Take yourself back to when you were a kid and try hard to think of the things you liked and hated, the things you adored and feared, the things you looked forward to and dreaded. All of those feelings are part of a normal human experience, but now put yourself in your child’s position. Would you not try to alleviate some of the fear, anxiety and dreadfulness they have regarding certain things if you could? As a parent reading this blog, chances are you have at least one child who has attended or is thinking about attending Mathnasium. You are then realistically probably experiencing some sort of struggle at home with your child involving math, whether it’s them being frustrated with homework, or battling anxiety before test taking. Perhaps your child is gifted in math and is acting out because they are bored in class and having to just go at the pace average of the rest of their classroom.
No matter what side you are on, you have identified that your child could use Mathnasium and that’s a great first step. Beyond taking them into them to Mathnasium of Cherry Creek, there are ways you can help your child cope with math fear and anxiety and some are healthier than others. Here we explore how to express empathy versus excuses for your child and where the heathy line lies.
To begin, empathy in the rudimentary definition means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” It’s debatable whether empathy is more of a nature thing, as in it’s innate in most humans, or if it’s more of a nurture thing, where it’s taught to be part of the human experience. Either way, as a parent, most of us can empathize with the many feelings our children experience, math struggle being one of them. Even if you didn’t encounter math problems as a child, surely there is a subject in school that at some point made your work for your grade and gave you some anxiety. Math struggle feelings may come out as frustration, anger, a sense of being overwhelmed, self-doubt and self-pity. As the self-pity comes into the picture, it can be easy for your child to slip into a victim mentality, where they feel almost personally attacked by math, which will lead to excuses.
Excuses, on the other hand, are the release of responsibility and they happen when as a parent you release your child from the responsibility of doing homework, earning good grades or studying for tests, possibly even allowing them to stay home “sick” or take personal days when they are not truly sick on days when they might have quizzes or big tests. Excuses can also come in self-deprecating statements from parents and other people. “It’s okay, some people just don’t have a math brain” or “you might just not be cut out for math” or “I am not a math person either – I was never good at it” or “boys just seem to be better at math” are all statements with math hating sentiment. This sentiment is toxic for children to hear at impressionable ages and has a long-term affect not only on your student, but on society as a whole. Our country can’t be full of a bunch of math haters if we want to keep being leaders in research and science. Children who are excused from working hard in math will end up in a perpetual cycle of falling behind, as it all builds on itself and falling behind doesn’t just result in bad grades or inability to do math. It can result in a lack of confidence to tackle anything that challenges them at all.
So how can you handle math struggle with empathy?
In the end, a child who receives empathy and a push to work through their struggles will learn the art of perseverance and be able to apply it to much in their life, math included. Once they learn the math material needed and continue to master math concepts, they will garner the confidence to slay and conquer dragons, too!
