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January 22, 2009

It's Math Again!

This has been a sore spot for me when it comes to homeschooling and my DD. This moves with the tides and it's frustrating for her and for me. I can't ignore the subject, nor do I feel that I'm helping her any. Sure it would be nice to get the high end fancy math programs, but we can't afford it, and at the same time Math has been taught with the simple stuff for ages. So I know even though we are struggling with this I can reach her.

Today we met a whole new level of frustration with my DD shouting at me, in a very tearful, sad, angry, at the top of her lungs type voice. "You don't know what I know or don't know! You say you know, but you really don't know. You are just pretending to know what I know, because you just want to say that you know". Those words cut through me like a knife. I know she knows this stuff, but then I began to wonder, Do I really know?? Or is my DD right, I'm I just "saying" that I know.

Wow! I walked into this thinking I can help my children, I had dreams of them soaring high above their peers, but now I'm starting to wonder....my eyes are heavy with tears, the sadness is overwhelming. The weight I feel is pressing down on me....I don't want to do my children a disservice, I don't want them to "fail".

All is not lost, I did find a FREE online placement test for math, it's printing now, I'm going to get to the bottom of this and if needed I'm just going to start over at the beginning!!!

2 comments:

  1. Hi,
    I am so sorry you are fighting with Math. I fought with it too. The firs thing I discovered with my son was he did not "get" division. Not at all. I thought he did but he didn't which means fractions were not even an option. So we just didn't do fractions. Not until seventh grade did we do fractions. We just worked on fundementals and a lot of division. In 7th grade he loved fractions , adding, subtracting multiplying and dividing them.He flew through algebra.It was kindof like me and my husband always upgrading our computer. ( he ran a BBS even bfore the internet) It didn't matter what I knew, the next computer would make me freeze up til I became comfortable with it.

    For Matthew, the best curriculum we found was Saxon. It didn't just give him a couple picture examples it gave him pages of explanations as to why you do what you do to get the answer and I loved that. So did he.

    I was wondering, how old is your daughter?

    Oh and on the days the tears came or he stared at the page for 3 hours we would change the subject and go back to it later. Sometimes he just needed to look at somethng else.

    Because of Jesus, Bobbie

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  2. Oh SAHM, don't cry...or, go ahead and cry, but I wish I could hug you while you do!!!

    Do you have any friends who are certified math teachers? Do you know any older students who excel in this area? I ask, because when my son was failing Algebra...a friend offered to "tutor" him for a while...he'd go to their house, and she'd look over what we'd been doing at home, etc...
    this really helped.

    But also, I found out that the program we were using with him wasn't a good fit...we switched, and he went on to have a 99% average all through high school years.

    I also learned that sometimes when I was wondering why my son or dd (who cries over math too) couldn't understand an answer (after all, I understood my own explanation!)...the problem wasn't truly that they didn't understand the answer...the problem was that they didn't understand my QUESTION.

    Anyway, perhaps having your dd sit with another person (your dh, a friend, or a peer) would ease the stress a while...just a temporary change to see how she does with someone else's input...I know it helped us.

    I'm sorry you're struggling. Remember Our Lord's words to Faustina, "Do not fear, I will make up where you are lacking"...
    TRUST SAHM...you can do this!!!

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