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Don't force your kids to do math

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Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#251

Post by NalNezumi »

rerdavies wrote: post #166
laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

The really important thing is to teach kids to find their joy. At the end of my second year of piano lessons, my teacher took me into her living room, and we listened to Glen Miller records for most of the hour. And then we had a cup of tea, and she told me, "this is the music that I love. I play piano because I love that music, and I want to be able to play it myself. What kind of music do you like?" I didn't really…

A counter argument is simply the observation that some stuff, it takes time (and effort) before you find the joy in it. Following your recepie, unless (as you say yourself) lucky teacher or wealthy parents, anything that doesn't incite immediate reward will be of low interest. A kid will probably pick up that general pattern too:

if joy can not be found in My brother (now an professional artist) told me at teenage years "some stuff you just won't understand the beauty and the joy until you've at least put 100 hours in it". And that's true in so many things in life.

I'm happy that one of my parent forced me to do some stuff (sports, music, language) even when I complained about it. Only 10 years later did I understand how valuable being able to speak another language fluently with minimal accent is, and how some of my fellow second generation migrants lost that ability, and regret it. (having to go to school on Saturday sucked as a kid)

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#253

Post by [deleted] »

hilbert42 wrote: post #171
kleene_op wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was exactly my sentiment. My parents pushed me hard to do piano when I was around 10-12. After a year that went pretty well I was starting to get lazy and put very little work and investment into preparing for the next lesson. They still had me play piano a full year until they eventually gave up and bitterly told me what a waste my resignation felt to them. 20 years later, I got back to playing piano, and I can…

"20 years later, I got back to playing piano, and I can't thank my parent enough for having me to continue playing in my teenage years." One of the tragedies of being young is that few have the insight to realize that the 'boring' stuff parents and teachers are forcing us to learn will actually benefit us and that eventually we'll be very thankful that they did. My parents nagged me all the time about studying and ev…

[deleted]

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#254

Post by wanderingbort »

kleene_op wrote: post #152
laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

That was exactly my sentiment. My parents pushed me hard to do piano when I was around 10-12. After a year that went pretty well I was starting to get lazy and put very little work and investment into preparing for the next lesson. They still had me play piano a full year until they eventually gave up and bitterly told me what a waste my resignation felt to them. 20 years later, I got back to playing piano, and I can…

I’m happy that there was overlap between what your parents put in front of you and what you found passion in later in life.

I think that story happens to many but I cannot accept a premise that it is somehow universal.

The passions I found later in life were unrelated to what my parents put in front of me. I suspect that it’s because the activities I eventually found (distance running, volleyball, cooking) were not activities that my parents enjoyed or thought much about.

Moreover, I was unable to develop healthy models of internal motivation until mid life. I didn’t have to when the “why” was covered by my parents.

Childhood should be the lowest risk time in life for people to learn to fail and find the path back to success. This is what I worry about as a parent when I try to set my kids up for future success. I want them to fail now.

I see my role as a parent as coaching them to care about how they spend their time and how to recover from disappointment and failure. If they get that, then learning piano later in life is just work. They won’t be afraid of that.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#255

Post by danenania »

ctxc wrote: post #243
danenania wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, those are definitely fun things to be able to do, but it’s not some kind of essential life skill. If it’s not someone’s thing, why force it? There are plenty of other skills that are also fun to have.

I mean, fair enough. I had an aptitude for it. If you're able to figure out what skills they might have fun with in the future, that's excellent. If not - I'm not sure, you gotta shoot your shot I guess? Because the dislike might be for the process (practice) when they actually would like the end product (jamming) I just had a kid so this is pretty real to me. How it will go is anybody's guess, but I hope it does go…

Congrats!!

I guess I believe more in the Montessori idea that kids are intrinsically motivated to learn and excel, and they will tend to be naturally drawn to work hard at the skills that they are best suited for.

I understand the idea that some skills have a hump to get over and it’s good to encourage that determination, but I’d also guess that for every person like you who is glad they were pushed to learn some particular skill, there is another person who it affected very negatively. So I suppose it’s a bit of a gamble in that sense.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#256

Post by electriclove »

kif wrote: post #233
laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

I’m not a parent myself, but something I’ve seen happen with an American family I know, is that they push their kids way too much to learn and do as many things as possible. They have their music lessons, their many clubs at school, several physical activities such as soccer, tennis, taekwondo. At some point you have to stop and wonder whether you’re taking their childhood away. These kids barely have any free time.…

Definitely agree though the alternative can quickly become all day spent on TikTok or YouTube shorts.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#257

Post by twodave »

twodave wrote: post #36
raymondgh wrote: post #23

30 minutes of play per 3 days is such a brutal reality to acknowledge. One of the most wonderful experiences in all of life so drastically limited by the society we’ve constructed.

In some ways yes, but men have always been the ones to go hunt/farm for long hours and provide for the family, leaving the children home under the care of the mother/village for days or weeks at a time. I would go so far as to say modern society actually enables us to be more involved in our children’s lives, especially those for whom remote work and home schooling are options.

To clarify, for those who seem not to have RTFA but are downvoting (I can only assume based on perceived sexism since nobody has been brave enough to comment)—-the parent was quoting an article written by a working father, who said his internal KPI was, “If I haven’t spent 30 minutes playing with my kids in the last 3 days something is wrong.”

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#258

Post by danenania »

WalterBright wrote: post #63

> Without realizing it, he was doing algebra. A friend of mine taught remedial math at UW to incoming freshmen. She would write: x + 2 = 5 on the blackboard and ask a student "what is the value of x?" The student would see the x, and immediately respond with x means algebra, algebra is hard, I cannot do algebra. So she started writing: _ + 2 = 5 and ask the student to fill in the blank. "Oh, it's 3!"

I got my daughter (just turned 6) this little hand held math game for her birthday: https://www.amazon.com/your-orders/pop?ref=ppx_yo2dv_mob_b_p...

She loves it. It uses a ‘?’ for basic algebra style problems and after a few days of playing (if/when she wants to, we don’t make her play it), she was already much better and faster at those problems. It made me think that schools should be giving kids games like these.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#260

Post by HdS84 »

sublinear wrote: post #81
WalterBright wrote: post #63

> Without realizing it, he was doing algebra. A friend of mine taught remedial math at UW to incoming freshmen. She would write: x + 2 = 5 on the blackboard and ask a student "what is the value of x?" The student would see the x, and immediately respond with x means algebra, algebra is hard, I cannot do algebra. So she started writing: _ + 2 = 5 and ask the student to fill in the blank. "Oh, it's 3!"

The semantic meaning of a blank is much better understood to everyone than an arbitrary letter like 'x'. People just want to know why it's x and not something else or how a letter can have value. They might even think how can 24 + 2 = 5? They just want something to grab onto and nobody is really teaching the concept of a symbol in a math class.

I will die on the hill that most of math would benefit from better naming, less short names and longer format. Yes, the crack math guys have no problems with terse symbols. But most people do. Good example is Greek letters for geometry. They are not really taught in school so an easy formula gets 'weird squiggly thing times another squiggly thing....' and that does not help understanding at all
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