Kumon, Math, and Our Asperger's Child

We've had such a battle with our 10 year old son and the dreaded subject of mathematics. He's a very bright child, but absolutely hates math. I don't think it makes sense to him and when I was his age I'll admit it was a struggle for me too.  I had no interest in understanding the subject. It was boring and lacked excitement. Additionally, my mind didn't bend that way! It simply wasn't my cup of tea.

For a time, our son loved TimesAttack, but it just couldn't compete with his Nintendo DS and his love for Pokemon... so, getting him to play TimesAttack (great multiplication game btw) has become more difficult, which is too bad, because it's an excellent tool for mastering multiplication. Now they've even come out with a division game which our son is begging me for... crazy kid! lol 

Late last year we started him at a Kumon center which isn't so much a tutoring center as it is self-paced repetition as a means of gradually introducing more difficult mathematics skills in a non-threatening way. Or... maybe better said, in a way that's not overwhelming to the child.

What's interesting is our highly-emotional son (thanks to the autism) freaks out most days when the Kumon assignment comes out, but when I ask him if we should quit he says "absolutely not mom". lol He doesn't want to quit, because well... he knows it's helping him, yet he still hates the assignments. I guess it's sort of like taking a nasty tasting medicine that you know works. You want the benefits of that medication, even though you dread taking it.

All this to say this... our son is finally getting it. He's never been so fast with his addition and subtraction... which is a Kumon thing. They get kids to the point that they just know the answer when they see the problem. Loads of repetition will do that. He's getting close to being able to do this with his multiplication too. Almost has it down so that when he sees the problem, much as he hates looking at that problem, he knows the answer. lol Asperger's children can be highly emotional, and our son could be that poster child. He howls and cries, then at some point accepts the assignment and gets it done. It would be awesome to avoid the drama, but we have to work with what the good Lord has given us! lol

Kumon sets us back $100 a month, but you can find books at Amazon.com for your child's grade level. Kumon won't explain or teach math to your child... what you'll find is page after page of math drills. They attempt to lay the drills out in such a way as to help the children see patterns in math, but to an adult it might look like the patterns give the answers away. It sometimes becomes a game... if the answer to problem 5 is X, than the answer to problem 6 has to be Y. I don't find this problematic... although when my son was younger I didn't like Kumon for that reason. I feared he wouldn't really be learning, but would simply find the pattern and follow it, never really learning anything. In the earlier levels, you'll see drills like this:

1+2=
1+3=
1+4=
1+5=

And so on... so you can see that if your child starts counting down the line, they'll just know the answer. This could be seen as a problem... after all shouldn't the problems be randomly shuffled? Maybe not. If you child is struggling with math because it doesn't make sense to him, perhaps the order will help. Patterns and order are essential for learning. So... why not give it a shot?

Kumon works by giving your child a 10-20 minute daily assignment. It's not supposed to be any longer than that. Just a daily drill to help build and maintain the familiar with new math skills. Our son goes to the center for his Monday and Thursday assignments, which are completed at the center and timed and graded. The other 5 days of the week he has a homework assignment that I grade. Any errors must be corrected immediately, in order for his brain to pick up on the error and correct it mentally. This way he'll be less likely to make that error again on future assignments.

I'll continue to keep you posted on our son's progress!

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