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If you ask any reading specialist at school what is the one thing new parents can do to develop a strong reader? They will have the same one answer: Read to them daily. Starting when? Starting as early as you can, even before they can recognize letters.
Yet you don’t math with your young kids. Why is that? I asked a lot of parents, and here are the 5 most common reasons.
It’s too early for Math. You believe that reading stories to your young children will stimulate their brain development, increase their curiosity, raise their comprehension, expose them to the world around them, give them a head start. But you think of math as an academic school subject that can wait. When they start bringing in math homework, for sure you intend to help them, but pre-K, 1st and 2nd grade – that’s too early.
You’re intimidated by math yourself. You want to, you know it’s important, you don’t know how to start. It’s not like picking up “The Hungry Caterpillar” one night, and “???” Another night. You know there’s a method to training a kid in math, and you’re sure you don’t have the know-how.
It’s not snuggly. Warm fuzzy snuggly reading. You remember boring drill-and-kill worksheets in school. After a hard day’s work earning a living for your child, you want to snuggle with our child and read a nice bedtime story.
Your young child will not be interested and forcing it on them may turn them off.
Those reasons make sense. It’s hard. But do you know what’s the #1 reason parents who read to their young children without fail every night don’t math with their kids? It’s not just because it’s hard. Parents do hard things for their kids day in day out. It’s not because we are lazy or selfish. We make sacrifices for our kids all the time. it’s not just because we feel we lack the skill. How many new skills have you learned for the sake of your children – from bathing a newborn, to cooking nutritious meals, to starting a college fund. Here’s the real reason parents don’t math with their kids.
You don’t think it’s your job. It’s the school’s job. The math specialists in school will take care of your child’s math growth.
In this day and age, no parent still thinks math is NOT important. STEM – science, technology, engineering and math is dominating the landscape more and more. A student weak in math closes off 2/3 of the careers out there.
You hope that you put your kid in a good school district, you hope they’ll land with a strong math teacher, you hope your kids pay attention and apply themselves., That’s your math success strategy. A lot of hoping. I don’t blame you. You look around you, a lot of parents adopt the same strategy of hoping.
I want to tell you, there’s a group of parents, not large, a small group, that’s quietly spending a few minutes each day mathing with their kids. They are not trying to raise Einsteins. Are you trying to raise author??? When you read to their kids every day? We just want to give them a number sense that will smooth their way through math in school.
Their you’re students tart school with a strong mental math foundational framework, beat even in a big class of 20 to 30 students and one teacher explaining, they will fill in the gaps themselves, they grasp new concepts easily, homework dis not a tearful event evening after evening.
Here’s the sad part. With the right preparation and approach, you too can math with your young students as regularly, with as much fun and engagement as you read with them. Look out for part 2 of this post.
Cost of math support the longer you wait.
Kids who know math feel smart.
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