How to make a kid like math?

The last batch of math district tests came back and the results were so great that I immediately wanted to share them with someone else. I located my husband in the house and I asked him, “For math, do you know what percentile range is the little one?” (Best results are closer to one hundred.)

My younger boy, now in fourth grade, is very good at math, so my husband ventured a very high number: “Is it ninety?” I replied with excitement, “Even more—his score is ninety-nine. And for the older one, it is eighty-six.”

I saw my husband's eyes grow wide with delight. As great as the percentile for my younger boy was, the results for our older kid, a fifth-grader, were even more impressive because he has always struggled with school and he needed extra help all the time.

It looks that somehow, we stumbled on a simple recipe to connect our kids with math. It only took us about eight years to have the confirmation that we were on the right track. So, what did we do exactly? Here are my six tricks to help a kid like math.

1. Parents must care

There are many things that parents would love for their kids to be good at. My own list is long, and it includes making friends, being curious about everything, doing unselfish deeds, playing sports, and reading. But math is close to the top, contending for the spotlight, because it is an essential skill for so many professions. Without math, my kids’ career choices would be seriously limited. I didn’t want my boys to turn their backs on math, if they had the bad luck to encounter bad teachers or if they were not born with a natural gift for it.

To show how much I cared about it, I volunteered at school helping other kids with math. That experience gave me ideas about how to help my own kids, and it kept me informed about teaching math in a grade-appropriate way.

2. Start young and make it fun

I cannot recall how many times the kids and I hollered the numbers song in the car when they were toddlers. At home, the boys had many educational toys that dealt with numbers. One of their favorite DVDs was on the same subject. Meals were another great time to play and learn. I would ask them, “Can you give Mommy five Cheerios, please? No, not four. I asked for five. One Cheerio for each of your fingers. That’s it! Great job!”

With the attitude that math is a game, both my kids grew up thinking of math as both easy and fun. Over time, we tried tons of games that were age-appropriate. Some were more successful than others. Today, my younger kid likes solving Sudoku, and he discovered an interesting variation of it that contains extra arithmetic challenges. On weekends we all play Rummy-O or "tabinet", a Romanian card game that entices kids to practice addition.

Nowadays, whenever I ask my kids what is their favorite school subject, they answer “math”. The younger one even declared that Mondays are no longer the worst day of the week because he has math enrichment at school.

3. Practice makes perfect

My two kids have very different learning styles. My older one does math homework every night, and if he doesn't have any assigned by his teacher, I select something for him. He learns math on a constant basis. My younger one learns in intense bursts of a few weeks, usually because he gets fired up by some challenge, like a school test or getting an award from us. After each burst, he takes a break from math and moves his learning interest to some other thing. For both boys, the total amount of time they spend on math is about the same over a month's time.

For some subjects, like multiplication, we started years in advance, during our weekend hikes. The monotony of walking for hours was interrupted by learning how much is 5 x 5, 6 x 6, etc. That gave them ample time to practice long before they had to master this skill at school.

I constantly look at what they learn, and help them when they get stuck. Every success they have, I never forget to praise them. Talking about praise…

4. Remind them that they are good at math

Nothing will fire up more a kid than praise. It shouldn't be every night because it might lose its potency if it’s overused. But, whenever they had a success—if they learned something challenging, or they practiced a little longer—I reminded them that they are good at math and that I was proud of them. Sometimes I added some extra enthusiasm, like “I also loved math as a kid. I always thought it was so much fun to solve a tough problem,” or “Wow, at this rate, you will start teaching me math.”

5. Show that math is part of everyday life

The other day, while I was driving them to school, my boys asked me, “Mommy, why do we need to learn math?” My hands tensed a little on the wheel, thinking that maybe their question was hinting that there were getting tired of this subject. I started to remind them how math was everywhere around us. "When you told me about the temperature of boiling water in Celsius and Fahrenheit, was this related in any way to math? How about yesterday, when we split a pizza for dinner? How do you calculate how much money you have in your piggy bank?"

