is where the spiral method worked well because it introduced new stuff so he didn’t get bored, but did keep reviewing mastered concepts so that he never took a break long enough to forget. Oh and sometiimes jjust a day was enough for him to forget. As for spelling, I tried multiple stuff and found that the only thing that has worked well is doing word lists and having him write them multiple times while spelling them out loud while writing them. I do break the words up into “chunks” and explain why each word is spelled like it is etc., but the writing and speak spelling have had the greatest impact. There are words that are cemented wrong in his brain and he has worked hard to correct them. these are sight words that PS “taught” him.
So, I would just do a quick review of the concept or material and let it jjog her memory and I would do it over and over and over…my son has finally grasped place value and I never thought it would happen and then poof he went from adding and subtracting double digit / single digits to adding & subtracting 3 digits and 3 digits and multiplying single digit/single digit.
HTH and know you are not alone and your kid isn’t crazy. LOL Learning is hard and the human brain is amazing, but it can throw us all for a loop every now and again.
Hugs to OP – I have been there. My only advice is perhaps to expect that it (the “I don’t know” look) might be coming and be mentally prepared for it yourself, get your patience ready and armed, and therefore be able to better keep in check your own frustration. Again, said with total compassion – I have been there, and have my list of moments that I’m not proud of either. This is super-difficult, especially when we can’t truly know whether it’s true or a bit of an act (for some odd reason), or whether it’s a little of both (i.e. a bit of forgetting, then some feelings of embarrasment due to forgetting, and then, and a little act to “look” really dumb, which she knows she is not – but acting out “really dumb” makes her feel better about the “little forget” that she experienced). Probably too much psychology, LOL, I will be quiet now! Just saying, it’s so hard to know what’s going on in the heads and hearts of our little ones…
@blue j – thank you for mulling it over and deciding to put forth your post on dyscalculia. I will be following when you post your sources. Not sure if we might have this situation with our second son, but for me, it’s sure worth making the attempt to figure out. I’ve been sitting here watching all the threads on behaviour and attitude, recently ordered The Strong Willed Child, and am about to order The 5 Love Languages. I’ll still go forward with these materials, and with digging deeper into all the attitude and personality stuff…but what you describe above (that Gloria told you) about forgetting learned material, well, it sure hits home here, so definitely worth considering this as well. My son provides exceptional narrations, loves to read, can quote major examples from Scripture that I’ve never even focused on in our studies (just things he picked up and memorized in his own personal Bible reading). Some days, he just astounds me with his math abilities. Yet other days, he has forgotten what we learned just the day before and is TRULY lost, almost as though he wants to insist we NEVER covered it.
Again, thank you for putting it forward blue j !
Ok I’m not sure if I can do a good job of explaining this but I’ll try. There are different types of memory.: long term, short term, procedural, etc. sometimes these memories have to “move” from one type of memory to another. For instance from short term to long term- this involves the hippocampus. Once the memory makes it’s way to the long term memory it involves less effort on the part of the cortex (which is the energy hog of the brain). I think sometimes things get a bit lost in the hippocampus during this transfer. It’s not quiet a long term effortless piece of knowledge, but the cortex is kind of “done with it” and doesn’t want to conger up the effort require to remember that piece of information. So it’s still there making its way to automatic but it requires a lot of effort to get to it. My advice is just help her jog her memory and move on. Easier said then done. For my son it’s spelling that constantly gets lost!
If this is happening in non-school areas too or in areas where she has previously had no trouble remembering things, then I would consider it a subtle form of disobedience and treat it accordingly. One thing that has helped with one of mine doing this (he’s younger so it may not work with an older one) is to have him go back and “practice” whatever it is he says he can’t remember how to do many times so that I’m certain he does actually know how to do it, and he gets a consequence for “not remembering”.
When my kids do that, it’s usually because they’re bored (having done the same thing million times), or because they need a break from that subject for a week or so. Somehow a break often seems to help them “process” things–a bit like sleep helps us process our days, maybe?
As for bored… I have this horrible tendency to completely forget what tasks need to be done when I turn my focus to housecleaning… 😛 I have a tremendously hard time focusing on stuff like that. Some additional mental stimulation in the form of, say, music seems to help both my kids and I focus better on boring tasks.
Thank you SO much for all of your feedback! I had also posted this on my churche’s Homeschool FB page and many others also said it sounded like boredome with the material. However, I did fail to mention that the day she did this, we had just added in $1 bills.; However, she has known for a long time that 100 pennies / 4 quarters / 10 dimes all = $1.00 and when I first brought the bills out, she seemed right on board with everything until I gave her the pile f money to sort. I had just gotten to know one of the HS Mom’s in my church the day before while we were at a park together. Through our conversation, I realized that my daughter is very much like her son in SO many ways. Her son was diagnised with ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder. But she was teling me how that makes him really giften in certin areas (like my daughter). I have always known my daughter is a little more unique than your average girl but, I have never wanted to put any lables on her. (I kind of still don’t). Anyways, when I posted something about this on the HS page, that same Mom chimed in and she had such words of wisdom that I am finding helpful. I figured I would share it here because maybe it would also be helpful for anyone else following this thread….
(1st post) “I’ve found that my kiddo who has always struggled in school, does this when he feels overwhelmed, which happens often. Particularly when he thinks about the other things he needs to do in school that day, or even a multi-step math problem (which is all of them now) makes him overwhelmed. When our kids get overwhelmed, their brains switch into survival mode, and it’s difficult to process much other information, hence the magical forgetting, in our case it isn’t defiance or deception out of laziness or a need for attention (which as the other ladies shared can all be valid reasons!) it’s a true struggle in the way this child’s brain is wired. We’ve done a lot of talking through this, how when we are overwhelmed vs. joyful about the task, we have our full brain available for use and it makes the task 100% easier. Helping him understand the unique way God created him and the why behind this struggle is empowering him to learn how to function on his own down the road. Also giving breaks, especially for physical exertion (go run around the house 10 times) can really help reset things. Sometimes the issue of forgetting is also that they know the information when thinking about one coin at a time, but when we ask them to put it together and add multiple steps, that requires a lot more functions to be done in our brains at once. Some kids just cause us to drop to our knees and cry out for wisdom and strength in ways other kids don’t, it is hard, but it also keeps us dependent! You are an amazing mom, and God chose you specifically for your daughter!”
(2nd post) “I’ve been thinking about M and thought of a few more things. First, parenting is so very hard, and often times it’s hard to know what to do, why, which “expert” to listen to etc, but the Holy Spirit is so so so very faithful to provide us wisdom without finding fault when we ask for it! James 1:5. Recently I was struggling with a hard issue with one of my kids then had a major “light build” moment in the shower, but really I think it’s a Holy Spirit moment, where he helps us see things about our kids, gives us insight, scripture, and just the right people to encourage us. You are on the right track!!! The second thing I thought of was that you mentioned she was gifted in some areas, and with my one kid who is very gifted in math, we’ve run into some similar issues. It would be going great, then we would run into a major block of frustration and it would take me by surprise because I thought, that’s your strong subject, you are so talented at it and way ahead of your grade level and shouldn’t be struggling! I think this can happen with our gifted kids when we don’t realize it, I know my average 6 year old would not be able to count money at all! Sometimes the issue with this gifted kid I have has also been that he can do more academically than he can developmentally or emotionally or with attention span, so there is clash there for him at some points, and we do a lot of oral work instead of written. “Gifted” kids aren’t always “easy” kids to homeschool!”
All in all, I am giving this up to God and trusting that He will guide me with wisdome and discernment. Thanks for everyones listening ears and words of wisdom.
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