In my tutoring and teaching experience I’ve met many different types of children. Some are visual learners, some need to use their hands. Some have been doing math since they were two, and some are just trying to catch up. Each student presents unique challenges. One big challenge for a teacher is to identify obstacles: what is preventing this child’s understanding? What do they misunderstand, but more importantly, why? Although difficult to do well, most dedicated teachers can accomplish this. 

The next, more difficult obstacle, is the topic of this post. Is this child motivated to correct the misunderstanding? 

Motivation is tricky for children. If left up to them, lunch would be candy and dinner would be ice cream. Since their decisions aren’t always good for them long-term, it becomes the parent’s responsibility to make these decisions for them. Furthermore, it’s tempting for parents to identify their child’s strengths and do their best to develop those strengths while they’re young. After all, learning is easiest at a young age. Often children don’t enjoy school, but education is important and the role of a parent is to guide their children, not to constantly please them. Learning to do things that you don’t like is a valuable skill, even if it makes the child unhappy, right?

My experience has not supported this line of reasoning. As valuable as a skill may be, and as gifted as any child may be, no one can learn the material for them. If they don’t want to solve the problem, they won’t. Even if they know the solution, if they don’t think the knowledge is valuable, they often won’t care enough to tell you. This is the most important factor, in my opinion, for a child’s education. 

Children learn heavily by association. If they are asked to try a new food, they hesitate. They associate it with other foods they’ve already tried, via appearance, smell, texture, etc., and judge whether they think they will like it or not. As hunter gatherers this behavior was extremely useful: better safe than sorry when trying new berries off of a bush. But, in today’s world, this impulse has consequences. Regardless of a child’s mathematical capabilities, if they associate math with negative feelings, they will avoid it like the plague. And as soon as this happens, all real learning halts.

Parents often ask me, “is my child strong in math?” Understandably, they want my opinion, having experience with other students. But like their children, parents sometimes miss the bigger picture. Parents know their child is talented, but may not acknowledge that they would rather be doing anything but math. It’s easy to tell when a child associates math negatively. You can see it on their face when they walk in the door. Children are great at faking negative emotions, but terrible at hiding them. Often they come right out and say it, “I hate math.” Despite this, parents often continue to push their child to higher and higher levels in hopes that mathematical strength will bring them success. When the child gets no satisfaction from learning the material, proficiency must be rewarded in other ways to maintain growth. Often it is sugary snacks, or in some cases a monetary incentive. These rewards, however, only further perpetuate the narrative that math is a chore. Inevitably, after years of “because I said so” and “your education is important,” the child grows to associate math with authority. Unless this association is broken, the child will just be looking for a way to stop learning math. Whether it’s goofing off in class, underperforming on tests, or just a bad attitude, the symptoms reveal themselves. So yes, your child is strong in math for now. But, they “hate” it, so they won’t be strong for very long. 

When I was my pupils’ age, my mom insisted I take tennis lessons. I hadn’t had very good experiences with sports and coaches, so I was hesitant. Like any good mother, she convinced me to give it a gentleman’s try. I liked it, sort of, and took lessons for a few years. But, when I got to middle school and my values shifted, I decided I didn’t like tennis anymore. My mom said no problem, and I stopped. Just like that. Flash forward four years: I’m in high school, and I didn’t make the baseball team. Besides being secretly relieved (I hadn’t had the courage to tell my parents I didn’t like it), I wanted to find a sport to play. My values had shifted again, and I now understood sports were good for my fitness, good for making friends, and all-around fun. Having some experience with it, I picked up tennis again, and my skills were pretty rusty. But I remembered liking tennis when I was young, and that’s what gave me the motivation to try it again. 

When I was even younger, my father, a dermatologist, started protecting my skin. Any skin visible to the eye was always properly lathered in sunscreen. To an adult, sunscreen is objectively beneficial. It prevents cancer, sunburn, and doesn’t seem to have harmful side effects. To my younger self, however, sunscreen is the gross cream that Dad always makes me put on. Unlike tennis, sunscreen wasn’t a choice I was allowed to make. So the sunscreen stayed, and I whined. And I whined, and I whined, and I whined and one day, Dad wasn’t there anymore. I was in college, my friends wanted to go to the beach, and sunscreen cost six dollars. Just like that, endangering my health became an act of rebellion and independence. I consider myself a very logical person, and it’s difficult to this day finding the motivation to put on sunscreen. How then, can one expect an 8-year old to find the motivation to learn math, if it’s been forced down their throat since pre-school?

As a teacher, I strive to create as much enthusiasm as possible in the classroom, so that my students associate math with enjoyable and relevant experiences. It is similarly important for the parent to take on that responsibility. In my time as a math student and a math teacher, I find that if long-term mathematical strength is the primary goal, then fondness toward math is of vital importance. The math that the child enjoys might not be the most advanced curriculum, and it might not even improve their test scores right away. But it will make them like math, so that when they do realize how useful it is, they have the motivation to pursue it. Instead of trying to determine if your child is good at math, ask them if they like math. If the answer is yes, don’t worry about how strong or weak they are. Put them with other people who love math, and the rest will come. 

If the answer is no, incorporate math into their everyday life. Children need to see math in the things they love. For instance, probability dictates board game strategy. Statistics are embedded in every sport known to man. I’ve even had a student ask me to teach her geometry in order to calculate the surface area of her tiled bathroom floor! With these strategies, a mathematical foundation will be a byproduct of general youthful curiosity. When they discover how math affects their everyday lives, they will be ready.