When it comes to kids, trust your guts. You live in Taiwan and mindset of local environment is " be quiet and suck it up".
Is hard to process it up, coming from West. I understand your concerns, but does not nessarily mean your daughter is stress out and overwhelmed. Watch out, not to inject your stress, concerns into her. She shouldn’t feel stressful at this young age.
Make sure she drink enough water, and get enough sleep. And set up your boundaries clearly to your wife. Those are my boundaries. I never cut my child sleep and never let people being in my child face.
This is really good advice. Writing down in notebook what is point of this exercise and you would like to have further instructions. Is Indirectly f off with all those homeworks.
A little bit off topic. Had launch today at 12. Opposite of road, students in local German high school gymnasium finish their day. Taking bus or walk home. Many of them will be good engineers and produce world wide German class products. I think at home they play computer games.
Or, as I said above, what’s the benefit of knowing calculus at all? Every once in a while I’m grateful for having taken stats. I don’t even think I apply algebra 1 in my life ever. Pre prealgebra with compounding interest formulas and percentages, which are available online I do, but otherwise the most I ever use is basic arithmetic (3rd grade in the US), which I can do in my head but I also have a calculator in my pocket to do for me.
Well, if you want to get into many (most?) STEM fields, you need calculus at some point. Beyond that, yea, you don’t exactly need calculus in your daily life - but I’d argue it’s required for a deeper understanding of physics, which is a cool nice to have in understanding the world around you.
Compound interest formula falls solidly in the algebra realm. Algebra is used all the time in real life, even if people don’t think of it that way - currency conversions , cooking, travel time calculations, etc…
This is hilarious. The benefits of people knowing calculus are all around us in the form of technology (IT, medicine, transportation, etc.). We need to start learning calculus at some point, so we can see if we enjoy it or are good at it, because someone has to understand it at a high level. Not everyone needs to follow through with it at high levels, but there’s definitely a reason it is required.
Seriously, I solve for x fairly regularly. Recently I was looking online for saddlebags that would fit my laptop. Couldn’t find anything long enough but some might work if I put it in diagonally. Since I can’t physically test online, and they don’t give the diagonal measurements, I chose to use the pythagorean theorem to figure out whether I could fit my laptop into the bag. Turned out, even with the extra cm diagonally the only bag that would work is too damn ugly. Saved me the hassle of ordering and returning bags that don’t fit my needs.
Just because you don’t understand math, doesn’t mean math isn’t useful. The computer science that we are using to communicate is built on math. @nz, you said you’re a teacher of some sort?
I am a teacher. I even teach math, in a very concrete way. As children move towards more abstract math, it’s fine, if they had a concrete foundation. I was not given a concrete representation of math and never understood it, even as I moved up the ranks. But, once you have a basic foundation, computers do most of the work for most people most of the time. Understanding why and how is great, but you don’t need to teach calculus in middle school
I see and hear a lot of people with the same argument. Computers were invented by humans who studied calculus and were great at math. If we want all these great inventions to keep going, improving or coming up with new stuff, we need people who studied calculus in middle school.
Why? Some people say because people who study math early have an easier time when they reach university where they worry mostly about coding and already understand the math behind it. High school is supposed to teach you a little bit of everything so when you “grow up” you can choose whatever path of your liking.
I think the problem might be the amount of homework or the test results expectations of Taiwanese parents when one of the kids clearly don’t like math or doesn’t really have the ability for it.
Putting aside calculus, if you don’t have a basic understand of algebra, a lot of times you won’t know what to put in the computer / calculator for normal life math problems. I guess you could just assume Google / Alexa natural language interpretation is good enough, but boy, that seems like a lousy way to go… maybe in another decade it’ll be pretty much always good…
I’m happy to hear that you were able to turn things around. I have been passively suggesting TAS or TES to my wife for a while now. I think it’s time I get a little more persuasive about it. I’ve heard that TES basically does not assign homework to the students. My daughter is actually quite brite. She got her ADHD from me and I was a good bit worse when I was her age. The problem (aside from the amount of homework) is getting her to sit and focus when she gets home from school. Once she’s focused she soaks up what ever she’s studying. Her memory is actually really impressive and she is extremely artistic. She often scores at the top of her class on quizzes and tests and her teachers are always commenting on her drawings and paintings. Unfortunate her ability to focus is extremely unpredictable. My wife will sit with her for hours some nights while she hums and taps her pencil on the table and squirms around in her chair. All the hallmarks symptoms of ADHD . Those nights can be a living hell. I usually don’t get home from work until 7-8pm. At that point the productive hour widow that a dose of Ritalin gives her has long past and the two of them are tired and my wife is either crying or yelling at her to stop singing and making noises and get back to work. Then “Oh thank god, daddy’s finally here to stop mommy from yelling at me” You can imaging what this does to our family dynamic. We need to make a change. This can NOT go on.
Taiwan hospitals offer ADHD evaluation reports as well as supporting classes to help kids to with ADD and ADHD issues.
It may take a while to get a spot however, as there is a long waiting list. Alternatively, you can find occupational therapy clinics.
My son was diagnosed with ADHD and we took him to one of those clinics, as we didn’t want to wait for 6 months until we get placed in one of the hospital classes. We saw a significant improvement on his behavior, although there are still some bad moments. They practice attention and focus through games and activities, and he likes going there too.
Last week we were called to join the hospital therapy class, so we’ll see how things go.
I don’t have ADHD, but the doc let’s me keep some methylphenidate around in case I need to do some serious studying/work. For me, Concerta was terrible, but it worked great for another guy I know.
I thought Taipei had banned homework in elementary schools some years ago. Or was that one of those things where they hold a press conference and make an announcement and nothing changes?
She takes a low dose combination of Concerta and Ritalin in the morning which holds her until early afternoon. Depending on the amount of homework she brings home my wife will give her a half of a Ritalin pill in the evening. I’ve been on Concerta in the past as well and I wasn’t a fan. It played with my moods and caused me to dwell on negativity. I phase on and off of Ritalin depending on how busy I am in my office. I’ve been off of it for a few months now. I find that regular exercise gives me almost the same benefit but without the side effects. I have plans to speak to my daughters doctor about switching from Concerta to something else.
The thing about ADD to me is that it is not a disease, just a natural part of being an animal. We don’t see animals sitting down trying to focus on boring task for hours unless it excites them usually. Why do we think humans are any different ?
Tribal people largely sit around all day in between periods of intense hunting or harvesting or fighting. We aren’t naturally supposed to sit hunched up over a textbook doing maths problems for hours. That is the unnatural act. Dosing kids with drugs to make them behave a certain way. Hmmmmm
Sure did. We’ve done several of the OT classes as well. Unfortunately the amount of homework we’re dealing with doesn’t afford us the type of evening life where we can schedule a weekly class. Not to mention that my wife absolutely insists that my daughter practice violin several nights a week. There’s also an art class that my daughter loves on Thursday nights. I keep telling my wife that we need to simplify things and cut the extras out for now but she wont hear it. It doesn’t help that my daughter is really artistic and her violin playing is getting seriously good.
I only wish. In a perfect world, Id have eat her eat dinner and then run wild in the park with her friends until the street lights come on. Then get a good nights sleep and do it all over again.
. Those nights can be a living hell. I usually don’t get home from work until 7-8pm. At that point the productive hour widow that a dose of Ritalin gives her has long past and the two of them are tired and my wife is either crying or yelling at her to stop singing and making noises and get back to work. Then “Oh thank god, daddy’s finally here to stop mommy from yelling at me” You can imaging what this does to our family dynamic. We need to make a change. This can NOT go on.