What's the best way for a child to learn math? 

Why won’t my kid get it!? 

Oh! Math is so abstract, how will I ever get it?

Oh! Math is so concrete, how will I ever get it?

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Any of these sound familiar? 

I can’t answer those questions, but this is one post about a ‘hard science’ that I'm going to write totally from the heart. 

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If I had a penny for every time I heard someone (including myself) say ‘I hate math!’ I’d be super rich. For many of us, math is a touchy, emotional, uncomfortable - even traumatic subject - that raises all kinds of insecurities,  scary report cards, and ghosts of bad times past.

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Here’s the story of when and how math and I broke up. 

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PS: I could also call this section “How the system ruined math for me”. 

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I’m sure there are people out there who love math (despite the way it's taught in school!) and of course there are people who build careers around mathematics - but the sheer volume of people I meet who are haters versus lovers is shocking!

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Over the last several years that I’ve actually been reflecting on why this is, why I ‘hated’ math, here are some of the conclusions I came to:

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1. As a child, I started off well, meeting every developmental milestone of blocks, shapes and counting, but that was my natural instinct - I do not think any intentional foundation building occured

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2. In school, increasingly advanced math was thrust down my throat without giving me the chance to ease into it as a ‘formal structure’

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3. Once I lost my step, somewhere around grade 3, I never got it back - i always remained behind in math, and couldn’t catch up

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4. Math was taught in a ‘my way or the highway’ style by teachers who had no awareness of or interest in my personal learning style

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5. Teachers, parents, tutors and even me were quick to label me as ‘poor’ and ‘weak’ at math. Seeing the word next to math in my class 5 report card still makes me inexplicably upset.

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But here is what makes me really sad. 

It didn’t have to be this way.

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I may never have become a mathematician, but surely I didn't have to go through life feeling so negative towards something that defines every facet of what we do. 

‍Worse, I didn’t have to go through life believing I was weak, poor and dumb at something that basically governs everything in life.

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Also Read: How I reframed my approach to learning math in my 30’s

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What could have been done differently when I was ‘learning’ math at school?

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If someone had told me - math is in flowers, and math is in clouds, and math is in the games I play and the clothes I wear, I would have been very interested in getting to know math. 

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If someone had told me patterns are math, and everything in nature follows a pattern, and if we just learn to observe them, we will see them, I would have been very interested in getting to know math.

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If someone had told me the story behind math, and people like Al-kwarizmi and Aryabhatta and Einstein, their struggles and motivation and what they discovered and how it changed the world we live in, I would have been very interested in getting to know math.

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In fact, I would have been motivated to learn it!

Instead, I was told not to question math.

I was told it's hard science - there was no human element to it. 

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In my classroom, math was reduced to a bunch of numbers and equations and problems in a book that had to be solved and not ‘understood’. Just solved. 

There was no why, how and for whom. There was zero context.

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I was unable to contextualize math into my daily life. I was unable to assign meaning to math in my mind. And so I built no attachment to it, I built no context for it.

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Math was just this huge, ugly silo standing alone that I had to get into and out of at 11am each day. Because someone said I had to. And after grade 10, thankfully I wouldn’t have to. 

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That detachment turned to distaste, as I started getting labelled dumb, incapable of math and logic, irrational and so many more things. 

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The detachment turned to dread as I started getting red lines under my otherwise perfect card, each time I was tested on my ability to climb into and out of that ‘math silo’. 

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The detachment turned to disdain when it became clear that some children were being singled out as the ‘smart’ ones- these were the ones who scored high in math or other hard sciences of course. I wasn't among them of course, but the ‘us versus them’ narrative turned into ‘I’m so cool, not like those math nerds’ as a way to protect myself and cope with the frustration of not understanding math.

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Math - or the way I had been taught math - had scarred me at so many emotional and intellectual levels that I began to ‘hate’ it.

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Those are just my feelings. If you are looking for a more authoritative voice, in this Q&A where teachers share their most successful strategies to teach math, I found that the number one approach recommended by Cindy Garcia, who has been a bilingual educator for 14 years and is currently a district instructional specialist for PK-6 bilingual/ESL mathematics says,

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 “The single most effective strategy that I have used to teach mathematics is the Concrete- Representational-Abstract (CRA) approach.”

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The line that really struck a chord with me was “During the abstract step, students are now primarily using numbers and symbols. Students working at the abstract stage have a solid understanding of the concept.” 

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That means, the 'abstract' of math - numbers and symbols -is the third stage of learning math effectively. The first two - concrete and representational are much more in the space of ‘experiencing’ math the way I’ve described in this article about beating math anxiety by making math a lived experience. 

