It’s happened to the best of us. Our kid asks for help with homework, we swoop in like a hero, happy to be called into action. Then we look down at the work, only to see the most fearsome of villains:
Math.
Oh damn. Here come all the recollections of torturous nights trying to understand the weirdly complex theories and problems of our grade-school years. Here comes the breach of our all-knowing-parent role with our kid. Here comes the moment when our kid learns we aren’t all-powerful.
What vexing hell is this?
For many adults, math anxiety is a natural and ongoing problem. Fortunately, there are some practical actions we can take to reduce and manage math-related worries.
The first step is to identify your triggers. Why are you anxious?
One of my triggers stems from failing to grasp foundational concepts that I missed when I switched schools more than once in my school career. That problem metastasized from grade to grade, leaving me needing substantial math remediation in later years. For years, I feared math would come up in some social or professional situation where the shame of not knowing enough would embarrass me.
Then, I got over it.
Once we’ve identified triggers, we can learn to manage and address them individually.
Conquering Math Anxieties
To do this, we might focus on the following:
Just know math anxiety does not have to control adult lives forever - identifying individual triggers and finding ways to address them together is vital in overcoming it for good.
And, while it helps you to name and attack your math anxiety, it also sets you up to be the superhero you want to be with your kids.
Helping Your Child Overcome Math Anxiety
Parents aren’t taught how to help their children build foundational skills. There’s no book given to us at birth with a chapter on “how to raise a confident mathematician.”
Yet, we can learn to adapt to the challenge and be good guardians of our children’s math development.
The first thing that needs to be done is understanding why your child may be anxious about math. While some students may lack confidence in certain areas, others may have experienced past academic failures. Either way, understanding why they are struggling allows parents to take the appropriate steps to help their children get back on track with their studies.
Of course, there are a few steps that every parent can take regardless of the problem:
I don’t think there will ever be enough usable advice for parents who want to slay the math dragon and raise young people to be math champions. How math has been taught is different for our grandparents, us, and our kids, creating a broken support system chain.
But never fear. Math is a constant in the universe, and we can master it.
What matters most is first raising the expectations for improving our math abilities as individuals and then committing to work with teachers to help our children see themselves as math masters too.
Take Action:
Watch this video on dealing with math anxiety.
Use these resources from Bedtime Math.