Algebraic Dyslexia
When I was in school I took algebra, twice. I have trouble with numbers. It’s like my brain freezes up when presented with a series of numbers that I must rationally calculate in some form or pattern. I find it quite ironic that my 9 year old has the entirely opposite approach to math. He loves it, and computes and calculates completely in his head and gets frustrated with having to show steps.
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| Fuzzy Like my Brain |
I think I have math dyslexia. I don’t know if that is actually a problem or just an excuse for my lack of math skills, but I know that math of any kinds gives me a headache. I’ve learned more teaching Little Man than I ever remember from school. Frankly, because I’ve had to slow down, take my time and learn how to TEACH him what he needs to know. Many times he gets it long before I do and I end up learning from him.
Sometimes it’s simply a matter of me remembering the functions of math.
For example: Today he is learning to multiply and divide rational numbers. For those of you who cannot remember, a rational number is simply a fraction or decimal that may or may not be a negative. Part of the steps here required prime factoring. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what that meant. I mean, I knew what prime numbers were. I knew what factoring was, but I couldn’t in my own little mind reasonably connect the dots. My mind froze up, I became embarrassed. I fear that Little Man will think I’m just completely ignorant. I get very nervous and my blood pressure goes up, my adrenaline starts pumping and IF I completely give in to my math fear, I’ll start crying.
Today, however…. My Beloved is home. He is better at math than I am, so I sent Little Man to him. He patiently and lovingly taught him and me at the same time. As soon as he explained it. I got it. I remembered, it was just that moment when I literally couldn’t for the life of me reasonably explain or even imagine an explanation for what Prime Factoring is. It was really simple though once someone showed me how. Little Man, got it and then set to work on his math.
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| Beloved explains |
We are only in Section 1 of this thing called Algebra. I’m in for a trying year.
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| Little Man Understands |
2 Comments
Carrie
Hi, Renee! I want to thank you for this post. I have had it bookmarked and am just now getting around to reading it. I have two children who have this same problem and I am just the opposite. Actually, my 17 yo son may be in between you and your son. We took at least 3 years to get through pre-algebra and algebra 1, and never really finished either. When he was little (and in public school), he would get so upset and cry and get really itchy all over. He would completely break down, but was stubborn and refused to take a break. Homework time was agonizing (which partly lead to our decision to homeschool). Geometry is a bit easier for him, but like your son, he hates having to list all the steps and can do so much in his head that he doesn’t think about them as individual steps.
My 13 yo daughter also has terrible math anxiety. She just can’t seem to remember any steps. She took over two and a half years to learn her multiplication facts, then forgot most of them again right away. I just let her use a chart now because we just have to move on. Then came division. She forgets the steps to long division all the time. Now we’re doing fractions (she is in 7th grade!) and struggling all the time. She quite often ends up crying which only makes things worse, but like my son, she refuses to take breaks. We ususally leave math till last or nothing at all would get done that day.
But I have trouble understanding this anxiety and difficulty. I LOVE math and science and, well, just all of it! I wish they had inherited that from me, but regardless, it’s been a wonderful journey for me to discover just who these children of mine are!
Renee Brown
Hi Carrie,
Thank you for writing to me and letting me know that you could relate to this post. It is one of those subjects that simply has always eluded me. I don’t think I was meant to e a mathematician for sure!
I hope you will find some assistance. In fact let me recommend a couple of things.
1. Check out this post it has a giveaway for a resource which might help:
http://www.greatpeaceacademy.com/2013/12/Math-Dictionary-for-Kids-Review.html
2. Math four is a site designed for teaching math strategies written by a math expert http://mathfour.com/
3. Khan Academy. I use https://www.khanacademy.org/ to “teach” math.. Here is a post that talks about why: http://www.greatpeaceacademy.com/2013/10/TeachingGiftedHomeschoolMath.html
I hope that helps.
Remember that God gives us gifts according to our abilities so if your children aren’t on a path for Trig/Calculus College Math… Don’t sweat it! I bet they have an abundance of talents in other areas. 🙂