Door-2-Math Blog

“A car is a car,” a new prospective parent announced during the assessment feedback portion of my assessment of his daughter’s math. “It takes you from point A to point B.”

“A beat up For will do if grocery shopping is all you need,” I countered. “I sure want at least a reliable Toyota if my daughter wants to drive from Tucson to Boston for Hrvard medical school, wouldn’t you?”

“But she’s getting A’s and B’s, why would I part with that much money and ‘rebuild her math’ as you say she needs?”

“How sure are you about the A’s and B’s?” I asked. “Are you willing to let your daughter’s dream of being a pediatrician on it?” The 9th grader attends one of the private schools in town that is famous for grade inflation.

“Look, all I’m saying is, with my program or not, your daughter’s math is equivalent of a beat up Ford. If all she wants  is to attend a local community college and find a regular 9-5 job, then you’re right, why spend more on top of private tuition. But she wants to go further than that. Then I’m telling you her current math foundation will not take her there. It will not be enough to pass Calculus II which is required for medical school.”

“Honey, let Dr. Pan talk. You don’t have to like the message, but don’t shoot the messenger,” added his wife. “Look I grew up in Communist China, I sure am suspicious when it comes to “being sold”, ” I continued to address the father. “Just think about it when you go home. Ask your daughter how important it is for her to go after her dream. She just entered 9th grade, we still have time.”

So dear reader, what math vehicle does your child have? If it is in good shape to take your child where she/he wants to go? “Ford” is good enough for rudimentary entry level jobs, “Toyota” is much more reliable; Mercedes would be great while Bentley makes a statement.

Did the dad sign up his daughter? You bet. Was it worth it? Seven years later, his daughter passed her required Calculus II and got into medical school. You tell me.

Having a strong math foundation is the surest way to prevent math struggle. Just how do parents go about building that strong math foundation? The rule of thumb is subtract your child’s age from 21 and that’s close to the weekly # of hours a parent ought to use on building the math foundation at home. So for a typical 7 year old 1st grader, that comes to about 14 hours per week or 3 hours per day, 5 times a week. Shokingly long? And for a 18 year old senior, that number is roughly 3 hours per week, enough to complete the homework assignment each time the class meets. Shockingly short?

If you find it counterintuitive, you’re not alone. The vast majority of families have the upside down pyramid – spending very little time if any on building the math foundation when kids are young, then panicking and insisting on long hours of study when math tumbles over when the student enters high school. By then, the amount of math material is daunting, with adolescent hormones and the breakdown of parent-child communication, plus peer pressure, you have a total math meltdown. Adding salt to injury, grades matter all of a sudden. Colleges want to know that your child had what it takes to succeed, so an F in Algebra 1 Freshman year somehow matters more than a B+ in Trigonometry in senior year.

“It’s just not fair!” one of my seniors with a 2.75 GPA complains. He is right. The system is not fair, especially since he worked so hard to raise his trig grade from an F to 91%.

3 hours of math sounds like a tall order to fill even for the most ambitious type A parent who buys in to start early. The trick is to divide and conquer: take them grocery shopping, point out the sale items and see how much you save; take them to the mailbox and add the zip codes up on the junk mail pieces; take them to the gas station and watch the gas  meter go up as you pump gas… The point is math is all around, you don’t have to use Asian drill sessions hours on end. The point is if math building is on your mind, it’ll be on your kids.

Smart kids get bored easily. Think about it – if you’re as academically gifted as, say, Federer in tennis, playing at your local tennis club just doesn’t cut it. Over the years, I’ve seen many students who are bright beyond the top-of-the-chart get so bored with their academic studies that they literally start to glide. Why should they bother to shore up the math foundation, sharpen test-taking skills or develop efficient study habits when they can ace all the exams that their peers spend hours preparing for?

So what should a parent do? First and foremost, trust your instinct. If you know you’ve got a hot-cookie on hand, treat it as so. Don’t rely on your nagging to propel the smart kid. It would only backfire and put your parent-child relationship in jeopardy. Instead, locate, place and insist that your prodigy is in an environment that entices him to excel.

For example, a student of mine who held the world’s #3 spot for solving the Rubik’s cube, his father took the time to travel with him to Japan so he could be among his Rubik’s Cube equals. Yes, a 13 hour flight. The result, my student came back with a new appreciation of that “There is always someone who is smarter and better than me in every respect.” He then transformed himself into a self-motivated student at his high school and went on to attend Stanford.

Moral of the story? Change the environment to bring out the best in your child’s gift.