Kids of all ages hint at their preferences and potential. However, in the busyness of everyday living, parents often don’t pick up on such signals. Besides, unless you know what to look for, it’s easy to overlook math-inclined behavior. All the top rated math tutors near me always look for these signs to identify students who are natural math geniuses.
Your Child Shows Keen Spatial Awareness
Spatial awareness means knowing where you are in a space in relation to other objects. It’s an innate system for triangulation and calculating distances. Gymnasts develop spatial awareness early on; they have to know where they are in their space to execute flawless routines. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles highlighted that in 2020, when she withdrew from various events during an attack of ‘the twisties’.
Your child might not enjoy doing flips and tumbles. They may prefer tossing or kicking a ball around, likely at something to aim for, a goal or target. Hand-eye (or hand-foot) coordination is evidence your child is spatially aware. Playing certain video games helps develop these spatial skills, too.
A well-honed sense of spatial awareness means being able to draw mental maps that show where everything is. But then, this skill goes further, to project how things fit together and how to estimate distances, velocity, and power. If your child seems space-aware, geometry, measurements, and mental math are natural extensions of their abilities.
Your Child Likes Playing with Blocks
Building blocks, Lincoln Logs or Legos: no matter the type of block or the age of your child, if they love playing with them, they likely have a strong inclination towards math.
Recall that spatial awareness allows people to visualize themselves in their space in relation to everything else there. When building with blocks, those same visualization skills present an orderly image of what the block constructions should look like once complete. Often, they provide a ‘map’ for how to build a sturdy construction.
Furthermore, blocks are geometrical shapes. Fitting cubes, rectangles, and arcs together demands familiarity with those shapes’ properties. That means sequencing the blocks properly, such that the construction does not collapse under its own weight.
Regardless of your child’s age, if they prefer playing with blocks, study their processes. Note how they manipulate those shapes, and their ability to put blocks together. You might ask them, “Why did you choose this block, why not that one?” and similar questions.
Your Child Excels With Sequencing Toys
Blocks are a kind of sequencing toy, albeit an advanced type, meant for older kids. For babies and toddlers, toy makers produce colorful stacking rings, ‘sort the shape’ balls, and ‘press the button’ consoles. If these are the types of toys your toddlers go for, be sure to monitor their play for intuitive math skills.
At that young age, these children cannot vocalize their thought processes, so you can do it for them. “You put the big ring on the bottom, good job!” delivers the positive reinforcement that signals they’re on the right track. Likewise, “You put the triangle in the triangle-shaped hole!” introduces your math-curious two-year-old to the proper vocabulary.
Your Child Uses Mathematical Language
Obviously, the youngest math geniuses aren’t likely to discuss linear equations or directed graphs. However, elementary school students talk about proportions (fractions, ratios, and so on) with no particular effort. Even tossing out a casual “That doesn’t compute!” isn’t necessarily just a slang term.
Using mathematical language isn’t limited to describing halves and wholes. Figurative expressions like the one above and other symbolic language hint at rational, logical thought patterns. Often, if their system of expression includes this type of verbiage, you may have a budding math genius on your hands.
So-called out-of-the-box thinking, finding innovative solutions to common problems is another sign your child is a math whiz. Problem-solving is a sure sign of math potential. Should your child have a habit of offering innovative solutions to common problems, you should explore their math aptitude.
Your Child Loves Music
Music is fundamentally mathematical. Beats and bars, notes per octave, octaves, that signal ‘eight’. Babies only a few months old react to music; they find and fall into the rhythm effortlessly.
However, there’s loving music, and there’s dissecting music into its component parts and examining its properties. If your child displays unusual focus when music plays, they may be doing just that. Should they count beats, tapping them out or nodding their head, they may be counting and measuring rather than just enjoying.
How do you know what your child is thinking when music plays? Beyond measuring their reactions, ask them why they like that music so much. They likely won’t gush about how mathematical it is, but don’t be surprised if words like ‘precise’ or ‘methodical’ crop up. That’s the type of language to look for when figuring out whether your child is a math genius.
