Comments on: 5 Things You Should Never Say to the Child Who Struggles with Math

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 05:51:16 +0000

Thank you for summarising everything I have been thinking for some years now. A really helpful read and just what I needed today

By: Bethany

Bethany — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 21:52:49 +0000

In reply to Yesenia.

I completely agree! And thank you for bringing up a great point! I definitely think we can and should be honest about our struggles. What’s great about your conversation is that you were able to share how you persevered and overcame. It’s more about attitude I think. A poor attitude that says, “I hate math too. It’s terrible and you’re never going to like it or get better,” is very different from an honest discussion of your struggles and eventual triumphs. 🙂

By: Yesenia

Yesenia — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 01:13:12 +0000

First, I would like to say thank you for this post. You have some great reminders of what not to say to our children, not just regarding math, but in any task. However, I would disagree with the last one. Both of my kids have struggled with math.

Yet, one day, I sat with them and told them I did not like math. They were shocked because to them I seemed to enjoy it. I was honest with them about my struggle, about my dislike for math, but how I persevered, and as a college student I grew to like it.

I believe if we are honest with our children about our struggles, they will come to understand that struggles are a natural part of life. Furthermore, because they can see how I persevered and can now do math well, not that I am a mathematician, they to can get better if they persist. Also, they came to understand that we all have things in life that we do not like to do, but we still need to do them.

This has opened a line of communication between my children and I. One I am certain would not have been there had I not been honest. And, I am happy to say that they are more relaxed when it comes to concepts they do not understand. They now trust me to be patient and understanding of their struggles. 🙂

By: Bethany

Bethany — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 02:26:35 +0000

In reply to Tina. Yes, completely agree! Math gets hard for all of us at some point-some at subtraction, some at calculus!

By: Tina

Tina — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 00:29:07 +0000

I never tell a child it is “easy”. Because for them, at that moment they are stuck or frustrated a d it isn’t easy!

By: Kelli

Kelli — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:09:18 +0000

My child was failing math so we decided to pull her out of traditional school and homeschool her. Little did I know how tough it would really be. Subscribing to your emails has been a life saver. This article really challenged me to be patient and keep my negative feelings about doing math together to myself. Thanks bunches!

By: Michelle Cannon

Michelle Cannon — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 05:09:53 +0000

I can appreciate this post. My daughter struggled like no one’s business. At one point, I hired a math tutor who was, quite obviously, a math whiz. I couldn’t even keep up with his explanations (and I’m good at math!). He left my daughter in tears weekly. He finally decided, after two sessions, that she just didn’t want to learn.

Turned out she has dyscalculia.

By: Bethany

Bethany — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 20:06:41 +0000

In reply to Holly Dehner. Thanks for sharing your experience, Holly, and your creative way of coping! I love that you found ways to work through it rather than giving up, and I'm glad that you now understand the issue is Dyscalculia. This is an incredibly unknown and undiagnosed condition! You should definitely put your ideas into a book, I'm sure it would help a lot of people! :)

By: Holly Dehner

Holly Dehner — Sat, 19 Dec 2015 19:15:05 +0000

based on my own experience, I’m inclined to think anyone who asserts “I HATE MATH”! is probably struggling with one of the variations of dyscalculia. For some, dyscalculia is like dyslexia – every time you look at the problem, the numbers look different: or it may be operational, the sequential process, or symbol recognition. In my case, I appear to have a gap in numerical definition, i.e. “3+5=8” doesn’t really mean any more to my brain than “ng+dok=ohm”. I did OK in the first levels when I could visualize objects (three apples plus five oranges equals eight pieces of fruit) but multiplication was a nightmare until I was in sixth grade and started assigning personalities to numbers- ones are everybody’s best friend, nothing ever changes with a one … two’s are your “bff”, double the fun … seven’s are EVIL because they don’t play by anybody else’s rules! (etc- some day I’m going to turn my number games into a learning book!) it was a creative process that helped me cope, but I still avoided numbers whenever possible until a few years ago when I finally read a description of mathematical disabilities and thought, that’s me! Now that I know it isn’t a matter of being ‘stupid’, not trying hard enough, or ‘doing it wrong’, I can handle numbers much more calmly.

By: Jenny @ Unremarkable Files

Jenny @ Unremarkable Files — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 10:47:59 +0000

I think it’s helpful to ask with story problems, “Well, what are you actually DOING here?” and try to have her visualize it. My daughter needed to figure out how much each item cost if a 4-pack was $5 (or something like that.) She didn’t know if she should divide 4 by 5 or 5 by 4 to get the answer, so we talked about what she was actually doing.

We drew a circle and said the circle represented $5. We drew lines to divide the circle into 4 parts representing the items purchased. Then I shaded one part of the circle and asked how we’d figure out how much that one part would cost. Once she saw on paper what she was actually trying to do, she knew what numbers to divide to get the answer. (The hardest part of math is not understanding what you’re actually doing, just doing operations without understanding why.)
#MMBH