Keep It Positive

Have you ever started helping your child with a math problem with the best intentions of making life easier for them, then realized it wasn’t going as well as you had hoped it would? Either the problem is giving you more difficulty than you expected or for some reason you’re not able to communicate your problem-solving methods to your child in a way that they understand. Before you know it, you’re getting frustrated, which is further confusing and irritating your child and you both enter into a downward spiral of all sorts of negative emotions.

I’ve totally been there. Dang it.

This is the sort of counter-productive math help we want to avoid giving.

I’ve got 3 tips that can help keep these situations to a minimum.

Tip 1: It’s Okay to Take a Break

It is my extremely strong opinion that it is better to step away and stop helping than to allow the situation to become ugly. It’s okay to say,

“Hey, why don’t we take a break from this and try again a little later”.

Maybe go off and do something to relieve stress. Throw a ball. Crank up some music and rock out for a few minutes. Find a way to laugh and release tension for both of you. Then, when you’re both up for it, try again.

Tip 2: Recognize What Your Child is Doing Right

I’m a problem solver. I like to dig in and focus on the problem at hand and get it done. All business. Unfortunately, this can cause problems when trying to help my children, who are real people with real feelings who might take my all-business attitude as an indication that they are the problem to be solved. I’ve had to learn to make a concerted effort to recognize their hard work while we struggle through math problems together. Especially if I need to correct their math errors, I need to try to recognize what things they have done correctly first. Here are a few specific wordings that might help keep the tone more positive:

• This is a really hard problem. I appreciate that you’re sticking with it.
• Yes, good job recognizing that we need to multiply here. Let’s review long multiplication.
• Yes, 3 times 4 is 12. I think we wanted 3 times 5 here.
• You plotted all of those coordinates correctly! You’re really getting this down!
• I agree with you on subtracting 6 from both sides of the equation in this step. Good job! Let’s take another look at the next step.

Tip 3: Solve It Privately First

I don’t know about you, but I get a little more stressed and uncomfortable when someone is looking over my shoulder while I work. For some reason, having an audience adds pressure and that pressure can make it easier for me to become distracted and make mistakes when solving a problem – math or otherwise. Then, if I make a mistake in front of the person watching, I have a tendency to become flustered and even less able to focus.

Sometimes I get flustered like this when my child is the one intently watching me as I try to help with a particularly difficult math problem. This is not a constructive situation and can lead to that downward spiraling.

I’ve learned that if for whatever reason I’m not able to immediately solve the math problem my child brings to me for help, I need to say,

“Let me look at this by myself first to make sure I know how solve it, so that I don’t confuse you. Why don’t you take a break and I’ll come find you in a few minutes.”

Realizing that I can take my time thinking through how to help explain a problem has helped relieve so much math stress in our home.

Keeping the math help positive and low stress is almost more important than getting the mathematically correct answer. When we help our children work through their problems without becoming super stressed or frustrated we build into their confidence and give them hope that they will be able to conquer their next homework assignment.

Keep it Positive

• It’s Okay to Take a Break
• Recognize What Your Child is Doing Right
• Solve it Privately First