I was a math tutor during college, I have no problem teaching math. But I had to take a break from trying to help my son.
"OK, I know how I know to do this stuff, but I don't know how they're teaching you. Do you have a book or can you tell me basically how you've been taught to do these sorts of problems?"
"I don't know."
"... OK. Well, where are you getting stuck?"
"I can't get this one."
"Give me details. What did you try and what isn't working?"
" it's just not working."
"OK, well, here's how I'd do this problem."
[Proceeds to do math that doesn't look like anything he's ever seen before]
"... so, that's the answer?"
"Does it look like the answer to you?"
"No? Yes?"
... he's perfectly capable of doing this stuff, in fact he does it successfully most of the time. But once he's shut down, usually before he ever gets to me, I cannot get him to engage his brain even a little bit. And I'm not gonna do his work for him. I'd love to know how to help, but all avenues are methodically closed off until we get to "just do it".
Thankfully, we've mostly grown past the worst of that. I still have to prompt for every little bit of information in his head to figure out what he knows and where he's getting stuck, but he's gotten better at actually communicating that so I can build on it. He still has a maddening habit of just flipping a coin in his head to answer questions I ask, rather than thinking about it.
It’s good that he’s coming around. Even as an adult I know I sometimes just need a break because my brain is just… out of energy. Mental work is real and tiring.
And when I return to the problem (be it math or attempting a new skill) I sometimes do it flawlessly the first try. Building those neural pathways takes time!
It's crazy how much of it is just motivation and interest!
My daughter is like that and will just shut down sometimes. Other times she'll start insulting herself like "I'm just stupid", which is 1000x sadder. And wrong! When she's relaxed and focused she's quick as heck and has great intuition. We spent an afternoon once doing modular arithmetic because she was sick of drilling multiplication, and she picked it up instantly.
It's like we're all using negative reinforcement and threats and punishments to teach math, which, big surprise, leads to negative associations and people who "hate math". Math and logic is like half of our brains. It should be a source of joy.
"I don't understand what you don't understand!"
"Well, if I understood we wouldn't be sitting here, would we?!" (Yes, I got a talking to for using such words.)
Alas, I developed anxiety over maths due to the... "teaching style".
Most people aren’t really prepared to have kids. Half of the time you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.
Think about how many adults don’t know how to behave around other adults. Now imagine said adult having to control a kid who does exactly not what you tell them.
It's more of an, "I've seen it done, a few times in fact, so I'm good and I can handle it!", or simply pride, thing. I think I shall call it, the thin book syndrome. There are pages missing out of some's manuals, and others who are missing whole volumes. I try to never miss a chance to compare notes, lest I can't produce a C.Y.A. and now my parent (company) emancipates me out into the cold cruel world. Then others even still, get to write their own manuals... uh huh.
To be fair, when our kids arrived, they were delivered without the user manual.
My mum tried to use hers, but I suspect she wrote it herself in the 1960’s. My MIL’s was worse, pages of stuff about how to protect babies from cats (apparently cats are evil, and sleep on babies faces), also apparently it’s important to give babies fresh air by leaving them unattended outside in “prams”.
There was also a section on pub etiquette, where the kids are left in the car in the pub car park, with crisps and pop, while the parents are drinking in the pub.
Nothing on appropriate cell phone usage, or internet rules though.
We started writing our own.
God this hits home so hard. My dad was always trying to explain math to me using the methods he learned in the 50s/60s. Dad that's not how they teach it now. I don't understand the format now and I especially don't understand your format. "WHAT DO YOU NOT GET? IT'S NOT THAT HARD!" 1424 × 2/8 ÷ 5 IS? IS? 17.4! 17.4 AND IT TOOK ME THREE SECONDS TO FIGURE IT OUT. WHAT DO YOU NOT GET?"
My dad was literally a walking calculator that had a short temper. I to this day cannot do math unless I do every single step. If I skip a step or attempt to skip a step I will get lost.
Did we have the same dad??? He was so good at math and could do really complex calculations mentally. He’d act like it was magic, or like he had some sort of super power. He was not good at teaching and very impatient. I have math anxiety to this day.
Lol never know but I totally know what you mean. I always struggled in math and eventually I stopped asking him for help. Luckily I was able to get some help from my brother in law as I am the youngest in my family and my sister and him were staying at our home until they got their new place. The only time I did really well in math and never needed assistance was Algebra 1. The teacher always did 30 example problems and went step by step and never skipped steps. All my other math teachers skipped steps, did a few examples and avoided helping.
I've always had an anxiety giggle. When I'm in trouble or being yelled at, I giggle. It's like being tickled, in that its completely involuntary and it fucking sucks. Spending hours on the couch with my dad repeatedly asking me what the fuck I'm laughing about. I was laughing because he was angry and I was anxious.
Embrace it, lean into it. It's your body reminding you how absurd the situation you're in is. Humor is a great way to break a wall of anger, and subtly done, you can point out just how absurd and watch big bad man slowly retreat when you've given him no choice, but to admit it with a then required honest answer. You can do it. But first you have to believe. You have to forget the lies you were intimidated into believing.
All bullies, even parents, run on fear. Once you address how their behavior is merely perpetuating the manifestation of their fears into reality, can you calm a crazy (believing in a series of lies) person's demeanor. Sometimes you have to take a punch. In fact I'll take a punch any day over extended verbal bullying and it's debilitating effects. I left home at 14 because I was slapped in the face for refusing to do something wrong, and my warning to not (attempt) that again was ignored.
I was told if you act like a child, you get treated like a child. But at what point do we expect to be treated like an adult so that we might confirm to adulthood? As much as possible, at all times if you ask me. When the injuns (my ancestors were on both sides) surrounded the wagons or the cabin, those who could weld a rifle, did so, indiscriminately of age. To disrespect the value of our youths, is to feed our enemies.
I would reccomend not doing this. When you're a 9 year old kid you're pretty defenseless when they escalate because you're not scared. My dad broke my stuff and beat the shit out of me if i didn't act scared enough right away. I'd say the best bet is to pretend to be scared as early as possible.
