If you read my blog regularly, you may know that math is a bad word to me. Just when I think I’m done with it, it rears its ugly head. So how on earth could I have spawned a child who by some miracle is really starting to get it? A child who not only gets it, but was so excited about something new he learned recently that he wanted to teach it to me?
You may read about that episode, where I may or may not have squirmed a little, here. (It’s a guest post for a great local—to me—moms’ site.) And you may find out whether I am or am not smarter than my fifth grader. In math anyway.
It’s deceiving, I say.
Mom in the Muddle 
I’ll check it out. I hope your son is assisting you, the math challenged soon.
If I ever need to take a math class again, he will definitely need to assist me. I think I’ve hit my limit with helping him, or close to it.
I bet you he would charge you a resonable rate for tutoring – say room and board?
Ha! The good news is, I don’t need that math stuff and I don’t WANT it. So there. Remember in school when there was that one thing you hated and said, “I’ll never need this when I grow up”? Well, math is it for me. Ugh. I can’t tell you how many times that has come back to haunt me.
Strong feelings there miss. Calm down.
It all comes rushing back. 😉
I often wonder why they invented a “new” math. The old one was more than I could handle. Good for you for trying. And it’s good for kids to feel smarter than their parents on occasion!
Well, he certainly did! Every time I look at the “new” stuff, I think, “What was wrong with the way I learned it?” The good thing is that my kids don’t seem to have nearly the problem grasping this stuff as I do, so their teachers know their stuff. That’s all that counts. 😉
It’s great that he gets maths. I’m a maths person myself but my daughter is the exact opposite. So it’s an uphill task for me to explain in her language
It’s a challenge even when they do like math. They just don’t like me to explain anything!
I don’t know what it is about math, but for me it’s like trying to learn the Egyptian hieroglyphs, it just isn’t going to happen. Fortunately for my son though hubs is way better at math, and will have to be the one that helps him. That’s cute that he wanted to teach some to you! Help you out a little 🙂
My husband is also very good at it. My kids just often do homework when I’m alone in the house with them. I’ve been able to help them pretty well, and sometimes even more than him because I keep up with what they are learning in school. If you asked him how to divide fractions or something, he probably couldn’t remember.
I think my son is just trying to get back at me for what he thinks is homework torture. 😉
🙂
I just found your blog on wordpress.com reader : LOVE IT! Your Header is awesome creative and this post is super fun and I can relate to it because my son is in all honors math and I had to take basic math 2 times in college! LOL Great to connect with you!
Thank you! I hate to admit it but gosh, I have always hated math. I’ve just never found it interesting. When teachers would talk about it, my mind would wander. So when people talk about not liking something (even if it’s reading or writing or cooking, things I love), I get it! Sounds like we have some things in common then. 😉
Ha! My mother-son relationship is exactly opposite to yours. But I laud you for giving your son an outlet for that excitement, even if you don’t understand it. Makes you wonder what he’ll grow up to be, doesn’t it?
Me, I always seemed to “get” math. Back in 12th grade (eons ago) and the first time I learned how to apply differential calculus in the real world and use those cool “tricks” I learned in trigonometry. I was like a kid in a candy store. (I won’t even go into learning LaPlace Transformations as an adult in circuit analysis; I didn’t sleep for days as I took old crunchy problems and solved them using this newer, much easier method for exams. Tee hee.)
Enter home-schooled 6th-grader. He groans with ever practice page and all the “work” that goes into learning a concept. Knowing how these beginnings of algebra and fractions are preparing him for something cool, I can’t help but give him a sneak-peek at what’s coming.
With a sigh, he’ll pat me on the back as I erase the whiteboard and say, reassuringly, “It’s okay mom. I’ll get it one day. And then I’ll probably never use it as an adult, just like Grandma.”
It’s amazing how easily some kids can understand things that we struggled with so much when we were their age. School subjects such as math are a great example, but it’s everywhere else too, it seems. How old were we when we first started using computers, other than just randomly clicking things onscreen? I know 3 yr olds who can navigate an iPad perfectly, and 5 yr olds who can log into Windows and do a YouTube search for their cartoons. Then again, when I was young, my parents always needed me to set the time on the VCR. Scary to think what the next generation will be like!
Technology is so scary, but I’d like to think someone can take all of these great things and do something wonderful with it. Maybe these kids will build a less polluted world–if we can get them away from their screens, that is.
Hi there. I love your blog! MATH is a really bad four letter word to me. My son is 13 and I am lost during his math homework. Thank goodness for youtube. I’ve learned a lot from some of the math tutors on there, and I am able to help him with his homework.
Oh, wow, thanks for that tip! I have never thought of YouTube for math homework! But it makes sense because everything else is on there, right? I hate math too. Boy, I hate it. It’s funny because my son talks about zoning out in his language arts classes, which I loved. Opposites.
Thanks for stopping by!
Yes, everything is on youtube! I frequent the khan academy channel. Here is the link http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy , If you’re ever stuck, check it out! His youtube subscribers got so huge and he was so resourceful, he started his own website and then bank of america sponsored him. Amazing!
That’s impressive!