Monday, November 28, 2016

You Don't Hate Math

This comes from a discussion I had with the girls recently:

It's unfair and inaccurate to say that you hate math.  You only find the parts that you're learning right now difficult.  And of course they're difficult!  They're new!

You don't hate the part of math that you're good at.  Simple addition and subtraction are easy.  You don't hate doing that because you learned it so long ago so you've become really good at it.  But at the time when you were first learning it, it was hard and it wasn't fun.

The "hard" stuff that you "hate" that you're learning today may become your favorite part of math in just a few weeks or months!  With some practice you could become really good at this stuff the same as you got really good at the easy Kindergarten stuff.

Just because you find something difficult, doesn't mean you should avoid it.  We only learn and grow in life when we're challenged.

I don't want you to label yourself as "bad at math" or "hates math" because that automatically limits you.  Don't put limits on yourself when you're still learning and still so capable of learning so much!

1 comment:

  1. I never thought I was particularly good at math when I was young, but I was always great at reading/writing/spelling/English. So imagine my surprise when, even though I scored very high on the English part of the PSAT, I scored even higher on the math part! It changed the way I thought about math ever after.

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