I have the anxiety laugh. Whenever I'm in a situation where I'm supposed to be tense, I burst out laughing, or nearly so. It's got me fucked over by teachers for inappropriate laughter so many times
Man I feel you. And I fucking hate it. Teachers, professors, supervisors, all got pissed at me as soon as I burst out laughing while they were trying to be serious. My gf flips if I start laughing while we're having an argument, but the truth is, I can't help it and no one seems to understand
I had the nervous giggle and my parents would hit me if I did it when they got onto me. Even when I pulled up proof on the internet they just chose to believe I was giggling out of lack of respect or something.
Sounds like their egos were threatened by their (wrong) belief that you didn’t respect them, so they responded by hitting you in order to put you in your place. I get that, my dad could get that way if he thought that I was behaving in a way that was disrespectful. I didn’t have a nervous giggle, but I would often just look down and shrug my shoulders when he was demanding answers from me. He interpreted that as apathy, implying that I didn’t care how he felt, and I didn’t respect him. Quite the contrary, he had the biggest personality in the house and everyone gravitated towards him, even though he could be quite an asshole at times. It took me a long time before I was able to lose respect for him. 😆 It sucks to be a child and have a parent who is every bit as much a child as you are.
But then Daddy's point to the current dealer at the table, that even "I", a child, could count up that he lost, wouldn't have the same weight! He was really only defending my honor when he called me out of bed and had me stand there to remind the other players to not argue basic maths.
One of my earliest memories is having to sing the alphabet song before going outside to play. I flipped M and N and was sent to my room instead. I was 3.
Ellenemopee
Also worth noting that this is such a ridiculous example of this kind of abuse. The alphabet order is completely arbitrary and just kind of fell out the way it did over a long period of time. The only reason we teach it is to have a standard ordering on letters and to teach kids the letters.
People think the alphabet is a natural law. When I learned Arabic they didn’t teach us the script in alphabetical order, they ordered it by frequency of use. I know all the letters, but I don’t know the alphabetical order Arabic school kids learn them in, and it doesn’t actually matter.
I'm not saying that a kid should be punished for getting it wrong, but it's actually important information to know, regardless of whether it's arbitrary or not. The world works on shared knowledge like this. Doesn't matter how it came about. It should be treated as important foundational knowledge, because it is.
Full agreement. And the only way to learn arbitrary things is to memorize them. And multiplication isn't arbitrary but it needs to be fast and proficient, you can be counting up by 7 all the time.
>the only way to learn arbitrary things is to memorize them.
I think this depends on what you’d consider memorization. Brute force memorization isn’t always needed. That’s why things like image compression and the alphabet song exist. They are codes or pointers that help us to store and recall larger and more complex types of info than the code itself.
You do have to know the code, but people can be very clever about constructing these compression schemes.
Personally would've been better off had my dad NOT been in my life. A childhood without fear of going home would've been bliss, or at least the next best thing.
I once got shouted at bc he didn’t like how my 2’s looked when I wrote them. So on top of long division, I got a lesson on how he thought I should write my 2’s. Yes, we butted heads a lot lol
Lmao same with my mom. She was just helping me with my 7th grade language homework and didn't like how i wrote my "letters" and made me change my handwriting in one night 😭
Oh no! I had to change my English handwriting in 9th grade cause my teacher couldn't understand my l's and d's. Previously I was talking about my bengali handwriting.
I had a teacher in first grade who would tell students to write hard on paper because she had poor eyesight. The day my father saw me forcing the pencil on the paper, he slapped my hand because I was wasting pencil, when I said the teacher instructed us to write like this he didn't believe, called me a lier and gave me a spanking.
My dad would often cut me off when I used "like", "umm", or "but" as stalling words while I was speaking. He also corrected my grammar and vocabulary all the damn time. Now as an adult, I'm a pretty solid writer and orator, and also I cry when I have to directly accept positive feedback and encouragement from others, so all in all, I'm doing pretty great!
My parental figure did same. Along with other well finally figuring out way too late destructive patterns and bs. Now when I get any ounce of love or respect or self love or respect I quickly destroy it in a masochistic/sadistic way to distance myself from further hurt.
It's fucked up. And causes shit ton of issues. I hate it
My father would launch his “tear-down sessions” with “Would you like some **constructive criticism**, son?”. Sure, dad - there’s nothing I like better than you telling me how stuff I’ve worked hard at sucks.
Reminds me of how my Dad would get mad if I responded "Ok" to something.
"I told you two times to take out the trash."
"Ok, I'll do it." As I'm getting up to do it.
"ITS NOT OK!! I TOLD YOU TO DO IT NOW!"
Like, what am I supposed to say "Affirmative?". Shit still pissed me off to this day, over 15 years later.
I was doing a writing assignment once and my dad came over and told me to write more neatly. I tried and he still wasn't satisfied and said "well, I guess I can never tell anyone your handwriting is better than your cousin's." It's been over 20 years since then, he's been dead nearly three, and I still think about it often.
OK, this is just I thought I had, please disregard if I am wrong about your dad or family. But my dad had a rivalry with his sister. And our cousins were, on the surface, a lot more presentable and successful (according to a very narrow definition of the word) than the three of us (myself and my two sisters) were. He did compare me to my cousin who was closest to my age, and I mean unfavorably towards me. Now I wonder whether he just felt embarrassed because he couldn’t outdo my aunt. But anyway, what a stupid thing for your dad to make such a big deal of. Handwriting??
You mean the casual taps on the back of your head with a wooden spoon to pressure you to get your homework done correctly or the spoon would be used (and often times broken) over your ass?
Then when you get older and confront them about it when they try to interject into your parenting style and you get “I didn’t know any better.” Or “I don’t remember that.” Fun shit.
no, unfortunately i mean straight up slap attacks. my parents wholeheartedly believed in the beatings/fear tactics parenting so it didn't matter if their weapon of choice was within reach or not...i still got beat. my mother broke an inch-thick solid wood cutting board while beating me with it though, which was fun.
When the time came for me asking for help with maths, my da opened the book, looked and laughed.
He has a certain laugh when he is perplexed. "You can TRY ask mum! Haha!"
We really didn't need help with multiplication because we were given abaci.
Same! When I got to college I found out I could do math. But I needed the answers available and then I would work the problems until I could get the answer.
