What To Do When Your Kid Says A Subject Is The Worst: Lessons From My Own School Struggle
Last Tuesday night, I was folding mismatched soccer socks at the kitchen table while my 12-year-old Jax worked through pre-algebra homework. He slammed his workbook shut hard enough that my mug of cold tea sloshed over the edge. “This is the worst subject ever,” he said. “I don’t get why I even have to do this.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “What was your worst subject when you were in school? You probably aced everything, right?”
I told him no. My worst subject was PE.
I can still feel the details of 7th grade PE, 30-some years later: the scratchy gray cotton uniform that was always two sizes too big, the locker room that smelled like wet sneakers and leftover orange slices, the cold dread that settled in my stomach every Monday and Thursday morning when I knew we’d do the six-week mile run. I was always the last one across the finish line, red-faced and gasping, while the rest of the class leaned against the fence chatting and waiting for me. One time my PE teacher yelled across the track, “Hurry up, Mae, we’ve got basketball next!” and I wanted to crawl into the cinder cracks of the track and disappear. I faked stomach cramps at least twice a month just to sit on the bleachers and count those cracks instead of participating. For me, PE wasn’t just a bad class—it was the worst thing about the whole school. No other subject made me feel small and wrong every single time I walked in the door.
Jax laughed so hard he snort-laughed. “Wait, you go three miles on the hiking trail every Saturday. You love moving.”
Exactly, I told him. I don’t hate moving. I hated that class. I hated being timed, I hated being watched, I hated that my best was never good enough compared to everyone else’s. That’s when it clicked for both of us: his hatred of pre-algebra isn’t really about algebra. Jax codes his own little platformer games in his free time, and he keeps a detailed spreadsheet of his lawn mowing earnings to save for a new graphics card. He’s good with numbers. He just hates school math.
When I was a kid, my parents brushed off my hatred of PE. They said it was required, I just needed to suck it up and stop being so sensitive. No one asked me what was actually wrong. No one thought to ask if there was a small change that could make it less terrible. It took me until my late 20s to stop thinking I was just inherently bad at all physical activity, just because I was bad at 7th grade PE. That’s the mistake I see a lot of parents and teachers make: when a kid says a subject is the worst, we jump to defending the subject, or telling the kid they just need to try harder, instead of stopping to look at what’s actually making it miserable.
The first small change I made with Jax was stopping my first instinct to say “but math is so important for college.” Now, when he says math is the worst, I just ask “What’s the part that feels the worst today?” It’s a tiny question, but it pulls out the real problem instead of letting him hide behind “I’m bad at math.” Last month, he told me the two worst parts were that his teacher calls on people randomly even if you don’t raise your hand, and there are 25 homework problems every night, and by the 10th one he’s so frustrated he can’t think straight. That’s specific. That’s fixable.
We didn’t demand a huge curriculum overhaul or fight for a full special education evaluation. We just emailed his teacher and asked for two small adjustments: could Jax opt out of random cold calling, and could he do 12 problems a night instead of 25, as long as he checked every answer and redid the ones he got wrong? She said yes immediately. It didn’t require extra work from her, and it took the sharpest edges off the class for Jax.
The other small thing we do is push back on the idea that a bad grade at a bad subject means you’re bad at the thing, or bad at anything. When Jax says “I’m just stupid at math,” I stop him and say, “You’re not stupid at math. You haven’t learned how to do this problem yet. That’s different.” We even taped a crumpled sticky note to the inside cover of his workbook that says “This class doesn’t get to decide what you’re good at.” It took 10 seconds to write, it costs nothing, but it reminds both of us that the subject is just a requirement, not a judgment on who he is.
You don’t have to turn the worst subject into your kid’s favorite. I still don’t like team sports or timed runs. I hike and do yoga at home on my own schedule, and that works for me. Jax doesn’t have to love pre-algebra. He just has to get through it, and we can cut away the parts that make it unnecessarily painful.
Last week, Jax brought home his latest math test. He got a C+, which is a full letter grade higher than his average from last semester. He tossed it on the kitchen table and said, “I still think this is the worst subject ever, but it didn’t make me want to cry this time.” That’s enough for me. We still have bad nights where he slams the workbook and refuses to look at another problem. We still occasionally email his teacher to work through a new kink. There’s no neat happy ending where he suddenly falls in love with factoring polynomials. But the heavy, constant shame I carried around through my whole middle school experience with my worst subject? It’s not there for him. That’s the best I can ask for right now.
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