Many years ago a friend of mine made a huge deal about how she hated math when she was a kid and how she couldn't even balance her checkbook. Not surprisingly, her daughter, who was in the second grade, wasn't doing well in math even though she did well in all of her other subjects.My friend was a brilliant woman, college educated with a masters degree. Yet, she claimed to know math only to about a 3rd grade level (balancing a check book requires elementary school level math). I warned her that she was most likely passing her 'attitude' about math to her daughter.
Over the years my friend kept me informed of her daughter's progress in school. After our chat, her daughter started excelling in math, took the advanced, honors math classes in high school and finished by taking A.P. Calculus as a senior.
Parents are likely to pass their fears to their children. If your loathed and detested math when you were a youngster and you are raising kids you might want to read this article from Parenting Journals.
The moral to the story is that if you want your child to succeed in math, and you detest math, then you need to at least fake it when your kids are of formative age.
No comments:
Post a Comment