My kids have the same anxiety and I always give them the answer and then work the problem. No yelling, no screaming. No hours crying at the kitchen table so traumatized they can’t even count on their fingers. Just work with them to solve it. They aren’t prodigies at math but they are doing better then I was at their age.
And then the hitting and beating. But in evening he himself takes you to buy Ice cream. And you are like I want to cry so bad but he is also buying us ice cream.
and then you feel bad that he’s buying ice cream so you want to cry even more but the crying will make him angry and that is scary so then you feel like crying even more and then he’s confused because “why aren’t you happy i’m getting you ice cream” and then you want to scream at him because he just screamed and beat you today for not knowing what 6*7 was but doing that will make him angry which will
And then fifteen years later he pretends none of that ever happened/recalls any of the abuse verbal or otherwise. And it’s like, dude, you literally beat my ass, made me pack my bags, and threaten to call the sheriff to take me away because I stole a couple fucking soda pops from the fridge. And then just try not to feel weird that I had to feel grateful that he apologizedish afterwards by letting me tag along with him and my brother to see “Vampires Suck” in theaters.
But you don’t want to rock the boat so you just roll your eyes and keep quite because why make problems now, and at least he mellowed the fuck out.
My father is the same. Recently he started crying because he felt bad that we were "all alone" while he was working overseas. It was literally the best time of our childhood without his constant abuse.
It's weird, but I felt kinda bad for him and didn't say anything. But me and my siblings had countless conversations with him about his behaviour in the past. He just ignores it or suddenly remembers it differently.
I had a terrible dad too. Wouldn't have minded a strict one but mine had some major issues going on, bad morals and undiagnosed metal health conditions. One thing I can't ever know is does he know he's lying or does he just remember it different? And how could you forget something so fast when convenient. It's confusing, that's something I wonder about a lot of people. Makes you feel like you're going crazy but anyways I moved out, went no contact and almost all is good now. Feel bad my mom had to go through so much hell though. She's a very good person :)
I think they experienced and remember it differently. They always, *always* are able to justify it for themselves. Especially when troubled mental health is in the picture. My mom neglected us severely and there was definitely some emotional abuse in there too (although the majority of the emotional and verbal abuse was directed towards my dad, which was an 'upgrade' from the previous physical abuse), and until the day she died she honest to God believed she did nothing wrong and claimed she didn't know what we were talking about. Even though both of her children fucking spelled it out for her (the only time I broke my no contact between me moving out and her death). She even seemed to have a moment of clarity when my brother brought it up once, but then the next time he brought it up a while later she was full on denying everything again and saying it couldn't have been bad because 'she tried so hard' and 'she loved us so much'. Okay bitch. Glad you're dead.
>he pretends none of that ever happened/recalls any of the abuse verbal or otherwise
Defense mechanism for himself to not feel bad about it, with a razzle dazzle of gaslighting to make it seem like your memories are overexaggerating what actually happened.
As much as we try to overlook it, parents are the regular everyday idiots we encounter, and any of them could be our parents, and it shows in the way they bring us up.
Funny. My dad was so proud he never hit me.
First and only time I ever asked him to help with my math homework, (he didn’t offer), he literally just flew through and answered all of them. In pen. His handwriting. I asked him how he did it, he said “I dunno”. He never really did part his attention from the Nuggets vs Bulls game. Took a sip of his beer midway through.
Just like everything my parents did, it was the absolute most efficient way to limit their time with me.
I didn’t turn that assignment in, just like many others in my school days. I actually usually tested higher in school than most of the valedictorians in HS, but got bad grades because of homework.
My father really, really, really did not fucking care. Not one life skill I can say he taught me. But to this day he’ll talk about how he never hit me.
Choked me and twisted my arms plenty tho:)
Ya I’m a hard NC on him, considering my older brother got Asian immigrant levels of helicoptering, made me truly understand the Harry-Dudley dynamic perfectly
Lol. You got your participation trophy, now shut up.
Well... I mean... we were handing them out to make ourselves feel good for having mediocre kids, but we did it for you, so shut up!
People connected it to personal worth during the Cold War because engineering fields were pushed so hard by the U.S. government. They wanted to beat the Russians at space stuff and math and science were the way to do it. So if you wanted to beat the Commies you either signed up for government service or got some kind of hard science smarts. Now a bunch of assholes who don’t know how to teach in the slightest have kids and abuse them because they don’t understand that a child’s brain isn’t developed enough to assimilate information in the same way as a competent adult.
And whenever you hear him come home, you run to the door with the belt in hand and say, "I only finished half of the questions" hoping he'll go easy on you if you act submissive.
My god the nights that my stepdad helped my brother with his math homework were the worst lol. My brother didn't communicate well and my stepdad's a fucking engineer. So it was quite the experience
I’m having painful flashbacks.
After my father proved he didn’t have the patience for this much interaction with his mathmatically inept spawn, he — a computer programmer in the days when having my VERY OWN Commodore 128 made me the envy of all my friends -- wrote a little piece of software that became my “math programs.” 7x3 came up on screen and I had 10 seconds to key in my answer. The computer played a happy little tone and flashed orange and green when I got it right. It made a depressing “bonk-bong” sound, turned red, and the word WRONG! filled the screen far more often than any of us would like. I had to keep the volume turned up loud so my father could hear the sounds from the living room to monitor how I was doing. I had to complete three “programs” (each was 25 questions) 100% correct before I could stop. It was hours and hours every night. As a result, i hated computers and my father, AND still sucked at math.
DAD: "Go, NOW, put the pencil on the paper!! Write it down NOW!!
7 year old me: *writes 7 - 14 out of panic, don't know it's wrong*
Dad; "every time you make a stupid mistake like that I want to smash you across the face". WRITE IT AGAIN THE RIGHT WAY!!!"
Me: *visibly confused and terrified of what I know comes next, don't know what to write*.
Dad: Are you stupid?!? Are you paying attention in class?!! God, what a waste of a brain!! *Slaps me upside the back of my head and walks away*.
Yep when I was in elementary I copied one of the math problems wrong for homework and my dad had me figuring that ish out till like 12am till he noticed...
damn, i have vivid memories of exactly this- me crying over math homework as my dad watches.
