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If your September social media feeds are like mine, you’re seeing a lot of stressed parents sharing memes about helping their kids with school work, especially math. Many make me laugh, and most make me cringe for parents, kids, and teachers.
No doubt about it: this is going to be a challenging school year for us all! But there are things you can do to make working with your kids not only less stressful, but also enjoyable. This is what has worked (so far) for our family ...
Why is working with our own children so hard?
Why is working with our own children so hard?
About 20 years ago I tutored middle- and high-school students in math. The kids I worked with had smart parents and good teachers, but for a variety of reasons—including learning differences and challenging circumstances that manifested as behavior that was not supportive of academic success—they needed extra attention. My students and I always found ways for them to be successful, no matter how grim the outlook appeared initially: it was some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done.
Fast forward to the 2018–19 school year. I had close to two decades of professional experience in math education. And I was also a single mom with a full-time job and a fifth grader and a second grader, each at different schools. When my daughter asked for help with her math homework one evening, I was beside myself with excitement! Finally, my daughter and I get to do math together! … But after just 30 seconds working together, she was frustrated and in tears. I was feeling defeated and incompetent. It was like everything I knew about working with other people’s children flew out the window when I sat down to do math with my own child.
The thing is, working with our own children comes with a lot of baggage: insecurity about our own knowledge and skills, anxiety about their future opportunities, questions about the quality of the instruction they’re getting at school. On top of all that, we’re usually squeezing schoolwork into our already frenetic family schedules: these days, we might have more time together at home, but most of us are also experiencing more stress than ever before.
Talk with your child about how you can work together
Talk with your child about how you can work together
After taking a break, I asked my daughter to debrief with me about our [catastrophically bad] experience doing math together. What went well? What didn’t go well? We each made our own lists. We compared them and talked about them, and we used our reflections to make a plan. Here’s what we came up with for our household. You and your child might require different things to work together effectively, but I hope this helps you get started!
Set ourselves up for success
Set ourselves up for success
We knew it was important that we had eaten a good snack before starting. We also knew that her younger brother needed to be occupied (yup, by a TV show) so that he would not interrupt us. Figure out what you need—food, uninterrupted time, an uncluttered space—to be successful. This might be different for each child in your home. I’ve done math with my younger child while he was sitting in a laundry basket (or a kitchen cupboard) and I sat on the floor beside him. Whatever works.
Let go of my own agenda
Let go of my own agenda
You can see on our list that I had to agree to the following: “We agree to identify math time and mom agrees to try to not talk about math all the time.” I love math. But I also I need to understand that my love of math is not necessarily contagious (much as I would love to believe it should be), particularly for my oldest child who can sniff out—and promptly reject—all of my hidden agendas immediately. I also had to make peace with the fact that she did not want me to teach her or deepen her understanding: what she wanted and needed from me was help with her homework. I needed to honor that she had a task to complete and limited time to do it: she needed me to provide the kind of help she needed, which was not necessarily the kind of help I wanted to provide.
Share responsibility
Share responsibility
It’s tempting to want to take over for your child. Don’t do it! Yes, we want to complete the assignment successfully. It’s also really important for students to be responsible for their own work. We settled on a compromise whereby we took turns selecting problems to do next. (Hint: You don’t always have to do all of the problems, and you don’t always have to do them in order.) We worked on each problem side-by-side, like two students working together, and compared our answers and our methods. This encouraged her to take responsibility for her own work and was far less stressful than attempting to work on each problem together.
Attend to our feelings first
Attend to our feelings first
If things are getting heated, take a break. Stop. Breathe. Do not yell. (Really: whatever it takes, don't yell.) Come back to it later. Invite your child to share responsibility for deciding when to return to the work with you. Do not compromise a positive relationship with your child for the sake of math: there are lots of resources for help with math, but there is no substitute for a loving, warm relationship between you and your child.
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