What Do I Do For Math When My Kid Says They’re Bad At It
I’m wiping strawberry jam off the kitchen counter Tuesday after school when my third grader Lila flings her math workbook down so hard the goldfish cracker crumbs jump off the edge of the table. “I’m stupid at math,” she says, kicking the leg of the chair. “I’m never doing it again.”
This used to send me into a panic. Two years ago, when Lila first started bringing home math homework that felt harder than anything I remembered doing in first grade, I’d drop whatever I was doing, pull out the extra practice workbooks I’d bought at the big box store, and sit with her for an extra hour every night. By the end of that hour, we’d both be red-eyed: me frustrated that she couldn’t “get it” after I explained it three times, her frustrated that she had to do more work after already sitting at a desk all day. I even downloaded one of those timed fact drill apps, and after a week of Lila throwing her iPad across the couch when she ran out of time, I deleted it.
Last spring, Lila’s teacher pulled me aside after parent-teacher conferences and said she’s technically on grade level, but her anxiety around math is holding her back. “She just shuts down the second she thinks a problem is too hard,” her teacher said. That’s when I stopped trying to cram extra math into our days and started doing something completely different.
That Tuesday, after Lila flung her workbook, I closed it, shoved it back into her backpack, and said, “Okay. We’re doing math at the grocery store tonight instead.” She blinked, like she was waiting for the lecture about grit or trying harder that I used to give. When I didn’t say it, she shrugged and went to dig out her stuffed cat to bring to the store.
At the grocery store, we needed to buy apples for sauce. I grabbed a 3-pound bag and a loose pile, and asked her to compare the price: the bag was $4.20, the loose apples were $1.29 a pound. Which was cheaper? She leaned against the cart, counted under her breath for a minute, and figured out the loose would be cheaper by about 20 cents. We got the loose. On the way out, she wanted a $3 chocolate bar. She has $12 in allowance saved right now. I asked her how many chocolate bars she could buy if she spent all her allowance on them. She counted on her fingers: four. That was the whole math lesson that day. No worksheets, no grades, no stress.
Most days, that’s how it goes now. Any math we do outside of required homework is just part of our regular life, no label attached. When we bake chocolate chip cookies for her class, she halves or doubles the recipe, measures the flour, counts how many cookies go on each tray to make sure we get 24 total. When we planted our vegetable garden last month, she figured out how many tomato plants we could fit in a 4-foot bed if they needed 10 inches of space between each. When we drive to her soccer practice 20 minutes away, we play multiplication car game: if she gets a fact right, she picks the radio station. If she doesn’t, I pick (it’s always the boring news station, which she hates enough to try to remember the fact next time). No flash cards, no timed tests, no counting how many she gets wrong. In three months, she went from missing half her 7s and 8s to knowing almost all of them, and we never had a single fight about it.
When she does get stuck on her required homework, I don’t re-explain the lesson the way the teacher did. That never works anyway, because it just confuses her more. Instead, I ask her to tell me what the question is asking in her own words, no math words allowed. Nine times out of 10, the problem isn’t that she can’t do the math, it’s that the weird word problem wording (why does every problem have to be about trains?) is tripping her up. Once she pulls the actual question out of all the jargon, she can usually solve it on her own. If we’ve been working on it for 20 minutes and she’s still upset, I write a quick note to her teacher saying she tried, got stuck, and we’ll go over it in class. I don’t make her sit there crying for an hour. That just teaches her that math is a miserable thing that makes you upset, not a tool you use every day.
I still get anxious sometimes. I see other parents posting online about their third graders doing pre-algebra, and I wonder if I’m letting her fall behind. Lila still says she’s bad at math sometimes. She still flings her workbook once a month or so. Last week she came home convinced she failed her math test, and she got a B minus. It’s not a perfect system. Most days it doesn’t even feel like “doing math” if that makes sense.
But last week, she pointed out to me at the Target checkout that the 10-ounce box of cereal was $3.50, and the 18-ounce box was $4.20, so the bigger one was a better deal. She did that on her own, no prompting. That’s the math that matters to me right now. Most people don’t use quadratic equations in their daily lives, but they do need to compare prices, calculate how much paint to buy for a bedroom, split a check with friends, and figure out how much they need to save for something they want. That’s the stuff I want her to feel confident doing.
Right now, this low-stress, in-the-middle-of-life thing is working better than any fancy workbook or app I ever bought. It doesn’t fix everything, and I’m sure we’ll have new struggles next year when the math gets harder. But for now, it’s enough.
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