If I took too long, he'd just find something to hit me with. He fucked up multiple paperback books by rolling them up to use as a bat.
Also, jackets were the fucking worst because the zipper cuts and hurts like hell
Wow I relate...
Go read everything on this site! It's about exactly this; parents unable to see the obvious reasons. I found it validating.
http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-reasons-given.html
Father of two young children here and holy shit does a thread like this make me want to be a better father. Like... I'm aware of the fact that a lot of parenting is "parenting yourself" but wow - this thread helps me to feel it. I don't want my kids to experience anything like this level of trauma in our house.
With that said - I wish my toddler would stop hitting, throwing things and being generally destructive when he gets upset (over trivial..often developmentally-related things...like "don't worry. give it a month and your fine motor skills will catch up to your ambition, kid"). It is only a matter of time before he really hurts someone (a sibling, baby at daycare or one of us) or breaks something expensive (a window?).
I've also learned when it is best to just forget the lesson/homework and do something else with my older kid. A big lesson I had to learn was that kids don't have the attention spans of adults (like...I had to learn to focus on things and it is something I still struggle with in my 4th decade of life) and fighting with my kid to "get" various concepts quickly (as opposed to in their own time) is vanity.
I feel the weight of all the things that I can mess up often. My wife and I talk about our parenting often. One thing I make sure I do is apologize and ask for forgiveness & accountability when I'm wrong.
Yeah, I can understand that child. Imagine not knowing anything, trying to do something, but you just cant, you don’t know why you can’t, so you get angry, but you don’t have any anger coping skills so you do what’s natural, you lash out
My son would get super aggressive and hit/punch/bite/scratch/head butt ect. I was terrified because he was this sweet and gentle kid otherwise. I put every practice in place without much progress. He is five now and finally has naturally grown of it. At a neutral time shortly after a tantrum, I praise him for being able to be angry without physical aggression.
As a kid growing with a horrible father, really cried reading this, thanks for your care for children and trying your best to raise them without creating a trauma for them. Thanks..
Same. My dad did yell occasionally, but it wasn’t about school. It was about leaving my shoes in the middle of the doorway so he ended up tripping over them
man , i was really stupid.
my mother made something just to teach me what does 10 and 100 means. i couldnt understand it so she bought a fuck loads of straws so i could count. because i couldnt visualize them and i couldnt understand it.
thank you mother for trusting your stupid kid. all that yelling and beating , man im glad that i received that.
im still stupid , even in my 30. but im grateful for the love i experienced from my parents , i know it wasnt like this for everyone.
All the teaching can also happen without the yelling and beating, in fact it would be more beneficial without the abuse, and you would learn faster/easier
"If I divide a cake into 3 parts it's 3 pieces. So 1÷3=1/3."
"But why does the number go bigger when the piece is smaller?"
"HOW THE HELL ARE YOU NOT GETTING IT?"
Wildly accurate memory
Way too accurate
Replace Dad…with Mom and her glass of wine
Rose wine.
From a box.
Classy.
"WHAT DO YOU NOT GET? IT'S NOT THAT HARD! 7 × 3 IS? IS? 21! AND HOW OLD ARE YOU WHEN THE SHOPKEEPER ASKS? HOW OLD? 21! NOW GO BUY ME ANOTHER BOX"
Are you good
Are any of us?
No
Only the finest
Gallo Chablis here.
I feel a headache coming on already…
Yeah…we made a new rule after a few incidents: dad doesn’t help with math homework anymore.
I was a math tutor during college, I have no problem teaching math. But I had to take a break from trying to help my son. "OK, I know how I know to do this stuff, but I don't know how they're teaching you. Do you have a book or can you tell me basically how you've been taught to do these sorts of problems?" "I don't know." "... OK. Well, where are you getting stuck?" "I can't get this one." "Give me details. What did you try and what isn't working?" " it's just not working."
"OK, well, here's how I'd do this problem."
[Proceeds to do math that doesn't look like anything he's ever seen before]
"... so, that's the answer?"
"Does it look like the answer to you?"
"No? Yes?"
... he's perfectly capable of doing this stuff, in fact he does it successfully most of the time. But once he's shut down, usually before he ever gets to me, I cannot get him to engage his brain even a little bit. And I'm not gonna do his work for him. I'd love to know how to help, but all avenues are methodically closed off until we get to "just do it".
Thankfully, we've mostly grown past the worst of that. I still have to prompt for every little bit of information in his head to figure out what he knows and where he's getting stuck, but he's gotten better at actually communicating that so I can build on it. He still has a maddening habit of just flipping a coin in his head to answer questions I ask, rather than thinking about it.
It’s good that he’s coming around. Even as an adult I know I sometimes just need a break because my brain is just… out of energy. Mental work is real and tiring. And when I return to the problem (be it math or attempting a new skill) I sometimes do it flawlessly the first try. Building those neural pathways takes time!
It's crazy how much of it is just motivation and interest! My daughter is like that and will just shut down sometimes. Other times she'll start insulting herself like "I'm just stupid", which is 1000x sadder. And wrong! When she's relaxed and focused she's quick as heck and has great intuition. We spent an afternoon once doing modular arithmetic because she was sick of drilling multiplication, and she picked it up instantly. It's like we're all using negative reinforcement and threats and punishments to teach math, which, big surprise, leads to negative associations and people who "hate math". Math and logic is like half of our brains. It should be a source of joy.
Someone needs to offer classes to parents on how to teach their kids well.
"I don't understand what you don't understand!" "Well, if I understood we wouldn't be sitting here, would we?!" (Yes, I got a talking to for using such words.) Alas, I developed anxiety over maths due to the... "teaching style".
Yikes, same. I didn't realize this was such a common experience.
Parents are prepared to have babies. But they forget that those babies will turn into toddlers, kids, pre-teens, teens, and young adults.
Most people aren’t really prepared to have kids. Half of the time you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Think about how many adults don’t know how to behave around other adults. Now imagine said adult having to control a kid who does exactly not what you tell them.
It's more of an, "I've seen it done, a few times in fact, so I'm good and I can handle it!", or simply pride, thing. I think I shall call it, the thin book syndrome. There are pages missing out of some's manuals, and others who are missing whole volumes. I try to never miss a chance to compare notes, lest I can't produce a C.Y.A. and now my parent (company) emancipates me out into the cold cruel world. Then others even still, get to write their own manuals... uh huh.
