Have you ever had math anxiety? If so, you are not alone. Many people report math anxiety, and expressing it can affect their children.
Parents’ beliefs are contagious
Studies have shown that parents who express anxiety while helping their children with math reduce their children’s performance in first and second grade. When mothers informed their daughters that they were not good at math, the daughters’ work on the subject decreased.
It’s not just parents
Teachers ‘math anxiety has been shown to negatively affect girls’ math performance. In one study, the more anxious elementary school teachers were, the more likely girls in their classes were to become infected with the stereotype that girls were not good at math, and girls’ math performance was affected by measurable way. The boys in his classes were not affected.
Why is math anxiety a problem?
Math anxiety affects math performance. Math anxiety can have a disturbing effect on working memory, which is necessary to attack math problems. When a child is preoccupied with fearful and apprehensive thoughts, their brain is not fully focused on the challenging task at hand, putting them at a distinct disadvantage that affects their learning. This is particularly common when children are given timed tests.
High-level math will be much more important to the next generation. American students, at a minimum, generally have to take 10 years of math classes to earn a high school diploma – the least amount of education needed to get even an unskilled job in today’s job market. Lack of confidence in math leads students to avoid certain careers because a high level of math needs to be completed to enter. This doesn’t just apply to the obvious scientific occupations, many business college programs actually require two semesters of calculus.
As time goes on, STEM careers will become a much more important part of the economy. The world of work will be radically transformed in short periods of time. For example, driverless cars could make taxi drivers and truckers obsolete in ten years. Uber and similar companies are already making full-time taxi driving a thing of the past. Today’s kids will need a solid foundation in STEM subjects to prepare them for a job market that we can’t even imagine today.
So how can parents help their children learn math more easily?
If you’ve had trouble with math or have had anxiety, refrain from expressing it to your child. Talk positively about how math (even simple calculations) helps you in your daily life today. Praise all efforts and perseverance with your homework, even when they don’t come up with the correct answer at times. If you are a mother of a daughter, let her know that you are confident in her ability to do math.
Parents can foster positive attitudes about math by emphasizing that math is just a subject that is learned through practice and perseverance. There is no such thing as a “math person” and anyone can learn math. Making mistakes is just a healthy part of that process, not proof of a lack of ability or intelligence. In fact, making mistakes in math on MRIs has been shown to make a person’s brain grow. There is no race or gender that has a special advantage when doing math, those stereotypes are totally wrong.
Parents can help their children learn math by encouraging them to play math enrichment games and do puzzles to develop number sense. Visuals such as board games are especially helpful in developing a child’s understanding of math concepts. Spatial skills, understanding and remembering spatial relationships between objects, are closely related to math skills. Studies have shown that children immediately benefited from playing a number line game similar to Snakes and Ladders and a visual model of the positive and negative number line helped children intuitively understand how negative numbers work. The more children play and have fun with numbers, the less math anxiety and the more confident they will be in exploring math.
