Good Parenting

My boss has been telling us at work for years how his son is having trouble with math, and the stress it was putting on him. He was pulling his hair out trying to teach him, but I felt more for his son. This is a subject that I know all to well because I struggled all of my live with math also. I remember how on test day I would be sick to my stomach and not want to go to school. I remember how I use to act out and get into trouble because I felt dumb. I could not learn the times tables for my life, it was like reading the phone book. We didn’t have any cool math for kids, it was just hammer it in round peg square hole. The math lessons were a head ache and no math tutor could help.

Two months ago I noticed that my boss was more relaxed and seemed to be looking healthier. I was ribbing him about his relationship at home. (We clown around a lot at work) He said that things were great, things were peaceful, everything was fine. It dawned on us later that he was not talking about doing math with his son anymore. I asked him about it, and that is when we ALL realized what has happened. He found a solution to his sons math problems, and his stress and home life turned around 180 degrees. He found a way to do fun math games with his kid, that were actually pretty cool. Just him telling me some of the games, I learned so much that I was almost mad that it took me so long to get it. If I only knew then I kept say.

Needless to say his sons grades are up in ALL subjects, and he is not acting like the teen aged brat kid anymore. (His words not mine) This made me reflect on my life, bad grades, attitude problems, lack of discipline, all of that good stuff. It made me remember my 6th grade teacher saying to the class, “why do I get all the stupid ones?” Talk about self esteem issues. It is very unfortunate that our education system has no real clue on who to teach. Don’t get me wrong I respect teachers, I just think that their hand are tied. If they don’t follow this blueprint they will get fired.

It dawned on me that as parents we need to think outside of the box. If we want our children to do good in school we have to make math fun, play math games. Kids do games, look around, do you know any kids that don’t have a game boy or psp? That is how they learn, ding ding. Not by flash cards, and trying to memorize the times tables. I wish that my parents knew this when I was young, heck I could have been the president!!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Good Parenting.