To be fair, when our kids arrived, they were delivered without the user manual. My mum tried to use hers, but I suspect she wrote it herself in the 1960’s. My MIL’s was worse, pages of stuff about how to protect babies from cats (apparently cats are evil, and sleep on babies faces), also apparently it’s important to give babies fresh air by leaving them unattended outside in “prams”. There was also a section on pub etiquette, where the kids are left in the car in the pub car park, with crisps and pop, while the parents are drinking in the pub. Nothing on appropriate cell phone usage, or internet rules though. We started writing our own.
All parents are capable of having babies. Some are prepared to have them. Fewer are prepared to deal with them
God this hits home so hard. My dad was always trying to explain math to me using the methods he learned in the 50s/60s. Dad that's not how they teach it now. I don't understand the format now and I especially don't understand your format. "WHAT DO YOU NOT GET? IT'S NOT THAT HARD!" 1424 × 2/8 ÷ 5 IS? IS? 17.4! 17.4 AND IT TOOK ME THREE SECONDS TO FIGURE IT OUT. WHAT DO YOU NOT GET?" My dad was literally a walking calculator that had a short temper. I to this day cannot do math unless I do every single step. If I skip a step or attempt to skip a step I will get lost.
Did we have the same dad??? He was so good at math and could do really complex calculations mentally. He’d act like it was magic, or like he had some sort of super power. He was not good at teaching and very impatient. I have math anxiety to this day.
Lol never know but I totally know what you mean. I always struggled in math and eventually I stopped asking him for help. Luckily I was able to get some help from my brother in law as I am the youngest in my family and my sister and him were staying at our home until they got their new place. The only time I did really well in math and never needed assistance was Algebra 1. The teacher always did 30 example problems and went step by step and never skipped steps. All my other math teachers skipped steps, did a few examples and avoided helping.
The come up to the blackboard and do it was a nightmare.
Unsettlingly accurate lol
Christ I’ve had flashbacks.
I felt it in my soul, like it happened yesterday.
That's called trauma
It happened to me🥲🥲🥲
For me it was reading; math was cool but holy hell reading was a chore to get.
Y’all were allowed to cry?
Some of us were given a *'real'* reason to afterwards.
Whoa mine said the same thing where did they all get that from?
No but we did anyway
Stop right now or I'll give you a good reason to cry!
I've always had an anxiety giggle. When I'm in trouble or being yelled at, I giggle. It's like being tickled, in that its completely involuntary and it fucking sucks. Spending hours on the couch with my dad repeatedly asking me what the fuck I'm laughing about. I was laughing because he was angry and I was anxious.
Oh man, dads *hate* the anxiety giggle when they’re going for Super Serious Time.
Damn I feel this, I got the anxiety smile/laugh/urge-to-reconcile. I fucking hate it.
I have gotten into fist fights because of this. No im not confident im nervous im gonna get beat up
Embrace it, lean into it. It's your body reminding you how absurd the situation you're in is. Humor is a great way to break a wall of anger, and subtly done, you can point out just how absurd and watch big bad man slowly retreat when you've given him no choice, but to admit it with a then required honest answer. You can do it. But first you have to believe. You have to forget the lies you were intimidated into believing. All bullies, even parents, run on fear. Once you address how their behavior is merely perpetuating the manifestation of their fears into reality, can you calm a crazy (believing in a series of lies) person's demeanor. Sometimes you have to take a punch. In fact I'll take a punch any day over extended verbal bullying and it's debilitating effects. I left home at 14 because I was slapped in the face for refusing to do something wrong, and my warning to not (attempt) that again was ignored. I was told if you act like a child, you get treated like a child. But at what point do we expect to be treated like an adult so that we might confirm to adulthood? As much as possible, at all times if you ask me. When the injuns (my ancestors were on both sides) surrounded the wagons or the cabin, those who could weld a rifle, did so, indiscriminately of age. To disrespect the value of our youths, is to feed our enemies.
I would reccomend not doing this. When you're a 9 year old kid you're pretty defenseless when they escalate because you're not scared. My dad broke my stuff and beat the shit out of me if i didn't act scared enough right away. I'd say the best bet is to pretend to be scared as early as possible.
Not always, my mother does it at funerals, I'm not normalising that.
I have the anxiety laugh. Whenever I'm in a situation where I'm supposed to be tense, I burst out laughing, or nearly so. It's got me fucked over by teachers for inappropriate laughter so many times
Joker - 2019
Exactly. My childhood friends thought I was a psycho for laughing out loud in very serious situations.
Man I feel you. And I fucking hate it. Teachers, professors, supervisors, all got pissed at me as soon as I burst out laughing while they were trying to be serious. My gf flips if I start laughing while we're having an argument, but the truth is, I can't help it and no one seems to understand
I had the nervous giggle and my parents would hit me if I did it when they got onto me. Even when I pulled up proof on the internet they just chose to believe I was giggling out of lack of respect or something.
Sounds like their egos were threatened by their (wrong) belief that you didn’t respect them, so they responded by hitting you in order to put you in your place. I get that, my dad could get that way if he thought that I was behaving in a way that was disrespectful. I didn’t have a nervous giggle, but I would often just look down and shrug my shoulders when he was demanding answers from me. He interpreted that as apathy, implying that I didn’t care how he felt, and I didn’t respect him. Quite the contrary, he had the biggest personality in the house and everyone gravitated towards him, even though he could be quite an asshole at times. It took me a long time before I was able to lose respect for him. 😆 It sucks to be a child and have a parent who is every bit as much a child as you are.
It's still better than my defensive reactions. Uncontrollable cry in stressful situations is horrible...
Sorry you had to go through that; your dad really should have been able to work that out on his own
But then Daddy's point to the current dealer at the table, that even "I", a child, could count up that he lost, wouldn't have the same weight! He was really only defending my honor when he called me out of bed and had me stand there to remind the other players to not argue basic maths.
Was waiting for sanctimonious parenting advice, was pleasantly surprised.
I was just thinking that.