I didn’t have to continue for long because they started to come up with their own examples. At some point, they went on a tangent, starting to talk about something else, related to the temperatures of the other planets.

The point is, from time to time, it’s good to remind your kids that math is everywhere, and ask for their help to calculate things in real life.

6. Make math a year round activity

Kids have a tendency to lose academic skills and knowledge during the summer. It doesn’t have to be this way. My kids do summer homework every day for about forty-five minutes, and usually it includes math and reading. I like to teach them in advance some of the curriculum of the year to come so that they'll continue to think school is simple.

For my kids, the most successful summer workbook was called Brain Quest, because it was colorful and covered many subjects, from language arts and writing to math and science. Because vacations and weekends, which are their most fun-packed time, are also used for learning, now, when my kids think about math, the thought triggers positive feelings.


It sounds pretty simple, I hope. Good luck and let me know if these tricks worked for you, too.

Why your daughters should work in software

I don’t have daughters, I have two boys, a nine-year-old and an eleven-year-old. Given that both my husband and I have worked in software for a quarter of a century, there is a chance that our offspring might end up in this field as well. That is, if you believe in genes, Mendel and his peas, and all that stuff.

However, if they were girls, I would have NOT given them much of a chance to make it all the way to a software job. To prove that genetics still works, after hearing what they want to be when growing up, I would have started to enumerate our aunts that have worked as teachers, artists, journalists, or doctors. Why? It’s because of the current statistics. Numerous postings on the internet show that, despite an increased effort to attract girls to computer science, the number of them receiving bachelor's degrees has decreased relative to boys. Ouch!

My first reaction is to say, “Great! Less competition for me. Let’s keep it as a secret how awesome this job is for a girl.” But, then, I start to be a little bit afraid of bad karma. What if I get punished for being so selfish? So, here it is! This is my motivation to tell the truth. And who should listen to my advice? The dads. This posting is for you, the dads of daughters.

Guys, I know that each of you wants to win the title of “Best Dad.” I know that you are already dressing up in tutus, drinking tea from mini cups, and wearing glittery crowns. But let’s go beyond defense and adaptation. Let’s have the attitude of “I will crush the competition, by raising a daughter who beats the boys at their own game and does it while wearing a pink outfit!” Go for a great offense, even when there is no hope for an easy win!

Here are my top ten reasons why your girl(s) should work in software, from a veteran who has claimed many victories and gotten some scars as well.

1. It is fun

If you don’t work in this field, you may ask yourself “How can you have fun doing something that looks so boring, staring at a screen all day long?” Well, does your girl like any logical games, like Sudoku, Lego, chess, UNO, or backgammon? If the answer is yes, then, bingo! The same activity that happens when one plays a game, which is thinking hard about how to solve a problem, is also part of computer programming. In that intense and silent solitude, the excitement starts to increase more and more, and when you finally find the solution, you experience an intense bout of happiness. The brain gets a jolt!

It took me several (read "many") failed attempts before I got it. I didn’t develop an instant love for it, but when it did, I was in awe. Do not despair if the first encounters with programming are not successful. A picky eater may need twenty tries before enjoying a new food. But when they finally get it...they are hooked.  

2. It brings home the bacon

Software developer is in the list of top ten best paid jobs for women. (Another top job in this list is CEO, but let’s face it, nobody starts on this job right from graduation. The list may as well include U.S. president or astronaut.)

With a job in software, your daughter can finance many of her hobbies with ease. If she likes to dance, excellent—she can take tango lessons nights and weekends, and afford buying tickets to ballet, opera, shows, until she gets zonked out by them. If she likes psychology, even better—she can immerse herself in understanding the elusive mind of the geek, and then explain it to all of us. Talking about geeks...

3. It’s not for geeks only

I am not a geek. I'm not proud of it, but what can I do? I don’t have the luck to be naturally attracted to technical things. My boys surpassed me years ago, and I call them to help me all the time. 

Despite this...I am the living proof that one can become a great software engineer without being a geek. I worked in many software companies for a long time, and I got appreciated and promoted. When I left them, they always invited me to come back if I should ever change my mind.

