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Paging Dr. Freud...If I'm honest, I always had a little bit of a crush on Calvin's mom ...
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NEVERENDING ♾️ The NEVERENDING Raising Children Thread
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bureaucrat#3
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We've been warning our youngest that some things have to change. She's 10 and while we've always required her to do chores she's become a little too messy. This combined with her first 9 weeks with a C led us realize she's not getting math. I'm not worried about the grade, but I am worried she's not understanding some foundational concepts and its only going to get worse.
Your daughter is at the age where girls decide whether they like math or they don't. My daughter came through not liking math. 😒 This was before STEM/STEAM.
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I like to joke that math is the reason I was a history major. In reality, my mother and my teachers missed the signals I gave at the same age as your daughter and all the math that came after was a major frustration for me as a result. Good on you for catching it, @bureaucrat#3 and I hope you can help get her on track. (The world doesn't need any more history majors ... lol)
WSU MUP Student
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Our neighbor's daughter was about that age a couple years ago and had done good enough in math but then took a sudden downturn. On a whim her dad signed her up for some tutoring sessions at a place around the corner from us called "Mathnaseium" (I think that's a Michigan chain but it's probably pretty similar to Kumon) and according to him, that made a world of difference. I think she just went once or twice a week for a couple of months and into the summer but it seemed to have made something click because she's now in honors math at the middle school.
I have no evidence to back this up but I think one-on-one tutoring for math in particular really works for a lot of kids because it allows whoever is giving them the lesson to tailor it specifically to them instead of in a larger classroom setting where the teacher has to teach to 15+ kids and does not always have the opportunity to explain things so that each kids can understand them. Sometimes that different perspective/teaching style makes a huge difference in how well a kid can grasp a concept.
SlaveToTheGrind
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Youngest (19) and his friends were busted NYE by the Sherriff and FD while having a bonfire and playing their guitars (with generator) and drums (his) on someone's property. They thought it was public land since it was not posted. Probably an honest mistake. Charges were dropped yesterday and they are on-site this morning doing some clean up/service work. Guy said they can come back if they ask, and he has power so no need for the generator.
Oldest (24) was busted by the Sheriff when he was 18 drinking unapproved beverages in the parking lot of a remote city park. Proof of frontal lob not being fully developed.
Middle son (23) has yet to have an incident.
Oldest (24) was busted by the Sheriff when he was 18 drinking unapproved beverages in the parking lot of a remote city park. Proof of frontal lob not being fully developed.
Middle son (23) has yet to have an incident.
Planit
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Oldest (24) was busted by the Sheriff when he was 18 drinking unapproved beverages in the parking lot of a remote city park. Proof of frontal lob not being fully developed.
Middle son (23) has yet to have an incident.
If they're anything like my 2 older brothers (14 months apart) the younger watches the older to figure things out.
It's funny because math was not my strongest subject in school . . . still isn't. But there is a lot of math in planning, and I am great at it. I'm also great with math in regards to taxes, etc. I think the difference is that I am good at the practical, useful, everyday math--not the random "solve this formula for no reason" type worksheet-math.
My SAT scores back in the day:
99th percentile verbal
70th percentile math (Someone in the 70th percentile clearly does not "suck at math," despite grades to the contrary.)
SlaveToTheGrind
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Similar story here. I did not do well in Algebra. Somewhat enjoyed Geometry but the teacher was the likely reason - Mr. Bushyager was awesome. Drove around a Camaro Berlinetta (this is 1986-1987 sophomore year) with the license plate Dr. Bush. Short non-threatening guy, probably 5'4" on a good day and Viet Nam vet.
My math ACT score was the highest of all the sections with English the lowest. Cannot tell you to this day was is a gerund is or a past participle. Could not stand diagraming sentences.
Past participle: Have you looked at the new issue of the paper yet?
Gerund: I am reading the new issue of the paper.
You are welcome.
SlaveToTheGrind
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WSU MUP Student
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This.
I was okay in math but it was never my strongest subject. In college and grad school I had to take a bunch of classes on advanced stats and linear equations for an econometrics concentration and I still struggled. Once I got out into "the real world" and started doing some economic and fiscal impact modeling and forecasting and regression analysis where I was using real scenarios and I could connect them to actual geographies something clicked and it suddenly became a lot more interesting and a lot easier.
FWIW, in school I always did a lot better on story problems or math work that at least tried to tie the work into some sort of empirical examples so maybe there's some sort of correlation there.
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My youngest spent a year at our local Mathnasium after a miserable performance on the annual standardized testing. This was due to a 1-2 punch of her 2nd grade teacher being overwhelmed and COVID remote instruction for 2nd and 3rd grade. She spent 1.5 years at Mathnasium and was full caught up to grade level by the end of her 5th grade year and has met all testing benchmarks since. She placed into honors math for 7th grade and again for 8th grade:
Our local Mathnasium is owned by two retired veteran teachers and they largely employee current and retired teachers. Bella was mad that she had to repeat some things but the way their program is designed focuses on mastery to build foundational skills.
bureaucrat#3
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I think some tutoring will be next. School starts back today here and report cards come out sometime this week.