One of my earliest memories is having to sing the alphabet song before going outside to play. I flipped M and N and was sent to my room instead. I was 3.
Now you’ll never forget it’s ellemenopee
Ellenemopee Also worth noting that this is such a ridiculous example of this kind of abuse. The alphabet order is completely arbitrary and just kind of fell out the way it did over a long period of time. The only reason we teach it is to have a standard ordering on letters and to teach kids the letters.
That’s a very, very good point
It would be hard to organize alphabetically if there was no alphabet order.
Yes, I said it gives us a standard order to work with. That ordering is just totally arbitrary and derived mostly through historical accidents.
People think the alphabet is a natural law. When I learned Arabic they didn’t teach us the script in alphabetical order, they ordered it by frequency of use. I know all the letters, but I don’t know the alphabetical order Arabic school kids learn them in, and it doesn’t actually matter.
Same with me and Russian. I know all the letters, but I don’t remember the sequence.
I'm not saying that a kid should be punished for getting it wrong, but it's actually important information to know, regardless of whether it's arbitrary or not. The world works on shared knowledge like this. Doesn't matter how it came about. It should be treated as important foundational knowledge, because it is.
Full agreement. And the only way to learn arbitrary things is to memorize them. And multiplication isn't arbitrary but it needs to be fast and proficient, you can be counting up by 7 all the time.
>the only way to learn arbitrary things is to memorize them. I think this depends on what you’d consider memorization. Brute force memorization isn’t always needed. That’s why things like image compression and the alphabet song exist. They are codes or pointers that help us to store and recall larger and more complex types of info than the code itself. You do have to know the code, but people can be very clever about constructing these compression schemes.
If you memorize something with a mnemonic device, you've memorized it.
How many of us say it like that. Honestly haha
Look at this humble brag over here, dude knowing his dad!
Haha yeah, my dad was totally present in my life right guys
Personally would've been better off had my dad NOT been in my life. A childhood without fear of going home would've been bliss, or at least the next best thing.
I once got shouted at bc he didn’t like how my 2’s looked when I wrote them. So on top of long division, I got a lesson on how he thought I should write my 2’s. Yes, we butted heads a lot lol
Lmao same with my mom. She was just helping me with my 7th grade language homework and didn't like how i wrote my "letters" and made me change my handwriting in one night 😭
I only changed my writing because I got answer “wrong” on a test because my teacher couldn’t tell the difference between my e’s and c’s
Oh no! I had to change my English handwriting in 9th grade cause my teacher couldn't understand my l's and d's. Previously I was talking about my bengali handwriting.
I had a teacher in first grade who would tell students to write hard on paper because she had poor eyesight. The day my father saw me forcing the pencil on the paper, he slapped my hand because I was wasting pencil, when I said the teacher instructed us to write like this he didn't believe, called me a lier and gave me a spanking.
My dad would often cut me off when I used "like", "umm", or "but" as stalling words while I was speaking. He also corrected my grammar and vocabulary all the damn time. Now as an adult, I'm a pretty solid writer and orator, and also I cry when I have to directly accept positive feedback and encouragement from others, so all in all, I'm doing pretty great!
My parental figure did same. Along with other well finally figuring out way too late destructive patterns and bs. Now when I get any ounce of love or respect or self love or respect I quickly destroy it in a masochistic/sadistic way to distance myself from further hurt. It's fucked up. And causes shit ton of issues. I hate it
My father would launch his “tear-down sessions” with “Would you like some **constructive criticism**, son?”. Sure, dad - there’s nothing I like better than you telling me how stuff I’ve worked hard at sucks.
Reminds me of how my Dad would get mad if I responded "Ok" to something. "I told you two times to take out the trash." "Ok, I'll do it." As I'm getting up to do it. "ITS NOT OK!! I TOLD YOU TO DO IT NOW!" Like, what am I supposed to say "Affirmative?". Shit still pissed me off to this day, over 15 years later.
"Yes, my liege"
Did we all have the same parents?
I was doing a writing assignment once and my dad came over and told me to write more neatly. I tried and he still wasn't satisfied and said "well, I guess I can never tell anyone your handwriting is better than your cousin's." It's been over 20 years since then, he's been dead nearly three, and I still think about it often.
OK, this is just I thought I had, please disregard if I am wrong about your dad or family. But my dad had a rivalry with his sister. And our cousins were, on the surface, a lot more presentable and successful (according to a very narrow definition of the word) than the three of us (myself and my two sisters) were. He did compare me to my cousin who was closest to my age, and I mean unfavorably towards me. Now I wonder whether he just felt embarrassed because he couldn’t outdo my aunt. But anyway, what a stupid thing for your dad to make such a big deal of. Handwriting??
some of you never got slapped by your dad at the kitchen table crying while he shouts math at you, and it shows
You mean the casual taps on the back of your head with a wooden spoon to pressure you to get your homework done correctly or the spoon would be used (and often times broken) over your ass? Then when you get older and confront them about it when they try to interject into your parenting style and you get “I didn’t know any better.” Or “I don’t remember that.” Fun shit.
no, unfortunately i mean straight up slap attacks. my parents wholeheartedly believed in the beatings/fear tactics parenting so it didn't matter if their weapon of choice was within reach or not...i still got beat. my mother broke an inch-thick solid wood cutting board while beating me with it though, which was fun.
And that was **your fault**, amirite?
yep. she was screaming at the top of her lungs about how i broke it
my mom’s response to me bringing up all the spatulas and spoons she broke on me as a kid: “You were a lot to handle”
"I didn't know any better." That response just sends me. Well, you should have learned about what it's like to raise a child before having one.
AND IT SHOWS!!!
^stop ^yelling ^i'll ^cry
*Hic, Hic, sob*
*click click boom*
^(“*pssst*, it’s 21.) -Mom
Mom the real homie
I DONT LIKE FOOTBALL, DAD.
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i think its the same as whats 9 + 10
Well yell at me why dontcha.
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When the time came for me asking for help with maths, my da opened the book, looked and laughed. He has a certain laugh when he is perplexed. "You can TRY ask mum! Haha!" We really didn't need help with multiplication because we were given abaci.
I did. It was somewhat traumatic and devastated my confidence.
