You want your child to succeed in math because it opens so many doors in the future.
But kids have a short-term perspective. They don’t really care about the future. They care about getting through tonight’s homework and moving on to something more interesting.
So how can you help your child learn math?
When kids face a difficult math problem, their attitude can make all the difference. Not so much their “I hate homework!” attitude, but their mathematical worldview.
Does your child see math as answer-getting? Or as problem-solving?
Answer-getting asks “What is the answer?”, decides whether it is right, and then goes on to the next question.
Problem-solving asks “Why do you say that?” and listens for the explanation.
Problem-solving is not really interested in “right” or “wrong”—it cares more about “makes sense” or “needs justification.”
Homeschool Memories
In our quarter-century-plus of homeschooling, my children and I worked our way through a lot of math problems. But often, we didn’t bother to take the calculation all the way to the end.
Why didn’t I care whether my kids found the answer?
Because the thing that intrigued me about math was the web of interrelated ideas we discovered along the way:
- How can we recognize this type of problem?
- What other problems are related to it, and how can they help us understand this one? Or can this problem help us figure out those others?
- What could we do if we had never seen a problem like this one before? How would we reason it out?
- Why does the formula work? Where did it come from, and how is it related to basic principles?
- What is the easiest or most efficient way to manipulative the numbers? Does this help us see more of the patterns and connections within our number system?
- Is there another way to approach the problem? How many different ways can we think of? Which way do we like best, and why?
What Do You think?
How did you learn math? Did your school experience focus on answer-getting or problem-solving?
How can we help our children learn to think their way through math problems?
I’d love to hear from you! Please share your opinions in the Comments section below.
CREDITS: “Math Phobia” photo by Jimmie (blog post title added) via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). Phil Daro video by SERP Media (the Strategic Education Research Partnership) via Vimeo.
Do you enjoy math? I hope so! If not, browsing this post just may change your mind.
If you slice a pizza with a lightsaber, you’ll make straight cuts all the way across. Slice it once, and you get two pieces.
People assume that because I teach math, blog about math, give advice about math on internet forums, and present workshops about teaching math — because I do all this, I must be good at math. 
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 
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