Hating Math

This child sounds a whole lot like I sounded back in elementary and middle school. In my experience I had several other students in my classes in 3rd and 4th grade that I remember as being pretty advanced and fairly fast when it came to learning math and science but especially math. I would find myself frustrated at not being as fast as some others and that frustration only added difficulty to my ability to understand math. Plus I just had hard time comprehending some of the more difficult concepts and I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of others. I think that a child like the one in the topic would have experienced many of the same things and maybe then some. I think this student probably had an experience where another student may have made fun of him or her when trying to solve a problem in front of the class and so they learned to associate a sensitive topic with that subject. Repeated frustration and an inferior feeling when it comes to comprehending something as fast as others probably ran through this child's mind as well. It is also possible that more emphasis was placed on another subject at home or through another teacher and the child just learned to like that subject more, caring less and less for something like math.