The Exhausted Dad: First in fun and last in math
Out of six people in my house, I rank last in math.
Weeks away from completing my second stint of post-secondary education, I still can’t be relied upon to calculate a restaurant tip.
My last intensive exposure to mathematics occurred in my senior year of high school … in 2002. For my undergraduate degree, the college counted my website design course toward my required math credits. Years later, and a career of words not numbers, my current program also doesn’t involve mathematics.
If you don’t use it, you lose it. I mostly lost it until my kids reached elementary school. I’m not proud of it, but with my oldest kid, I think I taught her some definitely-not-correct ways to reduce fractions, and I definitely blanked on some of those core, flash-carded multiplication and division tables.
My oldest is now approaching high school, and I just admit to myself that I don’t remember much of the eighth grade math curriculum. Some of it rings a bell. Most of it flies over my head. Luckily, she’s an excellent student, and even if she has questions, my wife can draw expertise from her much-more-useful degrees.
For the three kids still in elementary school, I feel confident in saying I still understand their assignments. I can do the math, if not in the most efficient, modern ways. I love the “new math” strategies my generation didn’t use, and I love all the different ways teachers nowadays make math fun, engaging and approachable.
While I still understand the math, I’m not much help if my 11- and 9-year-olds run into trouble. They do the math faster, and when they “show their work,” it doesn’t resemble the work I used to do on those worksheets back in my school days in the 1990s.
With all that in mind, I can admit my wife, my 13-year-old daughter, my 11-year-old son and my 9-year-old daughter are all superior to me at mathematics. Fifth place. The only one I could reasonably best was my baby — my 7-year-old second grader.
Did you notice the past tense usage in the last sentence?
Last week, at my 7-year-old’s parent-teacher conference, his teacher praised my son’s progress on core math subjects. She showed me his “speed” worksheets where he plowed through a page full of basic math problems in under 60 seconds.
I studied the page for a moment. I looked at a couple of the problems. Focused, I believe I spent at least seven to 10 seconds on each of the two problems. I burned as much as 20 seconds to come up with two answers (not even having to write out the answers). There were at least 30 problems on the page.
If the teacher timed me with this worksheet … well, do the math! Ten seconds per problem, 60 seconds on the clock … What? Am I getting like eight questions? I can’t do the math to know how much of the math I could do!
OK, so I think I still know more about multiplication and division than my 7-year-old. I’ve heard him count money too, and I’m not ready to hand over my tax returns to him this year.
But simple addition and subtraction? Timed? I think he beats me. I think I lose badly.
So, if my 7-year-old beats me at the easiest of math, then I deserve my place at the bottom of the standings. I’m the Last Place Mathematician of my family.
On the bright side, my poor math skills mean I don’t understand and therefore don’t worry about all my student loan debt.
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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student, and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
The Exhausted Dad