Best Advice: Don't Believe In Yourself

Yesterday I told my daughter something that I wish someone had told me when I was her age. It was in regards to math, which is uncharacteristically hard for my little genius girl. Uncharacteristically if you're not me. To me, it's right in character for her, because she IS me, and math was my nemesis. For Ava and I, words and grammar and history and logic thinking are like blinking. We barely have to think about it, our instincts take over. And we trust our instincts, because they're correct 99.9% of the time.

Numbers, on the other hand.....and the hard part is that we can't even believe that our instincts wouldn't be right. For us, if we understand the concept, that should be enough. For instance, Ava understands that the problem 57 x 23 means that you need to make 23 57s and add them all together. But then to actually have to DO that is frustrating. Isn't understanding what it means enough? That's how our brains work, we conceptualize. Actually doing it is the grunt work, and it's in the grunt work that dumb mistakes are made.

Ava's in 4th grade math this year, so the years of math that are easy for anyone with an IQ over 70 are over. She's realizing that math isn't going to be breezy for her. I had to give her this piece of advice yesterday:

"For you, when it comes to math, don't trust your first instinct. Don't believe your first answer. Before you move on to the next part of the problem, go back and double check, and then triple check what you already have. In math, you have to be RIGHT. There's no such thing as "close" in math. So if it takes you longer to get to RIGHT, that's ok. It's better to be right than to be fast.

In language skills, your first instinct is always correct. Because that's who you are. Math is different. You're just like me, and we have to change our brains when we do math. We can't trust ourselves when numbers are around, so we have to slow down and triple check."

I think she got it. While it's not going to make math easier for her, I think it will lessen the amount of mistakes, which will lessen her frustrations.

The best advice I can give my daughter, in math anyway, is Don't Believe In Yourself. Not many kids need to hear that, the few that do all live in my house.