Five years ago, I sat in a tiny orange chair across from the first grade teacher who had on a pink headband and wore a smiley face button on her lapel. I said, “I think my son has math anxiety already. We’re not math people.” She said, “You don’t tell him that, do you?” I winced. It was going to be a long 12 years.
There’s a ton of pressure on kids to do well in math, and if you’ve ever sat with a child who’s erased so much that he puts a hole in the paper, you know the frustration. But there are solutions! Here’s why math causes such anxiety and 4 ways to ease the pain.
Why Math Causes Anxiety
Math has a reputation. Whether you agree or not, there’s a perception that the most intelligent people are the people who excel at math. It’s like an exclusive club that only a few people get into, amplifying a child’s self-doubt.
We act like there’s a math gene. Most people fall into one of two camps. We say we’re “good at math” or “bad at math.” We tend to pass this all-or-nothing attitude on to our kids. I’d never want to pass another fear onto my kids, so why do I flippantly tell them we aren’t a math family?
You either know it, or you don’t. As a child, I feared failure. I knew I could make an educated guess on a history test (or at least write my way into a kinda right answer). With math, there’s only one right answer.
We don’t have sentimental feelings toward math. I’ve never done math at bedtime with my kids, but we’ve read plenty of books. And because we don’t play with numbers at home, it’s like a foreign language at school. (But this can change! Resources like Bedtime Math can help you add math to your conversations at home.)
How to Help a Child Who Hates Math
Change your attitude (and theirs). At my house, we talk a lot about growth mindset versus fixed. Growth mindset language says that “I can work at math and improve” while fixed says that “I’m not good at this and won’t ever be. It’s not my thing.” If you’re like me and think you’ve passed on a bad attitude, it’s not too late for you and the kids to start saying things like, “This is tough, but I bet we can figure it out. Let’s see how we can look at it differently.”
Use memorization tricks. The Child Mind Institute explains how humans have a mental notepad called working memory. It holds things we tell it to remember and is an essential math tool. Our kids mentally scribble the order of operations or the Pythagorean theorem onto their working memory. However, anxiety and panic make it hard to access that notepad during a test or when homework becomes overwhelming.
Memorization tricks like acronyms (PEMDAS for the order of operations) or putting multiplication facts to music can make it easier to access working memory even when anxiety is heightened.
Write down formulas. My son starts out calm, but I can see his nerves becoming frazzled as he works through his math homework. To cut the nerves off before they throw the whole lesson for a loop, he’s now in the habit of writing out the facts and formulas. Quick references at the top of the page help him stay calm.
Use regular life to practice and point out math successes. If your child has math anxiety, cooking is your best friend. It’s math IRL! I’ll tell my son, “We need to cut this recipe in half. What’s half of one-fourth?” I remind him he’s doing fractions when he gets the answer right. We might not do algebra in the kitchen, but knowing he can practically apply math and “get it” boosts his confidence.
If your child has math anxiety, cooking is your best friend. It’s math IRL! Click To TweetWhat are some everyday ways to practice math with your kids, like comparing prices at the grocery store, calculating tips, sewing, or crunching statistics of your favorite pro athletes?
