Door-2-Math Blog

So you’re a doctor, here’s how to save your child’s math in 15 minutes.

1. Explain your work. Explain why you have to rush off to the hospital in the middle of dinner.
2. Acknowledge, acknowledge, and acknowledge your spouse.
3. When and if you do have some time to spend, spend it on what your kids want, not what you think they want. Vacation in Hawaii or fixing the broken toy plane – pick the broken airplane! Attending a sold-out social event or hitting a ball in the park – choose to hit the ball!

Did you know that for TUSD (Tucson Unified School District) students, there are only 16 report cards for their entire high school career?

That’s right! Just 16.

So when the report card gets home you can either celebrate with your child that another milestone has been reached or you can use it as a measuring stick to how much has yet to be accomplished. The glass is either half full or half empty — you’re right either way.
From working with students in the past, I’ve come to appreciate the heaviness of the load a normal teen carries these days: the opinion of their peers, that of their parents and teachers, and heaviest of all, the opinion they have of themselves. The amount of anxiety can sometimes make them physically ill.

So what can parents do to turn the arrival of a report card into a powerful positive experience of ‘let’s work together’ instead of gut wrenching ‘I’m so shocked at your grades’?
Since most of my experience as a professional learning coach is based on restoring children’s math confidence, here are some of the do’s and don’ts I recommend to my clients on how to best handle these less than pleasant grades.

1. Do celebrate no matter what the grades are.

1. Take your child to his or her favorite restaurant or spend some one-on-one with your child upon the arrival of the report card. With each passing report card, they are that much closer to ‘getting out of the house and flying solo’. Remember back when their baby teeth were falling out, no one ever said ‘I’m worried about your teeth. They are falling out!’ Didn’t we invent the tooth fairy to celebrate those funny tooth gaps? Treating those report cards as what they are, milestones of growing up, will give your child a sense of accomplishment and put everything into perspective. As they say, ‘a penny held close to the eye can block the sun’, don’t let the report card block your child from feeling your love and devotion.

2. Do express your emotions.

   Children are pros when it comes to intuitively reading our emotions, and it’s those emotions we try not to show that speak the loudest to them. So if you are disappointed about the grades, say so. Acknowledge your worries and then ask them how you can help. This will help you both to free the energy spent on emotion-dealing and use it, instead, on actively listening and solution generating together.

3. Don’t tell a child to ‘just try harder’

   I cringe every time I hear ‘just try harder’. In most cases, math struggle happens not because the child is not trying hard. To the contrary, they try very hard — just not at the right place. Imagine how alone and frustrated you’d feel if someone were to tell you to ‘try harder’ to find your lost keys under the street lamp when you lost it in your house! Math is a unique subject in that it has to build on itself. So trying harder at learning what Mr. Bourret taught you yesterday doesn’t bring the improvement unless previous foundation holes have been patched up. Arranging for an overall math skills assessment will give you and your child a better idea on what’s missing.

4. Don’t blame the teacher.

   Even if your child’s teacher is less than your ideal image of perfection, blaming the teacher can only divert the energy needed to help your child. By helping your child identify any positive traits of working with the teacher, we not only conserve our energy, we model for our children that solutions are found by looking inward. All actions take energy, and since the end goal is to help our children to reach their maximum potential, we can’t afford to waste it on changing things/people we have no influence over.

   In conclusion, the arrival of your child’s report card makes yet another milestone in your child’s life. Treasure it.

    

   Happy Zen Math!!

   (c)2006 Feenix Pan. All Rights Reserved.