Start With Joy You open your child's homework folder to find another math sheet that's due the next day. You take one look and roll your eyes. Here we go again. You muster as much patience and courage as you can because you know what's coming. The yelling. The tears. It's become a nightly ritual that no one wants and no one can seem to escape. Math anxiety is real and can be developed once grade level expectations far exceed a child's ability to achieve success. If you've witnessed your child cry, yell, or shut down while doing math homework, you know math anxiety all too well. Anxiety and frustration remarkably limit something called working memory. Working memory is a type of short-term memory that is responsible for skills such as reasoning, judging, and decision making. The moment your child becomes overwhelmed, frustrated, or anxious their ability to access their working memory is restricted. Without working memory your child cannot work . It's cr
It's a time of new backpacks and sneakers. Children wonder who their classmates will be and who their teachers are. If you're like me, your major hope is that this year will be different. You imagine a year that sparks joy and a love of learning, and maybe even a report card with passing grades. You just want your child to feel accomplished and proud. We know that helping at home is essential. And as parents of children who struggle in math it's something that we know very well. We ask teachers for resources all the time. We do everything we know how to do. But most days it's like we are just treading water. Other days we want to give up altogether. What is the best way to help a child who is 1 or 2 years behind their peers in math.? The class is multiplying while your child still forgets the numbers 12 and 13 when counting by ones. How do we prevent the gap from growing? There are some things that we know now about the brain and how children learn that we didn'