Metamorphosis at 10

Coco has been amazing these few days. She had been focusing on studying for exams, be it English, Science or Maths.

Unlike her normal sluggish self, she kept at doing the work assigned to her.

I have to admit that I have screamed at her out of exasperation more than I really wanted to. William and I fail to understand what is so difficult about place values in Decimals eg. 0.456 - The place value of '4' is 'tenths', '5' is 'hundredths' and '6' is 'thousandths'.

But Coco keeps saying that '4' is 'hundredths', '5' is 'thousandths'. William and I have taught her the place values weeks before, even just yesterday. I made her doing the basic exercises in Decimals which include translating the digits into their place values. In fact, she did so well I commented that she had become a Decimal expert. Yet today, she said the same thing again, that '4' was 'hundredths'!!!

It puzzles us no end why identifying place values in Decimal can be difficult to her since she is a bright girl. To qualify her brightness, her own teachers, even her Chinese teacher who despairs at her sluggish attitude towards Chinese, remarked that Coco was intelligent and could do well if she tried.

She catches on things fast. She gets the drift of things really quickly. Many times, before I could finish my explanation, or even before I get to the crux, she just has to pick up the cue word and there she goes.

But despite all these, she has been really amazing and impressive with her effort. I haven't seen anything like this in her before. She would complete what I tasked her to do, she would sit through the day just to do work, for the purpose of revision for exams.

She said that it was because I was with her, and promised her breaks.

Silly girl! I retorted that she wouldn't need breaks if she took 3 hours to solve one problem, which was what she often did!

Let's hope this is the beginning of her maturation phase in taking ownership of her studies.