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In my case, I felt that I never had the opportunity, in early childhood to 

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1. Take my time through the concrete and representational stages of learning math - I was straight away thrust into the abstract stage with the assumption that I would ‘learn’ it
   
   
2. I was never given the time and space to make the connections - the natural, instinctive and conceptual connections between math as a concrete, representational and abstract concept of life.

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She goes on to say (honestly, I felt like she was talking directly about me - or actually about my primary math teachers!),

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“Some teachers try to start teaching a concept at the abstract level, for example, the standard algorithm for multiplication. However, they soon find out that students have difficulty remembering the steps, don’t regroup, or don’t line up digits correctly. One of the main reasons is that students don’t understand this shortcut and they have not had the concrete & representational experiences to see how the shortcuts in the standard algorithm work.”

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For instance, my reality is that once I got behind in math, I actually was never able to catch up again, at least not during my school years. 

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This is something we see over and over again with kids- once you get behind in math, intellectually and emotionally, it's very difficult to catch up and be normal about the subject again. Pretty soon the fear of failure takes over.

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Could math and I ever get back together again? 

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It's fair and natural that math is not a favorite subject for everyone, just like music, dance or geography wouldn't be either. However, we all know that basic math is a must for everyday life, at any age, in any profession. 

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Yes, even our fruit-seller knows how to add, divide and subtract numbers when he sells me my daily bag of veggies! Usually he’s far more astute than me, and smiles when he sees me struggling with adding up as quickly as he does. 

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This is a huge clue to understand that he’s good at this kind of basic arithmetic because it has so much context and meaning in his daily life!

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The fact is, like it or not, some amount of basic math is important for living. 

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As I have found, a lack of a strong foundation in basic math can be debilitating in adult life- it can make you feel quite helpless even, at times. For example, your grocer adds up the total, subtracting the discount- all mentally - and you blindly agree to his figure because it's too much for you to handle mentally (or even with a phone to be honest!).

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In 45 years and a fairly successful career in marketing, I have learned that you don’t really use any of the advanced math they put you through in school: I’ve never had to use quadratic equations, for example. 

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But there is a need to know and understand and be able to do basic geometry, arithmetic (add, subtract, multiply and divide), percentages, ratios and proportions, conversions and some amount of equations. 

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When it comes to equations, I found that more than solving the memorized equations, the real skill is in forming the equation - of taking a practical problem and framing it as a mathematical equation. That's where the logic skills come in. 

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And honestly, when I started seeing math this way, as a basic life skill- and not an exam to be passed, I did start slowly extending a hand of friendship towards it again.

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Two things happened to catalyze this re-forming friendship.

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• A job offer from Procter and Gamble that needed me to pass a ‘business math’ exam to qualify (I did - read the story of how I managed it here)

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• My kids.

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With my children, I vowed not to let history repeat itself. I’m not hung up on making math their favorite subject, but I want them to be comfortable with it.

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I want it to be a normal part of life for them, just a regular skill like being able to put on our clothes or tie our shoelaces or eat with a fork and knife.

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I want them to be as unafraid of it as they are of using colors to paint and draw or running around climbing trees. 

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Saving my children from becoming math-haters: reframing the meaning of math in life

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As I shared in this post, approaching math as a lived experience helped me realize that math is not a ‘subject’ - it is a natural lived experience.

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It should not be treated as a subject - especially in the early years when the foundational context and connections are being formed. 

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Reframing what math meant and why we needed it in life really helped me see it with new eyes. 

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Schools are incapable of this approach to math - they have timelines, curriculums, a class full of diverse learners who must be boiled down to an average, and most of all - the school is evaluated based on your child’s ability to pass an exam. 

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Is it any wonder then that they will teach with the goal of helping your child pass an exam, not with the goal of learning, understanding or living an experience.

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As career math teacher Barry Garelick has observed in his book, ‘Out on Good Behavior: Teaching Math while Looking Over Your Shoulder’,

“Teaching math in public schools is becoming increasingly divorced from what neuroscience has revealed about how students actually learn math”. 

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Of course, his approach also suggests that a more human approach to math: one that encourages discourse, debate and personal process - may not always be the best approach for math teachers, in reference to the growing narrative that this is ‘dumbing down’ math or lowering standards where mediocrity is accepted and applauded for the sheer effort alone. 

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But I’m not making an argument for mediocrity. I’m saying there is a way to reframe the approach to math that makes it more normal, less scary and more ‘learn-able’ for our children. 

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In fact, more kids labeled ‘weak in math’ by these teachers might actually get really good at it if they felt an internal comfort, and an authentic motivation to learn it. I’m living proof of that.

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At school, math will always be a subject.

But at home, it can be different. 

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How can parents make math a natural lived experience for their children? 7 tips to normalize math.

