Watching Our Language

I often give talks about math to groups of parents.  So often parents come up to me afterwards with a question or a comment.  They preface it by saying, “I’m not a math person.”  This comment always makes me wonder, “Have you figured out how to double a recipe?  Do you manage your bank account?  Can you tell how much the pants will cost if they are 25% off?”  Yes, you are a math person.  You may not love math, but you are a math person.

We cannot deny how much math affects our modern lives.  Each morning when my son wakes up he checks the temperature for the day and compares it to the day before.  “Oh, mom, it is going to be 13* cooler than yesterday.”  My daughter collects snacks for her Girl Scout troop.  “If we have 12 girls and each box of granola bars holds 8 snacks then I need to bring two boxes.”  We get in the car and I calculate if ¼ of a tank of gas will get me the 30 miles to school and back.  Every hour of the day we are involved in some sort of math.

Two hundred years ago women were considered too delicate to think about math.  We need to stop perpetuating this idea and give our daughters (and sons) the confidence that they CAN do math.  It is OK to say, “I don’t know how to do this problem,” but follow it up with, “Let’s figure it out together.”  Your child will get the idea that they can do math if they stick with it and talk about it.

Most parents know that it is important to read to their children at night but so few parents know that it is also important to do math with their children.  No, I don’t mean worksheets.  I mean, real-life math.  First you need to realize when you are using math in your life and then you need to talk about it with your children. 

Has the price of gas gone up?  If it goes up five cents per gallon how much does that change your weekly gas bill?  Talk about it. 

Are you wearing a fitness tracker?  Have you hit your 10,000 steps for the day?  How far do you have to go?  Talk about it. 

Just this morning the DJ on my radio said that she didn’t like doing math.  Talk about it.  Break down those perceptions.

My children are now in middle school so they are studying decimals and percents.  I have been using that language to give them answers to their questions.  How much longer until we get to the birthday party?  We are 50% of the way there.  Do we have any cake left?  75% of it is gone.  Talk about it.

So many of the jobs of the 21^st century require math skills.  We are doing our children a disservice when we set them up to think that they are not a math person and thus cannot do many of our modern jobs.  Change the language in your house.  Change your child’s attitude and tell them we are all math people.