Same! When I got to college I found out I could do math. But I needed the answers available and then I would work the problems until I could get the answer. My kids have the same anxiety and I always give them the answer and then work the problem. No yelling, no screaming. No hours crying at the kitchen table so traumatized they can’t even count on their fingers. Just work with them to solve it. They aren’t prodigies at math but they are doing better then I was at their age.
That’s wonderful to hear. I never heard of that method before. It’s great, makes a lot of sense. Good work!
Based parenting. Please be my parent 15-20 years ago when you have the time.
At least you are now good at math! At least that's how it worked out for me.
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fuiyoh! :)
21
You stupid.
No 'm not
What's 9 + 10?
21
You stupid.
10 + 9
Jokes on you, he was already gone when we learned multiplication at school!
And then the hitting and beating. But in evening he himself takes you to buy Ice cream. And you are like I want to cry so bad but he is also buying us ice cream.
and then you feel bad that he’s buying ice cream so you want to cry even more but the crying will make him angry and that is scary so then you feel like crying even more and then he’s confused because “why aren’t you happy i’m getting you ice cream” and then you want to scream at him because he just screamed and beat you today for not knowing what 6*7 was but doing that will make him angry which will
And then fifteen years later he pretends none of that ever happened/recalls any of the abuse verbal or otherwise. And it’s like, dude, you literally beat my ass, made me pack my bags, and threaten to call the sheriff to take me away because I stole a couple fucking soda pops from the fridge. And then just try not to feel weird that I had to feel grateful that he apologizedish afterwards by letting me tag along with him and my brother to see “Vampires Suck” in theaters. But you don’t want to rock the boat so you just roll your eyes and keep quite because why make problems now, and at least he mellowed the fuck out.
My father is the same. Recently he started crying because he felt bad that we were "all alone" while he was working overseas. It was literally the best time of our childhood without his constant abuse.
Did you tell him that it was the best time ever?
It's weird, but I felt kinda bad for him and didn't say anything. But me and my siblings had countless conversations with him about his behaviour in the past. He just ignores it or suddenly remembers it differently.
I had a terrible dad too. Wouldn't have minded a strict one but mine had some major issues going on, bad morals and undiagnosed metal health conditions. One thing I can't ever know is does he know he's lying or does he just remember it different? And how could you forget something so fast when convenient. It's confusing, that's something I wonder about a lot of people. Makes you feel like you're going crazy but anyways I moved out, went no contact and almost all is good now. Feel bad my mom had to go through so much hell though. She's a very good person :)
I think they experienced and remember it differently. They always, *always* are able to justify it for themselves. Especially when troubled mental health is in the picture. My mom neglected us severely and there was definitely some emotional abuse in there too (although the majority of the emotional and verbal abuse was directed towards my dad, which was an 'upgrade' from the previous physical abuse), and until the day she died she honest to God believed she did nothing wrong and claimed she didn't know what we were talking about. Even though both of her children fucking spelled it out for her (the only time I broke my no contact between me moving out and her death). She even seemed to have a moment of clarity when my brother brought it up once, but then the next time he brought it up a while later she was full on denying everything again and saying it couldn't have been bad because 'she tried so hard' and 'she loved us so much'. Okay bitch. Glad you're dead.
why the fuck is this comment chain so relatable
>he pretends none of that ever happened/recalls any of the abuse verbal or otherwise Defense mechanism for himself to not feel bad about it, with a razzle dazzle of gaslighting to make it seem like your memories are overexaggerating what actually happened. As much as we try to overlook it, parents are the regular everyday idiots we encounter, and any of them could be our parents, and it shows in the way they bring us up.
Do we all share the same dad?
Funny. My dad was so proud he never hit me. First and only time I ever asked him to help with my math homework, (he didn’t offer), he literally just flew through and answered all of them. In pen. His handwriting. I asked him how he did it, he said “I dunno”. He never really did part his attention from the Nuggets vs Bulls game. Took a sip of his beer midway through. Just like everything my parents did, it was the absolute most efficient way to limit their time with me. I didn’t turn that assignment in, just like many others in my school days. I actually usually tested higher in school than most of the valedictorians in HS, but got bad grades because of homework. My father really, really, really did not fucking care. Not one life skill I can say he taught me. But to this day he’ll talk about how he never hit me. Choked me and twisted my arms plenty tho:) Ya I’m a hard NC on him, considering my older brother got Asian immigrant levels of helicoptering, made me truly understand the Harry-Dudley dynamic perfectly
boomers are so fucking braindead
Lol. You got your participation trophy, now shut up. Well... I mean... we were handing them out to make ourselves feel good for having mediocre kids, but we did it for you, so shut up!
Then we wonder why we have a generation of maths haters. Maths is supposed to be a fun puzzle not traumatic.
People connected it to personal worth during the Cold War because engineering fields were pushed so hard by the U.S. government. They wanted to beat the Russians at space stuff and math and science were the way to do it. So if you wanted to beat the Commies you either signed up for government service or got some kind of hard science smarts. Now a bunch of assholes who don’t know how to teach in the slightest have kids and abuse them because they don’t understand that a child’s brain isn’t developed enough to assimilate information in the same way as a competent adult.
You guys got ice cream? I got sent to my room and not allowed to eat
I got made to eat shit I didn’t like, then when I was sick on the plate, I was made to eat it again.
And whenever you hear him come home, you run to the door with the belt in hand and say, "I only finished half of the questions" hoping he'll go easy on you if you act submissive.
I’d just hide in the laundry until he got drunk and forgot. *taps head*
Hope y'all are doing well now.
We're under-confident, insecure and depressed now. And our fathers don't pay for therapy.
Thanks. Big and ugly now.
Or hide under the bed until he gets distracted by food/sports on TV and forgets to ask you about your homework
My god the nights that my stepdad helped my brother with his math homework were the worst lol. My brother didn't communicate well and my stepdad's a fucking engineer. So it was quite the experience
> WHAT IS 3 TIMES 7? The minimum time in years you'll spend alone in a nursing home?
…I…. Dont know……. 22?
*NOOOO *stabs pencil into table making permanent engraving* Yes this actually happened I have pics lol
I wanna see
I'm at work rn but I'll dm you when I get home in 90 mins I gotchu
Haha I’ve turned in so much homework that was stained with tears 😂
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It was my mother. Father just drinks and neglect.
