I think you are at a high risk of full rebellion. I would STOP. She will be taking math & science courses in high school. She will have the opportunity to sign up for STEM related ECs if she wants to. Her life is not ruined if she doesn’t go into STEM, I promise.
From the point of view of a teenage girl, you can never force a kid to like a subject. Just teach her a good work ethic and encourage her to try out new things. Praise her hard work even when it results in a failure or rejection. I only became truly passionate about math after I attended a summer math camp (which I applied to on my own terms btw). Just keep offering her opportunities, but don’t force her to do things. They key is to get her to believe and understand that there are an infinite number of opportunities to take advantage of (the internet is a powerful tool!), but that she essentially has to be the one to pursue them.
Thanks! Oh, believe me, we know that ^^^!
@intparent, thank you, but I don’t think it’s the rebellion stage and we definitely don’t want to push her anywhere - we just believe that STEM is where she will feel most “at home”. Of course, that all can change a thousand times yet.
As for ECs - we are just trying to warm her up for that. Of course, she will be picking (or not picking) them herself. We can only tell her what’s available.
If you get to the rebellion stage, you likely won’t get her out of it. Give her options, do family activities that revolve around interesting STEM related activities, and let her make her choices.
By the way – non-STEM ECs aren’t the kiss of death for a STEM career, either. My D2 was a Quiz Bowl expert in literature, art, and opera. She won poetry and art contests as well. Yes, she had a couple of STEM ECs (First Robotics for a couple of years and some wildlife biology activities). But overall her ECs were not weighted to STEM, and she got in to great schools and picked a STEM major.
That’s nice to hear! Actually, none of her ECs were STEM-related so far, although she does get plenty of STEM-related family activities.
My son loved numbers from an early age, but he never was much interested in math as a subject. He became interested in statistics, however, as a tool for understanding baseball and other sports. And that interest in applied math and statistics was led him to major in economics in college. Now he makes his career doing and writing about the statistics of sports and politics. And he sometimes plays cards (poker), which also demands a good understanding of odds and strategy.
To the OP, I encourage you to encourage your daughter to find and pursue interests that may allow her to apply math reasoning and methods. Then school classes in math can help give her some tools to pursue other interests.
If you would’ve told my parents where I ended up, they would’ve laughed themselves silly. Of course I wanted to major in STEM. I had wanted to do medical research since as long as I can remember. I was determined to find the cure for Cerebral Palsy. (No, I’m not making this up.) History? I’ve always loved it but I despised the way it was taught. I’m a US historian now and never took APUSH in high school and I took a grand total of one history course as an undergrad.
Life makes many twists and turns.
She sounds like a driven, curious kid. If she likes something, she will pursue it. She is already super exposed to STEM by your own admission, so I’m not really sure what exposing her to even more will do. Just do it naturally- like exposure to statistics as mackinaw suggests. But I can almost promise that she will start pushing back sometime soon if you keep prodding.
The best way to awake interest in math is to put her into good after-school math enrichment program where she will meet like-minded peers. I cannot imagine an 8th grade girl studying geometry with proofs on her own or with parents. You need to check certain immigrant communities.
I really think you need lay off. You keep saying “We’ve tried” this and that. Your daughter knows what you are doing and she’s going to continue to push back. She does not need a STEM EC. My son is a STEM kid and doesn’t like any of the STEM ECs offered at school. I think you are walking a very think line and you may “lose”.
I would have expectations of taking 3-4 years of math and science, language, english, etc. in HS because you never know where she will want to go to school and what they will require. But, leave it at that. Let her choose. Let her find her way.
As many have suggested, a math mind doesn’t mean she’ll go into a STEM field.
Back off a bit. 8th Grade is early.
I was very similar to your daughter at that age. While I always scored very highly in math aptitude and enjoyed science, my true loves were history and writing. Despite knowing that, my parents forced me to attend the Bronx HS of Science. I hated it and was allowed to transfer after I threatened to commit suicide if I had to go there anymore. It took three semesters to get out of there and into a school where I was valued for what I wanted to study and not just for what I was “good” at.
Once I left Science, I took the bare minimum in both math and science because I was so turned off to it. I took CLEP tests in math and science subjects and did not take any math or science classes in college.
I am now a civil litigation attorney.
I always felt that my parents were trying to push me in a direction that I didn’t want to go into for their needs. They wanted me to become a computer programmer because my father wished he could have been one but that career didn’t exist when he was coming up.
The one piece of advice I would give you, parent to parent, is don’t try to force your D to become something she isn’t interested in just because you think it’s more advantageous for her. I do agree with trying to awaken her interest in math, but if isn’t there to be awakened, don’t push it. Encourage her to explore the things she does enjoy, it will make her life easier to know her parents support her.
She doesn’t even strike me as not interested in math. She’s in advanced geometry. She did some Khan Academy math outside of school. That’s not a kid who is rejecting math. If math is not her favorite subject, that’s fine. It sounds like she’s willing and able to challenge herself in math and elsewhere. That’s what’s going to serve her well in high school and beyond.
