Wednesday 4 May 2011

Math is Making Me Crazy

Well, Peirce's experience with math is actually what is making me crazy. I have to ask: Why the he'll has no one taught this kid to borrow or carry over??

Tonight he brought home 3 pages of two and three digit addition and subtraction. In his mind he has to be able to just look at it and know how to do it. I had to talk him into trusting me and zipping his lip about how he isn't allowed to do it my way for a bit to see if it might make any sense for him. It didn't take long until he was flying through the questions (well, except for the fact that he gets distracted by every shift of wind....sometimes I think he has the attention span of a gnat!)

It probably isn't good to be a teacher and a parent....particularly when I feel like someone is needlessly messing with My kid (or not sharing key info to help achieve success). Tonight I sat here and finally realized I had to stroke his ego all along the way. Every time he added or subtracted something I would have to add in there, "you are so amazing" "perfect!" "you are really getting the hang of it now" "you are becoming a math whiz" and on and on and on. He is so frustrated in math that basically he gives up before he had even started. I think the whole idea of how you need to give three positives for every negative means that I have a lot of work to do to make up for all the negative talk he has running through his head about math.

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