Even more amazingly, good software companies actually treasure someone who is not geeky. Super cool! It’s all about diversity of opinions, and finding complementary qualities that gel a team. For example, bringing laughter to meetings stimulates the creative group thinking. It’s really fun to see yourself elevated to the status of being special, because of being normal (and non-geeky).
 

4. Companies want to hire girls

Software companies have discovered how great girls are, and they want them. This is not a recent phenomenon—it's been going on for a couple of decades. I always felt I had a slight advantage over my husband, also a software engineer, when we were interviewing for the same job type. Since this is a field still dominated by males, a female stands out.

In the last few years, things have improved dramatically. Women like Sheryl Sandberg, the famous Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, started a veritable revolution. We have seen a plethora of data demonstrating that hiring women makes business sense. Apparently, hiring software women makes a company more money. Nice! Software corporations are so convinced about it that they started to spend money to finance recruiting, retaining, and promoting women. Girls in software are in demand! Not bad, I’d say!

5. Boys help the girls

This one is a “glass half full versus half empty” situation. On one hand, there is evidence that women in software suffer from gender bias, get fewer promotions, and make less money. On the other hand, this happens in many professions, even in those dominated by women. So, it seems that no matter which job a girl picks, there will always be some sort of uphill battle. Why not pick a job where, even when women are paid less than a man, they can still join the ranks of top earners (remember Reason #2 above)?

Anyway, let’s start with the view that men still dominate the world. There is also a positive: in my experience men, willingly help women. When I got stuck, at one point or another, they jumped in and helped me. When I needed a job change, they offered me the chance. When I needed sympathetic support, they listened. Many times they did things for me that I didn’t ask for.

6. It’s the easiest of all engineering disciplines

Software is about solving people's problems with the help of a computer language. Languages are something that humans (and especially girls) are wired to learn with relative ease. I find it much harder to fix the engine of a car than to write code.

I spent my college years learning how to become an electrical engineer and I can tell you, it was difficult, because I was not born with a technical brain. I was able to learn everything in the books, because everything sounded very logical, but I couldn’t overcome the fact that I lacked the real-world problem-solving intuition that my profession required.

Software is easy because it is abstract, and it is not tainted by the imperfections of real life. There is no overheating due to friction between atoms, no dirt that clogs pipes, and no vibrations that lead to energy loss. In this profession, nature doesn’t laugh behind one's back.

7. It’s a good springboard for other professions

There are many around me, women and men, who have switched to other disciplines: project manager, program manager, product manager, architect, executive, even teaching.

With the skills one acquires, you can open your own company. If you are smart and lucky, you could give birth to the next Facebook or Microsoft. Many software giants started with one person, programming something in a garage. (I know, I’m curious, too—why not use some other room in the house? Maybe it’s the male brain that gets attracted to cars and garages. I don’t know...)

Software intersects with so many domains that you have a virtual universal entry pass to any human activity. Does your girl like fancy clothes? She can develop the software for an online boutique and get the company discounts. Does she like detective stories? She can become a security expert, to catch hackers and prevent fraud. Name any human activity, there is software that is needed for it, and your girl can go for it.

8. Programming is universal across all countries

Not only does this profession allow you to work in any domain of activity, but you can also move around the globe. Unlike doctors, lawyers, teachers, or engineers, there is no need to pass additional exams when moving from one country to another. I've worked in three countries. The programming languages, tools, and skills I had in one place got recognized everywhere, right away.

I admit that you may ask, who in their right mind, born in the United States, would want to leave and go anywhere else? After all, everybody in the world wants to move here. Plus, there can be real complications in obtaining working visas.

All I can say is this, the world is changing and it’s becoming more open. At some point, going to some exotic place, working there for a few years, then coming back, may be easy and fun. Why not have a job that enables that?

9. Programming offers flexible work hours

Most, if not all, software companies allow their employees to vary their arrival and/or departure times. One can take a quick mid-day errand and occasionally even work from home.

