“I ask my daughter of nothing!” a prospective student’s mom told me during our first in-person assessment. “I clean her room, do her laundry, pick her up, drop her off and even clean after the dog that her boyfriend gave her for Christmas!” she went on saying.
“And what do you ask for in return?” I was curious.
“Nothing. I just want her to focus on school.”
What this mother doesn’t know is that by doing and giving, she is taking away her daughter’s ability to be self-sufficient.
“Is your daughter appreciative of your sacrifice?”
“No, she is not! She gets upset when I question her about her grades,” the mother said quietly.
It’s been awhile since she’s let anyone come close enough to take a look at her school work?” I asked.
“Long while. And I’m worried for her. It can’t be good to be under so much stress about grades as she is. Dr. Pan, you don’t know how hard she studies! It breaks my heart to see her fail.”
I can only imagine,” I agreed with her. “Your daughter’s math is behind but not to the point that I can’t help.”
“Oh, thank you!”
“But that’s not the hard part,” I pointed out. “The hard part actually rests on your shoulders.”
“Anything for my daughter, she wants to be a doctor healing others you know.”
“Good for her.”
“And what do I have to do? I didn’t like math when I was in school and her math is way beyond me now.”
“Math part I can handle. But how you relate to your daughter – that part only you can do.”
“What do you mean, Dr. Pan?”
“By insisting on doing everything for her, I’m guessing your daughter is terrified to let you down. And when she does get a poor grade, she could only study harder but her tools are limited. The funny thing about learning math is that unless a student understands why a formula looks the way it does, it is nearly useless to memorize it for the test.”
“Because she can’t figure out how to use it under pressure such as during tests.” the mom caught on quickly.
“What I’m saying is that unless you stop “doing and giving”, she won’t have any other place to learn from her mistakes. By “doing and giving” all the time, you’re taking away her freedom to fail.”
“That does oddly make sense to me,” the mother pondered out loud. “So what am I to do?”
“Take a step sideways and teach her how to fail the right way. Give her permission to have a messy room, dirty laundry and a starving dog. If you can give her that space at home, she’ll have the mental space here to learn math.”
As it turned out, my student detests messy chaos around her. In the months that followed, tough spots and all, we got through her Algebra 2 and Trig with high B’s.