She’s fine. Back off.
I think the OP’s question is entirely appropriate. Someone who gets anxiety from doing math contests but “loves” reading Euclid’s Elements (which btw I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say before) will have a hard time pursuing their interest in mathematics outside of classes (which exists for the OP’s daughter because she enjoyed Euclid’s Elements, and not necessarily because she is advanced in math). It seems to me as if the OP has not tried very much, to be honest.
If you can find a math circle in your area, that might be a good place to get more exposure to math outside of school. In my experience they tend to not focus so much on competitions, but this can vary.
Not everyone has the opportunity to participate in STEM related EC’s.
Going to chime in again. My Physics major kid has taken TONS of math in college. She only went through AB Calc in HS (all that was offered), and had no specific math ECs. Some of her best college grades have been in math. You really are barking up the wrong tree here. It is unnecessary.
My freshman is REALLY good at math. She is in pre-calc honors. all she wants to do is run. And run some more. And swim. She has no other extra curricular other then Girl scouts where she sails and backpacks and hikes and camps. With all her homework, any time she’s not doing homework she wants to be outside. It is what she lives for. Making her do more math outside of school would be miserable.
Slight threadjack, but if my D had been in a Girl Scout troop that sailed and backpacked and hiked and camped, she might not have quit scouting after 7th grade. Her troop did mani-pedis and baked, neither of which is an activity that appealed to my D.
All right, thank you, everyone! I knew this will be a wealth of wisdom on CC.
You all convinced me - we will not be doing anything STEM-extra with her (unless she asks, of course). I still think we will continue with what we were doing before, though - she kind of expects it already with her dad playing a magician pulling bunnies (aka interesting random math and science problems) out of his sleeves. I was just in search for more of those “bunnies” 
She is not exactly rejecting STEM (or English or history), she is just not THAT interested in anything (besides ballet and kittens) and this worries her as well. In fact, she is quite open to trying new aspects of different things and that’s what we are trying to do.
Why, oh, why elementary and middle school curriculum is so dumb! But that’s a separate story…
I appreciate the ideas and support here!
Interesting that people mention backpacking here. That’s what my D spent half her summer doing. The other half was ballet intensive. She did catch up on her reading list as well (reading list of her own )
H and I love math & scienc, and we raised our D and S in a math-and-science-loving home. The kids loved going to science museums and doing fun activities at home that reinforced math/science concepts. Both were excellent students, and they excelled in the STEM area. And guess what? D had no interest in a STEM major in college. She is doing very well in life-after-college, so it worked out fine. Just because we are good at something doesn’t necessarily mean we want to make it our life’s work.
A few thoughts.
- You can’t wake the love for anything in anyone. It’s there or it isn’t.
- AoPS is not math. It’s competition math which really is just learning tricks to solve problems fast. It doesn’t really provide a core foundation in math. I personally think that it actually hurts more than helps, but is great for the AMCs and such.
- For the right kid, AoPS is insanely fun. Heck, it was fun even for me. But then my hobby has always been doing puzzles. AoPS is just much more complex puzzles.
- The way math is taught in US schools is an abomination. So, I am not surprised that she liked Euclid’s Elements and not common core geometry. This may mean that she likes the classical concept of math which is really abstract thinking and not the “how do we apply it to real life” nonsense that often passes for math these days.
- Pushing someone to do something that they don’t like is never beneficial. Let the kid do what she wants to do, but …
And here’s the but. Try out some number theory courses from AoPS. Number Theory is as abstract as it gets, and she may like it if she is into abstract thinking. If that doesn’t stick, try Combinatorics and Probability. If that also doesn’t stick, this is not a math kid per se, even though she could be acing exams.
@1Wife1Kid, thanks!
- I disagree that you cannot wake the love for something. In many cases you need to get into the subject deeply enough, to see it from different perspectives to start loving it. You cannot love or not love something you don't know.
- We are familiar with AoPS. I agree that the puzzle aspect is fun and math competitions provide, well, competition and also they connect the similar-minded kids together. That's why we still explore this route with our daughter and see if it will "click" eventually. I think math circles would have been better for her, but she didn't want to go, so we didn't insist. So far she doesn't mind trying it out with AMCs (she wants to try both 8 and 10 this year).
- I don't even want to get started on this topic! Yes, yes and yes. Interesting observation: many of her friends (and their parents) who are not in advanced math track like the Common Core approach. They say that it makes things really easy for them to understand and to use. But WHY push it onto advanced kids? That's beyond me.
- The kid really wants to find out what she likes. That's why we try different things and approaches - to see what works and what not. We already know that abstract theory wins over strictly technical, so technical is left alone (except she did ask for Python tutoring because she believes she will need at least some programming later). And yes, Combinatorics and Probability and some Number Theory did go well with her - we always revert to that when out of ideas :-)
I do think she should be good at AMC, though. It’s just last time she was exhausted from two big tests in school earlier that day and on the top of that the teacher who was supervising managed to go around the class loudly talking on the phone the whole time AND she collected the papers a few minutes earlier. D was pretty mad then.