Salmissra
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I could have used a Mathnasium in middle school. But I switched states, had a sub-par Algebra teacher and neither parent able to help with homework. Did not get help until 2 years later, when I was in danger of flunking out of math and my parents freaked.
My tutor was a math prof at the community college. She was also left handed (same as my math-inclined sister). Learned/relearned/finally grasped high school math by her tailoring my lessons to my last two math class books and understanding how I learn. I learned more from her in 6 months than the previous 1.5 years of high school.
By the end of the year, I was passing math. Of course, the dick of a teacher accused me of cheating. For background, it was his first year of teaching, and he was trying to write a math class book for geometry. When half of the class is struggling, and half of those kids are flunking, you don't provide study/help sessions, and you call your students stupid in front of the class, you are going to face repercussions.
My senior year I was in my third school system. I was struggling again, but recognized the signs early and asked for help. The pre-calculus teacher had a side gig of tutoring students that weren't in her class (no bias). Surprise - another left handed female. I guess I learn math best when taught by a left handed female.
My tutor was a math prof at the community college. She was also left handed (same as my math-inclined sister). Learned/relearned/finally grasped high school math by her tailoring my lessons to my last two math class books and understanding how I learn. I learned more from her in 6 months than the previous 1.5 years of high school.
By the end of the year, I was passing math. Of course, the dick of a teacher accused me of cheating. For background, it was his first year of teaching, and he was trying to write a math class book for geometry. When half of the class is struggling, and half of those kids are flunking, you don't provide study/help sessions, and you call your students stupid in front of the class, you are going to face repercussions.
My senior year I was in my third school system. I was struggling again, but recognized the signs early and asked for help. The pre-calculus teacher had a side gig of tutoring students that weren't in her class (no bias). Surprise - another left handed female. I guess I learn math best when taught by a left handed female.
JNA
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As posted on FB
is saving money for a Lego set he’s really wanted…he’s been coming up with all kinds of different ways to earn the money…he just came to me and said “I’ve created a chore list for myself and wrote down what each chore is worth. I’ve priced them so I earn $10 a day so I can have the Lego in two weeks. So I’ll be doing these daily chores for two weeks”
I told him that’s not how it works…and people with jobs would love to tell their boss hey this is what I’m gonna do and for how long and this is what you’re gonna pay me
I told him he already has a chore list he could be doing to earn $2 a week and he consistently does not do them…he said that’s too much work for too little money…I said welcome to the rest of your life
is saving money for a Lego set he’s really wanted…he’s been coming up with all kinds of different ways to earn the money…he just came to me and said “I’ve created a chore list for myself and wrote down what each chore is worth. I’ve priced them so I earn $10 a day so I can have the Lego in two weeks. So I’ll be doing these daily chores for two weeks”
I told him that’s not how it works…and people with jobs would love to tell their boss hey this is what I’m gonna do and for how long and this is what you’re gonna pay me
I told him he already has a chore list he could be doing to earn $2 a week and he consistently does not do them…he said that’s too much work for too little money…I said welcome to the rest of your life
Heh, when I was a kid my parents would punish me by making me pull weeds, the one chore I hated (but I don't mind it now as an adult). I outsourced the work to a kid down the street. Instead of happy parents and sad me, we had three happy parties: the parents, because the weeds got done; me, because I did not have to pull the weeds; and the kid down the street, who now had an extra $20 in his pocket.
I don't know if they ever caught on to the outsourcing, but, no matter--they got pulled. No different from businesses in the real world outsourcing data entry, HR, and the like as many do.
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When my oldest was a teenager, I had a chore chart that said 100 Ways to $100. I listed every extra cleaning chore around the house and assigned it a dollar amount. If if was easy it was worth a couple of books, more detailed items were $5 and $10. I put a limit on how many times the easy stuff could be done
She made her $100 over the course of summer break, so it was successful. She laughs about it now but said her little sister needs such a chart, not to be outdone little sister says she doesn't even need money like that because if she just goes to the Bronx to see her great uncle he slips her a $100 bill. She's a miserly little thing and brought me her piggy bank to show me her 3 $100 bills!
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bureaucrat#3
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We try this, but my youngest doesn't care about money. She'll do a few every so often but will tell us at times it isn't worth it. We need to start charging her rent.When my oldest was a teenager, I had a chore chart that said 100 Ways to $100. I listed every extra cleaning chore around the house and assigned it a dollar amount. If if was easy it was worth a couple of books, more detailed items were $5 and $10. I put a limit on how many times the easy stuff could be done
She made her $100 over the course of summer break, so it was successful. She laughs about it now but said her little sister needs such a chart, not to be outdone little sister says she doesn't even need money like that because if she just goes to the Bronx to see her great uncle he slips her a $100 bill. She's a miserly little thing and brought me her piggy bank to show me her 3 $100 bills!
