Younger sibling doing things older sibling can't

CaptainSerious

Does anyone have this situation?

My younger son is 8 (2nd grade) and is pretty good with basic math concepts. Is pretty clear that he understands math and can compute better than my older son, who is 11, and in 5th grade. My older son realizes he's behind other kids his age and struggles with his self esteem. He thinks he's stupid. I am really worried what will happen when he realizes his younger brother who idolizes him can understand and perform better at math.

If you've been in a similar situation, how did you handle it? We already talk about how we all have different strengths and weaknesses and always point out areas in which he excels, but he already says things like, "I don't have a brain," "My brain just doesn't work," and the ever common "I don't get it," "I can't," and "I'm stupid." I'm so worried that this will be the crushing blow that makes him just give up.

Any advice?

Princess_Lily

Sounds like you are already on a great track.

My brother and I were very different academically, and in many ways he succeeded where I failed.  While I would jump around, and grades were all over the place, my brother pushed himself academically for success.  However, he had to do twice as much work, things just didn't come easy to him.

My parents and I always insisted to ignore the "haters," (teachers were the biggest a-holes IME - always telling him he will never get into college, etc.). My parents told him to just keep pushing on!  They also made sure to provide tutors in areas where he was falling behind.

Sometimes he would hate the tutors which pushed him the hardest!  In the end though, he graduated law school and is now working in a fortune 500 company! 

hopecounts

Not exactly the same but my middle brother has a very high IQ and my oldest brother has a mild LD. 

One of the things my Mom did was emphasis effort not success/grades so my oldest brother who was putting in 2-3 hours a night got a lot of praise for his commitment and hard work and grades were minimized (not ignored exactly but very much downplayed).

My middle brother got minimal praise since he basically intentionally skated through.

I was in the middle smart but also worked hard so I got praise for making the effort not my grades .

This worked pretty well for us, and minimized isues around ability. Middle Brother didn't love it but that's because he was lazy. J seems to be more of a rule follower/hard worker so I think if you praise them both for working hard it may work for them. 

I'm pretty sure you are doing this already but wanted share my experience with it.

CaptainSerious

Thanks, everyone.

@-auntie- where to start?  M has a language-based learning disability, dyslexia, memory issues, and a low average IQ.  Most significantly, though, he just doesn't understand that math works, or why.  He doesn't get that the numbers represent real quantities of things, no matter how many different ways we explain or show him or how many types of manipulatives we use.

At his best, he can compute 2+2 and get 4, because he's learned through repetition how to do that.  But then if you ask him 4-2 right after, he will again have to compute it.

Even simpler, he can tell you that 1+2=3 after computing, but if you ask him again 20 seconds later, he has to recompute it.

In school, they were working on long division.  Again, he can multiply, because he memorized the times tables (sort of) and uses skip-counting songs as memory prompts, but he can't remember the steps to long division.  First of all, it confuses him that when you multiply, add, or subtract, you always start at the right, but when you do long division, you start at the left, so he keeps messing up where to start from when dividing and doing the necessary subtraction in long division.  Then, he can figure out what number might go into a dividend, but by the time he has to write down the product of that number and the divisor, he forgets and has to recalculate.

I don't know if this is making any sense when I write it out.  But if, for example, he's doing 264/6, this is how it would go.  He'd start by doing his 6 times tables until he figured out that 6 could go into 26 4 times.  This is the hardest part.  Then he'd write 4 on the top line, and freeze until he's prompted that the next step is to write the answer to 4x6 under the 264.  Then he'd have to recalculate, most likely by using his 4 times tables this time, and he might make a mistake along the way.  Assuming he gets the right answer, he'd write the 24 under the 264, but it might be under the digits 64 rather than the 26.  He'd often have to be prompted to subtract, and then would have to calculate the subtraction.  Assuming he arrived at the correct answer, 2, and everything was lined up correctly, he'd bring down the 4, and the whole process would start over with him trying to figure out how many times 6 can go into 24.  He'd never put together that he just determined that it has to be 4, or that 4x6=24, and so the rest of the problem would be just as painstaking as the first.

I just honestly don't know how to make math make sense to him, as it feels like we've tried everything, and it's just another foriegn language he doesn't understand.

CaptainSerious

AA0417 said:

Sounds like you are on the right track. It's not like you can hide the facts, so highlighting strengths is great. I agree with PPs and just wanted to add one thought, which maybe you are doing already. Having them work on homework separately can help if the younger one ever tries to "help" the older. I have two NT relatives in early elementary school. The sister is a year ahead, but the brother is really quick with math, which happens to be her area of struggle. When she would ask her parents a question, he would innocently pipe in with, "Oh, that's easy. You just [do this]." (which made her feel bad). The parents quickly implemented new places for each to do homework. I think they used the excuse of there being less distractions or something as the reason for the change (they proposed the change a different day).

This is our situation, exactly.  I can't tell you how often my older one is struggling and someone says, "That's easy.  You just..."  To hear his younger brother do it now makes us cringe.

So, my husband and I have actually discussed trying to separate the boys through homework this year.  I don't know if it will work, because I have to work closely with each of them because neither can read well enough yet to do homework on their own.  They both want to get their homework done right away, so they don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day.  I usually sit between them at the table and bounce back and forth between helping them.  Between sports and therapies and other commitments, I don't know if we'll always have time for me to work with each of them individually, but I will do it as often as I can.