Math tears. Do you have them at your house? I am very familiar with those big, frustrated, droplets that bring a good school day to a screeching halt. It’s just math! Please stop crying!!

But what brings our kids to this point? Is it the math lesson, or is it a feeling of being defeated? Do we accidentally expect too much of our kids? Or do we roll our eyes and tell our friends about how much we all hate math—setting up an expectation that math is to be despised and feared?

My guess, most of us do all of the above. I have.

A couple of years ago, our family was not in a good place with math. There were tears almost daily. One child was good at math, but didn’t know it. She didn’t have any confidence and thought she was doing terribly. Her only gauge for her success was how she felt about it, and since it was hard and she didn’t enjoy it, she internalized that she wasn’t doing well.

My other daughter just hated it. She struggled simply because she didn’t want to turn on her brain. She is good at math, but not interested in it. There was nothing fun about it. Just drama.

As I evaluated our math situation, I realized that I needed to adjust our focus. I spent a lot of time coming up with a plan to boost the confidence of one, and increase the enjoyment level of the other. In truth, I’d created the problem. I’d pushed too hard, assigned too much, and expected them to work too independently. It was up to me to mend what was broken.

That’s when I started discovering math read alouds. We love reading together. I can read fun books about math??!! Games. Games can be math! This year, I’ve decided that the last school day of each month is game day—with no regular math assignments! And, I took a hard look at our curriculum and our pace and changed it up. We needed to back off and slow down. I need to respond to math calmly and without drama. I often tell them that “it’s just math.” Let’s figure it out together. (And math should never be attempted with low blood sugar!)

Math takes work, and we all tend to resist something that’s hard. But hard does not equal bad. What a life lesson we can teach our kids if we can show them clearly that they can do hard things! All while learning…math! Perseverance, determination, problem solving, …and math! These are lessons we should be valuing just as much as multiplication tables. Don’t miss the opportunity to guide your kids through these lessons. To do that, we must demonstrate these traits ourselves. If we moan and groan about math, tell everybody how bad we are at it, and complain about teaching it, we don’t demonstrate the attitude we want our kids to have. If we allow math to become something we argue over with our kids, then we’re allowing it to break our relationship with them, rather than be a tool to build character. Don’t let that happen—it’s just math!

This isn’t something we can change overnight. Everybody has bad days. I have seen my kids’ attitudes change so much for the better. I told somebody that yesterday, and today—bam! Math tears. My third child hasn’t even done his math yet today (as I write this at 5:45 in the evening). Math is still hard—but I’m determined that it won’t defeat our family. I won’t let it make our homeschool miserable or damage my kids’ self-esteem. It’s not worth it--it’s just math.

Rebecca LaSavio

rebecca.lasavio@sequoiagrove.org