Door-2-Math Blog

“It’d be so nice to be a bird,” my 8 year old son remarked from the backseat of the car on our way to school this morning.

“So you can fly around all day long?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the traffic light that was about to turn green.

“That and I’d have such a pretty view from the roof where they stand.”

“Not if birds don’t know what views are,” my 12 year old daughter pointed out to her brother.

“What? Birds don’t appreciate the view they got?”

“Kinda like how you guys don’t appreciate a full frig of food if hadn’t gone through famine like your grandparents.”

“Yeah, that’s why we prefer beef jerky from the store rather than boiling our leather belt!”

My kids do have a point. Who’d rather eat a leather belt when beef jerky comes in flavors like original, smoked, hot and spicy how could birds appreciate their awesome view when they stand up high on the roofs all day long? They’ve got no other view to compare with even if they are capable of doing such comparison. So what makes us parents think our kids are capable of appreciating the sacrifices we make for them? Just like those birds with the awesome view, our kids do not have the marks of growing pains we have, so how could they appreciate? We can either wait til they have their own marks of growing pains or we could teach them to appreciate by appreciating who they are to us.

“MATHDOC” is my license plate, a birthday gift from my kids actually. I like it because it captures what I do at work: diagnose and treat students plagued with math anxiety.

For the 3 years I’ve driven my Toyota Camry with the license plate, only my mechanic who changes my oil every 3000 miles asked me if I’m indeed a “Mathdoc”. “You bet”, I remember answering him proudly.

You can imagine my amusement when my husband told me, for the third time, in a week, that someone asked him if he teaches math. Each time he asked why and each time, they pointed at the “MATHDOC” license plate. A motorcyclist even pulled besides him at the stop light and asked him where he teaches math at.

My own amusement aside, you must admit that our society is pretty biased when it comes to women and science. We tell our girls “be all you can be” but when push comes to shove, we comfort girls struggling in math with “oh, who needs math anyway. That’s what accountants are for.” So, hold on tight moms. Hold on to your girls, keep them in chess, in math, in physics, in biology, in chemistry. Keep your daughter in those challenging fields, not to groom another madame Curie, but to give our daughters an equal footing on the playing field. Give them a chance to be “MATHDOC” not “MATHDUCK”?

“Well,” I told the young man who was toweling  my car after a car wash “15% of my bill is what I usually tip. How much would that be for you?”

“I’m no good with percentages. Guess you’re a “mathdoc” after all.” Who said math is not cool!

“Repeat after me, mommy,” our 12 year old daughter said after school one day with her shining eyes “That’s a fantastic job!”

“That’s a fantastic job!” I said, copying her enthusiasm.

“You worked hard! And I’m proud of you!”

“You worked hard! And I’m proud of you!”

“You’ll go far in life!”

“You’ll go far in life!”

“Okay. That’s good enough,” she said contently. “Here is my physics test I aced last week.”

Sure enough, she got 100% on the unit test. The test was on momentum and energy transfer.

Yes, she is smart academically. Yes, I’m proud. But that’s not the point.

The point is that through work, I’ve met many talented and gifted students. Yet very few feel they’re smart. It’s hard for parents to balance between praising their kids too much and imparting modesty, so when in doubt, many parents do neither.

To me, what I think of my daughter’s intelligence is of very little value. It is what she thinks of herself that matters. And that’s where the “repeat after me” was born one day. After a hard day at work where I couldn’t put a positive dent on a 4.2 GPA Ivy League bound sophmore, I asked my daughter how she’d want to be acknowledged.

“That’s easy, mommy. Just repeat after me and I get to decide how I want you to show you’re proud of me.”

Most of us are proud of our kids or we wouldn’t hang on to their old guitar, old ballerina slippers, soccer trophies, swimming gear, tennis racquets or the last “I love you, mommy” note. Why not let your child decide how to feel that you’re proud of his/her accomplishment? Got a child who can’t compliment herself? Maybe let her know you value her self esteem more than modesty. After all, when one day, when you and I are gone, our kids will have to repeat after themselves. And what they say then to themselves would be all that matters.