This flexibility is huge! Will your kid need to wait for a special delivery, or for the plumber? Will she need to drive the kids to school in the morning? Will she need to spend a day in solitude, at home, to concentrate on finishing a work project without interruptions? That's no problem in software.

Tell me, how many other jobs, such as teaching or nursing, will allow her to do that?

10. It’s a good workout for the brain

Nobody knows yet for sure, why women are disproportionately affected by Alzheimer’s disease (AD). But, among the different recommendations to prevent the onset of this terrible disease, there is an important one: continuous learning. Women are advised to learn something new on a regular basis, to create new brain pathways.

Software changes all the time, new languages, new methodologies, new processes, new domains...It requires you to bend, twist, and rewire your neurons to adapt to something new all the time. Even if your daughter gets carpal tunnel syndrome from too much typing, she will benefit a little—her brain will benefit when she switches the hand she uses for moving the mouse.


Dads of daughters, I feel I did my duty to tell you how good this job is for your girl(s). If you don’t take my advice, no problem for me. I did my part to avoid bad karma. The rest is in your hands!

Genetics - Part 2

A week ago, my younger boy reminded me about genetics again, because I discovered that he was a collector, just like his paternal grandmother. I had to spend more than twenty minutes pleading with him to return the little boxes, miniature picture frames, fairy teeth, and other objects that he had been moving for weeks into his closet.

That explained also why I had not been allowed to come to his room, where he kept receiving me with a cold “What are you doing here?” He hadn’t wanted me to discover the hiding place where these objects were disappearing.

To convince him to relinquish same of the objects, I tried to invoke aesthetic principles. “Look!" I said. "The metal frame and the shiny ball go together, but the wooden boxes should stay close to the wood vases.” He was unconvinced. In this tug-of-war, I had to be the one to give up first, which made me think, this stubbornness of his—where did he get it?

The next morning, however, after I got out of bed, I saw that he had returned some of the objects, and that he kept in his room only those that matched a proper nine-year-old boy's collection.

I love genetics!

Genetics - Part 1

The first time my younger son, now nine, made me think about this concept was soon after he was born. He was so young that the best way to describe his age was in hours, not days or weeks.

The nurses administered him a battery of tests, and one was for his blood type. My boy was identified as blood type B. The problem was that I was type O and my husband was type A. This adorable baby, that I was crazy about, didn’t match us.

(By InvictaHOG - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1088507)

“It must be a mistake,” I said. “Please redo the tests.”
It was heartbreaking to see him being pricked again in the heel, to squeeze another drop of blood. His little foot was so tiny! Poor baby! He cried in desperation, but it had to be done, right?

The second result came back identical to the first. I doubted that the lab had made a mistake again, so what could be the explanation?

The nurses and the doctor were continuing their routine like nothing unusual was going on. Maybe they thought it was not their business to suggest that perhaps I was an unfaithful spouse. My husband seemed indifferent, too. I was the only one who started to panic. What if they accidentally had swapped the babies?

“When they took him to the nursery, did you follow him all the way?” I asked my husband. “Did you look at him all the time? Was there any moment that he was not in your sight?”
“What?! Of course I did. I followed him everywhere.”
“Are you sure he is ours?”
“No doubt.”

The beautiful baby in my arms was so precious and cute that he made me cry from time to time. (Yeah, maybe my hormones were also a bit out of whack.) I didn’t want to give this baby back, even if he wasn't mine.

I wanted, in case of a mix-up, to go back home with two babies, the one I had started to nurse, to kiss, to hold, and the other one, whom I needed to find. My husband repeated several more times that he had followed him around everywhere, while I was recuperating. I had to give up and say to myself, "Genetics is bogus!"

The next day, the mystery was solved. We learned that my husband's blood type was AB, not A, as he had thought for many decades. I regained my faith in the fact that parents and children share many visible and invisible components of their bodies. The doctor added, “Of course he is yours. He has the darkest hair of all the babies in the whole hospital. I can tell you are his parents from the way he looks.”

Go here for Genetics - Part 2