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Here’s the lucky thing. Patterns are everywhere, numbers are everywhere. So its easy for parents to help children ‘experience’ math in everyday life.

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1. Let kids tap into their natural instincts to make meaning of math in their world

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To place it into their own context and everyday lived experiences. Let’s give them the luxury of forming their context and meaning of math. 

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Unless they are able to make ‘meaning’ of it, they will simply not see that it's a normal part of everyday life. It will remain numbers on a page. Exams to be passed. Silos to be climbed in and out of.

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Instead, let’s help them see and experience math in everything, everywhere, everyday. 

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2. Let kids fail and make mistakes in math!

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One of the main reasons I lost interest in math was that there was no room to fail, to make mistakes. 

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It was ALL about the final answer - never about the process. There were ‘steps’ but all steps HAD to arrive at a predetermined correct answer. 

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In real life, math is not about speed. Students need time to think and grapple with the problem, to make observations and frame the right questions, which are always more important than the answers. 

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Instead of dismissing or deriding improbable ideas and theories our kids come up with, we should actually help the child make their case and argument, and arrive for themselves why something is true or not. 

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3. Let kids ask questions about math

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Don’t try to answer them, especially not like a ‘mathematician’. Instead, discuss them. 

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Talk about them. Explore the possibilities around their questions and encourage them to find parallels in the world around them.

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 No doubt math is closely linked to exactness and precision, but discouraging kids from being curious about it, by not asking questions but to blindly obey the ‘rules’ is not the way to reinforce that focus on perfection.

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As Dan Finkel says in this hugely popular TED Talk, start with a question.

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4. Let’s end the superiority around math skills

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Being ‘good’ at math doesn't make you ‘smarter’ than someone who's ‘good’ at music. Both children have an equal shot of living a wonderful life! 

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Both children will have a different way to appreciate the beauty of math. Let them arrive at that. No doubt STEM is critical to move the world forward, and yes, everyone should develop a scientific mindset but everybody doesn’t need to feel inferior because they didn't choose to be experts in the technical intricacies of advanced math. 

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After all, they would know the technical intricacies of advanced something! So don’t let math become a tool for cultural segregation.

Instead, use the power of math to show just how connected everything and everyone is.

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5. Parents need to walk the talk

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Instead of all the emotional manipulation (force, threats, pleading, bribing, etc.), try framing math as a part of everyday life. Let them see the value of knowing the basics. Let them know there is no pressure to become an expert, that they are not learning math to pass an exam but to live a richer life. 

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When your child says they hate math, instead of being your rational self and giving them reasons why they HAVE to learn math, try having a healthy discussion about all the ways non-mathematicians use math in daily life, jobs, and tasks. 

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For instance, what are the ways in which a doctor, footballer, chef and artist use math in everyday life? How do you use math everyday at home, at work, in the kitchen, in the garden, while driving and while playing cricket? This can be a meaningful discussion to help the child make meaning and contextualize math in their own life. Let math simply be a lived experience.

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6. Replace fear with understanding

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Putting math on a pedestal, framing it as a technical or hard science, reducing it to an exam score: all these create fear and panic in a child’s mind (even adults minds!).

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Instead, find ways to help them understand math. When you have some idea of their preferred learning style, make it a game to find math in everything around them in ways they will enjoy. Instead of always doing math in a controlled environment with pen, paper and notebook, talk about math in different settings - grocery shopping, art & craft sessions, bathing the dog! 

The opposite of fear is understanding.

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7. Make space for creativity in math 

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In this article about the best strategy for early learners to embrace math, I’ve spoken of reframing math to approach it as a lived experience. I’m borrowing from Peter Kline’s book ‘The Everyday Genius’ to extend that thinking. 

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He says,

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“Creativity is a function of our whole personality and its interaction with the world, not something we turn on or off. The more we see ourselves as innovative and original thinkers, the more creative we tend to be."

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If we truly want our children to apply math to solve real problems, then we need to let them express and explore their creativity in math too! Why must math be seen as this absolute, fixed science? Is there nothing more to discover in math? Are there no new, innovative applications of mathematical concepts in real life problems?

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Sure there are! So let children know that math can be a creative endeavor as much as it can be an effort in precision.

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Ready to friend math again?

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Math is the secret to understanding life, but for most of us, it’s hiding in plain sight. 

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I’m a recovering math-hater, and I say, math is not the enemy. It is not a subject -  it is a language, it is life, it is a story. 

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Don’t reduce the amazingness and beauty of the lived experience of math to a sum, an equation, an exam result. Bring the mathematical or logical language and vocabulary into daily conversations. 

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As parents, the best thing we can do for our math-hating kids is to just normalize it!

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