teaching math

You know, I was never very good at math. Now, however, at 57, I’m pretty excellent at math.

And I can tell you why. I’ve been homeschooling my kids for thirty years. And in that thirty years, I’ve taught and done a lotta math. Lotta. What I have now, and what I didn’t have when I was 8-18, is a foundation. A solid, secure, unshakeable foundation of math skills.

Now, I’ve been at it for thirty years. It probably didn’t take that long to get here, and I don’t know when that exactly happened. But I do know that pushing me from one concept, one skill, one grade to the next without that foundation did not do me any good at all. By the time I got to high school, I was completely and utterly lost.

Kind teachers passed me because I was a nice kid, and they could see that I was trying. But that didn’t help me to know math. And certainly marred my ability to do higher level math. And having lived that experience, I urge you….do not push, do not move on, do not assume a timetable that is not that child’s timetable to learn math skills.

We can and should introduce ideas, find more than one way to teach concepts, approach it from different angles - but if the child isn’t ready, they aren’t ready. And we have to

a) learn to be okay with that and

b) respect the readiness of the child

We can’t teach them math better because we push harder. They can’t know something better because we have angst about it. They can’t absorb information more quickly because we push it towards them.

The math will come. The baby will eventually sleep through the night. The whining will stop. The potty training will happen. One day they’ll tie their own shoes, make their own bed, drink without a sippy cup. One day, they’ll fall asleep without you.

The math will come.