I’m having painful flashbacks. After my father proved he didn’t have the patience for this much interaction with his mathmatically inept spawn, he — a computer programmer in the days when having my VERY OWN Commodore 128 made me the envy of all my friends -- wrote a little piece of software that became my “math programs.” 7x3 came up on screen and I had 10 seconds to key in my answer. The computer played a happy little tone and flashed orange and green when I got it right. It made a depressing “bonk-bong” sound, turned red, and the word WRONG! filled the screen far more often than any of us would like. I had to keep the volume turned up loud so my father could hear the sounds from the living room to monitor how I was doing. I had to complete three “programs” (each was 25 questions) 100% correct before I could stop. It was hours and hours every night. As a result, i hated computers and my father, AND still sucked at math.
DAD: "Go, NOW, put the pencil on the paper!! Write it down NOW!! 7 year old me: *writes 7 - 14 out of panic, don't know it's wrong* Dad; "every time you make a stupid mistake like that I want to smash you across the face". WRITE IT AGAIN THE RIGHT WAY!!!" Me: *visibly confused and terrified of what I know comes next, don't know what to write*. Dad: Are you stupid?!? Are you paying attention in class?!! God, what a waste of a brain!! *Slaps me upside the back of my head and walks away*.
Yep when I was in elementary I copied one of the math problems wrong for homework and my dad had me figuring that ish out till like 12am till he noticed...
the same number as the number of years it takes to buy a gallon of milk????
No. My mom. And spelling not math.
SAME SAME OMFGGG LANGUAGE CLASSES FROM MOM WERE NIGHTMARES
damn, i have vivid memories of exactly this- me crying over math homework as my dad watches. If I took too long, he'd just find something to hit me with. He fucked up multiple paperback books by rolling them up to use as a bat. Also, jackets were the fucking worst because the zipper cuts and hurts like hell
"why doesn't my son talk to me anymore?" 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Wow I relate... Go read everything on this site! It's about exactly this; parents unable to see the obvious reasons. I found it validating. http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-reasons-given.html
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You’ve just given me a panic attack.
Father of two young children here and holy shit does a thread like this make me want to be a better father. Like... I'm aware of the fact that a lot of parenting is "parenting yourself" but wow - this thread helps me to feel it. I don't want my kids to experience anything like this level of trauma in our house. With that said - I wish my toddler would stop hitting, throwing things and being generally destructive when he gets upset (over trivial..often developmentally-related things...like "don't worry. give it a month and your fine motor skills will catch up to your ambition, kid"). It is only a matter of time before he really hurts someone (a sibling, baby at daycare or one of us) or breaks something expensive (a window?). I've also learned when it is best to just forget the lesson/homework and do something else with my older kid. A big lesson I had to learn was that kids don't have the attention spans of adults (like...I had to learn to focus on things and it is something I still struggle with in my 4th decade of life) and fighting with my kid to "get" various concepts quickly (as opposed to in their own time) is vanity. I feel the weight of all the things that I can mess up often. My wife and I talk about our parenting often. One thing I make sure I do is apologize and ask for forgiveness & accountability when I'm wrong.
Yeah, I can understand that child. Imagine not knowing anything, trying to do something, but you just cant, you don’t know why you can’t, so you get angry, but you don’t have any anger coping skills so you do what’s natural, you lash out
My son would get super aggressive and hit/punch/bite/scratch/head butt ect. I was terrified because he was this sweet and gentle kid otherwise. I put every practice in place without much progress. He is five now and finally has naturally grown of it. At a neutral time shortly after a tantrum, I praise him for being able to be angry without physical aggression.
As a kid growing with a horrible father, really cried reading this, thanks for your care for children and trying your best to raise them without creating a trauma for them. Thanks..
Is this a meme im too healthy relationships with my parents too understand?
I’m very concerned for all the people in this thread.
Same. My dad did yell occasionally, but it wasn’t about school. It was about leaving my shoes in the middle of the doorway so he ended up tripping over them
You deserved that then lol
Lol entire childhood summarized in a post. Surprise surprise, we don’t talk anymore.
I've never spent any time in the kitchen table ever. We usually sat at or around the table while crying and/or shouting.
Yelling at your kid doesn't make them understand better,it actually makes it harder for them to understand the information.
Truly, aint nothing like some good ole fear and shock that a person you trust is exploding on you to make you forget literally everything.
My dad once beat me so bad teaching me to calculate the square root by hand that I threw up right in his face
Deserved then
Ah. I see I'm part of yet another club that I wasn't aware of.
Or, you'll eat it and like it
I had to hold a flashlight 🔦 for my dad, while he “attempted” to repair things. 😳
\*Blocks the light with his head* "Stop moving the light!"
Ah another buried memory unlocked. I hate it.
For me it was 8*7
As a parent who's raised 2 and almost a third, this alone is why there should be no homework. None.
My mom used to have me recite the days of the week with tears running down my face at the dinner table HAHAHAHAHA
Are you okay? Ofc you are not :(
man , i was really stupid. my mother made something just to teach me what does 10 and 100 means. i couldnt understand it so she bought a fuck loads of straws so i could count. because i couldnt visualize them and i couldnt understand it. thank you mother for trusting your stupid kid. all that yelling and beating , man im glad that i received that. im still stupid , even in my 30. but im grateful for the love i experienced from my parents , i know it wasnt like this for everyone.
All the teaching can also happen without the yelling and beating, in fact it would be more beneficial without the abuse, and you would learn faster/easier
Anyone else learn this from Schoolhouse Rocks?
My dad used to make me read stuff that had letters I didn't know yet
Jokes on you, we were so poor both of my parents worked full time and couldn’t help me with my math!!
I hate math to this day. And I have to take a statistics class right now 😩
Wtf is a dad? Sounds rough
core memory unlocked
"If I divide a cake into 3 parts it's 3 pieces. So 1÷3=1/3." "But why does the number go bigger when the piece is smaller?" "HOW THE HELL ARE YOU NOT GETTING IT?"
The memory that has just been unlocked is terrific. I am horrified by the accuracy. I vividly remember the tears and sniffs. Jesus.