I've also made deals with both kids at times that I would pay them to read during the summer. I'd give them a list of books or they could pick the book. I'd determine how much each was worth (generally $5-10) based on the size at their age. I think I've paid a total of $20 out in 10 years.
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The current gens don't know the Gen-X and Elder Millennial desire and joy of reading books to get personal pan pizza coupons at the pre-1995 Pizza Hut restaurants.
@ursus @Wannaplan? @btrage @michaelskis @Suburb Repairman @Hink @MD Planner @kjel @Faust_Motel @WSU @SlaveToTheGrind MUP Student @Salmissra @dandy_warhol @jumbach
I was not allowed to play the reading contest games because I did not need an incentive to read. The prize for me should have been for NOT reading books.The current gens don't know the Gen-X and Elder Millennial desire and joy of reading books to get personal pan pizza coupons at the pre-1995 Pizza Hut restaurants.
@ursus @Wannaplan? @btrage @michaelskis @Suburb Repairman @Hink @MD Planner @kjel @Faust_Motel @WSU @SlaveToTheGrind MUP Student @Salmissra @dandy_warhol @jumbach
Plus, the concern would then be that kids are reading to get a prize, and not reading for its own sake.
WSU MUP Student
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The current gens don't know the Gen-X and Elder Millennial desire and joy of reading books to get personal pan pizza coupons at the pre-1995 Pizza Hut restaurants.
@ursus @Wannaplan? @btrage @michaelskis @Suburb Repairman @Hink @MD Planner @kjel @Faust_Motel @WSU @SlaveToTheGrind MUP Student @Salmissra @dandy_warhol @jumbach
I never did "Book It" and, other than Choose Your Own Adventure Books, I also never really enjoyed reading books as a kid. As far as books go, I basically only read the bare minimum.
I did however read MAD Magazine and had a ton of the little paperbacks that were compilations of things like The Lighter Side Of..., Spy v Spy, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, etc. We also got three newspapers delivered to our house each day (Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, and the Port Huron Times Herald) and I'd read basically the entirety of each paper each day along with the Newsweek and Economist magazines my dad subscribed to. When I was around 8th or 9th grade I got my own subscriptions to Spin and Rolling Stone and while I didn't read all of the articles I did read every. single. album review. whether or not it was an artist or genre I was even interested in. I kept my Rolling Stone subscription until just about a decade ago.
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This is (was?) actually a classic method to get kids to read regularly. Get them comic books, periodicals and magazines in subject matters they enjoy.
As preteen/teen I had two subscriptions to my favorite coin collecting related magazines and then in my late teens got a subscription to Automobile magazine.
Because reading is reading. One of my favorite quotes from an Automobile editor was that engaging 'journalism' of their type required the author to 'write like you speak and speak like you write'.
DVD
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I've got one daughter who reads everything. She fell in love with Oscar Wilde when she was maybe 12. The other daughter hates reading. We couldn't get her into anything. We would go to the library weekly to get books. She kind of flipped through the pictures. Now that she's older we caught her reading Poe and other horror stories. Good for her.
Oddly, the one thing my parents never banned from for punishment was reading. No computer games? Fine: I don't care. No TV? Well, I don't watch much anyway, so fine. Taking away reading really would have hurt, but that's the one thing I was never banned from. A week without reading would have been very painful.
Mom and Dad years later told me they never even thought of this, and if they had, it would be a) too cruel, b) unenforceable, and c) would have made school and homework impossible and affected academics.
My oldest brother, though, wouldn't let me read the newspaper in the morning because I "turned the pages too loud." Like I can control that.
If I turned the pages too loud, he'd take the paper away. Mom and Dad put a stop to that.
Mom and Dad years later told me they never even thought of this, and if they had, it would be a) too cruel, b) unenforceable, and c) would have made school and homework impossible and affected academics.
My oldest brother, though, wouldn't let me read the newspaper in the morning because I "turned the pages too loud." Like I can control that.
If I turned the pages too loud, he'd take the paper away. Mom and Dad put a stop to that.
The parents banned the movie "Big." I was never allowed to see it (a ban later revoked, along with all other "rules and banishments given by us or on our behalf," in 2008). But they had no problem with my watching "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Grease," or any other number of teenage movies/frightening situations.
To this day, I don't know what their issue was with "Big." It's very wholesome.
We had "Strange Brew" on an infinite loop when I was a kid, playing 5-6 times over the course of any given weekend for at least a year. Right after Saturday Morning Cartoons. To this day we still watch it regularly, eh.
To this day, I don't know what their issue was with "Big." It's very wholesome.
We had "Strange Brew" on an infinite loop when I was a kid, playing 5-6 times over the course of any given weekend for at least a year. Right after Saturday Morning Cartoons. To this day we still watch it regularly, eh.
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Basically 😆 My oldest said to me one day that the youngest was going to take me to my graves. The youngest promptly interjects “don’t laugh sister because you’re going too!”She's all like...
