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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

#271

Post by yuuu »

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…

In your penultimate sentence, why did you put the period outside the parentheses instead of inside?

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#272

Post by lanna »

confidantlake wrote: post #26
lanna wrote: post #9

I'm fortunate enough that my daughter has an admirable interest (and talent) for Math since very early age. She even won a medal at a renowned nationwide Math competition when she was in Grade 5... competing in the Grade 10 category.

That kid's name? Alberta Einstein.

The only thing better than telling a lie and people believing it, is telling the truth and no one believing it. Shows that her achievements are truly remarkable

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#273

Post by hkpack »

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.…

Every parent is fighting an uphill battle against the technology now.

You either structure the day in such a way that there is literally no time for anything outside of activities, or you just observe the kid gets sucked into the screens with less and less will to do anything else.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#274

Post by cpursley »

danenania wrote: post #241
cpursley wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because eventually you plateau without proper foundations, and that's not fun.

Does it matter if you “plateau” at a hobby? I have lots of hobbies and skills I’ve learned then plateaued at. It doesn’t bother me in the least.

Yes, it’s been very frustrating because there’s things (songs, techniques) that are beyond my reach at the moment due to large gaps.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#275

Post by mschuster91 »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #217
mschuster91 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of crap teachers never taught that It's rarely the fault of the teachers. The problem is, in many MANY MANY schools, teachers are more like social workers that have to compensate for utter horrifics outside of school. You got a ton of children so poor they didn't have breakfast which means their first (and all too often: only ) meal will be the school-provided lunch (Covid showed that - a bunch of schools…

I taught at a nice middle-class school, so most of the problems you mention were not relevant there. And yet, it seemed like half of the kids' families were either recently divorced or in the process of divorce. I couldn't really blame those kids for not paying attention to school. And this seemed like the best case, so probably at most places it gets much worse. Education has a problem with scaling, especially at th…

> Education has a problem with scaling, especially at the elementary level.

Not if you actually provide the money. Europe gets this down decently well - although I'll admit, in rural areas in Germany we got some serious consolidation issues thanks to urban flight.

But at least our teachers are well paid government jobs and the job is decently attractive.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#276

Post by 0xSKOOMA »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #265
jasode wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“Joy” is not found in a day. People enjoy doing things they are good at. There's got to be more to it than your simplified breakdown. My first exposure to computer programming was fun and instantly addictive . There was no struggle to learn coding. Same childhood experience for guitar. Nobody was around to push me. There was no need for "discipline to practice". It was simply practice-was-natural-thing-to-do because…

I find tremendous joy in playing the piano today. That mostly started when I was about 20, ~15 years after I started playing the piano. It had its moments during the first 15 years of my life, but it was more of a competitive activity than an entertaining one. Conservatively, every fun hour had about 50 shitty hours when I was a serious piano student. Now it's 100% fun.

Same for me, I've learned programming, reverse engineering, music production, cooking, etc. I learned all these things not because I'm intrinsically in love with doing them, I just love having done them. This quote fits it perfectly, "I hate writing, but I love having written."

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#277

Post by timcobb »

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…

> A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it

This may be true, but explain to me what are the returns you get on forcing math (or anything) on kids? They won't like it, they won't learn it intimately, the won't internalize it, it'll be unusable knowledge and mostly a waste of time with lots of bad vibes and probably even a little trauma...

I spent a lot of time with math in high school and college but that was because I had a couple teachers who really elucidated why *I* might find math to be interesting (in my case, it was physics and computing). Forcing people to do anything generally leads to nothing worthwhile.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#278

Post by timcobb »

r0fl wrote: post #222
rerdavies wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“Joy” is not found in a day. People enjoy doing things they are good at. It takes a long time to get good at some things and those days suck.

> It takes a long time to get good at some things and those days suck.

If those days suck, chances are you won't get good at it. People like things that are engaging and develop their identity and understanding of themselves and the world, even more so than things they are good at.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#279

Post by timcobb »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #266
Loic wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But kids are going to have setbacks, they will reach a plateau in their craft (music, painting, art, sport, ...). You need also as a good parent to help your kids go through, to not give up, because even joy to do is not always enough. This is the hard part. From my modest experience of being a ski/snowboard instructor and trying to raise 3 boys (now 12, 16 and 18).

why does a child need to break through a plateau at anything? Of my five sample size of five, expose them and support them, some things can’t even hook you until your brain grows enough .. The musical one is in a band now the nerdy one likes inhaling solder. I did force both boys to Hockey but just to have passable skills so that he can enjoy that all that comes with the sport as an adult

> why does a child need to break through a plateau at anything?

Exactly! Why? The few things I do better than most people are things I've stayed engaged with during those plateaus because I wanted to, not because someone else told me I should or that it was important. The people who respond positively to being forced into things generally end up not knowing who _they_ are, and end up generally unwell people.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#280

Post by [deleted] »

yuuu wrote: post #271
rerdavies wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In your penultimate sentence, why did you put the period outside the parentheses instead of inside?

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