Posted on 04/08/2025 2:38:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Mathematics anxiety is a feeling of tension and fear when dealing with numbers or performing calculations. It is a common form of academic anxiety: according to an OECD report, around 40% of students feel nervous, helpless or anxious in everyday situations involving mathematics, such as solving problems or doing math homework.
We know that mathematics anxiety is present from the first years of primary school, and it interferes with both mathematics performance and mathematics learning. However, the origins of mathematics anxiety are less clear.
Our new research, conducted in collaboration between the universities of Bologna, Trieste and Macerata in Italy and Loughborough University in the UK, addressed the question of whether parents may play a role in the development of children's math anxiety.
We wanted to find out if having a parent who struggled with math anxiety would make it more likely that their child also felt anxious when doing math.
The influence—or not—of anxiety
We followed 126 children from Italy from the age of three until eight, assessing their math skills and level of math anxiety several times along the way. We also measured their parents' mathematics anxiety at the start of the study.
We found that, actually, having a parent with higher levels of math anxiety did not make it more likely that their children would also have math anxiety. This is different to what research has shown about general anxiety: growing up with a parent who suffers from anxiety is linked with a higher chance of developing anxiety.
What we did find was that the children of parents with math anxiety did less well in math.
Throughout the preschool years, children's early numeracy skills were lower if their parents were more anxious about math. And children with lower math skills in their early years still had lower math attainment when they were eight.
These findings are surprising, as one may expect the strong influence of school education on children's math skills to override any parental influence.
We also found that the relationship between parental math anxiety and children's mathematics development was still present when parents' level of education was taken into account. This means that children's lower math achievement couldn't be explained by their parents having a lower level of educational achievement themselves.
These findings add more nuance to the broader question of how beneficial parents taking a role in their children's math development is.
For literacy—learning to read and write—the evidence is unanimous: parents getting involved in shared literacy activities with their children is beneficial. If parents spend more time engaging in reading books together, telling stories or talking with their children, this has a direct positive impact on children's outcomes.
When it comes to math, though, the picture is more mixed. Research does show that the more parents and children engage in shared math activities, such as counting, playing board games or measuring ingredients for cooking, the more children progress in their early numeracy. But the effect is small, and individual studies may show contradictory results.
And sometimes, parents helping their children with math may actually be linked with their children doing worse in math. Previous research, conducted in the United States, found that when parents were anxious about math, their children learned less math, and had higher math anxiety by the end of the school year if parents were helping them with their homework.
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Learning to overcome negative feelings
Our new study adds another piece to this puzzle by further showing that parents may sometimes have a negative influence on their child's math development, even before children go to school.
It is important to keep in mind that parental influence is just one of several factors that relate to children's early mathematics development. Even within the same family, siblings may show big differences in their mathematics skills and confidence. Issues with mathematics may also arise due to other factors, such as dyscalculia, a mathematical learning disability.
Nevertheless, our results suggest that, all other things being equal, parents' feelings about mathematics play a role in children's mathematics development.
For parents concerned about their math anxiety, it is never too late to increase your confidence in math and to learn functional numeracy skills. You can explore adult numeracy classes or take advantage of free online resources to help boost your confidence.
You can also embrace—and help your child adopt—a growth mindset, where you recognize that making mistakes in math is not only okay, but an important part of the learning process.
Even just speaking more positively about math is a good start. Parents who show interest, enthusiasm and encouragement when their children engage with math can make a big difference.
Common core math is horrendous. They want the kids to be able to estimate and variously map out by about 6 different ways roughly what the solution is to an equation instead of giving them one sure way to get the exact answer.
We now have a lot of barely numerate and barely literate college students—and college grads.
I had a terrible time trying to help my kids with the new math. My wife and another gal went in for a couple of years (4th and 5th grade??) to teach them the math tables. “Math in a minute”. They took alternating days and the kids would come out in the hallway and would get tested on the flash cards that they took home. And when they could do them in a minute they would get a new set.
The teachers and principal were 100% behind it. But warned if they ever got caught by the higher-ups they would probably be banned from the school.
One year a teacher kept giving my one daughter poor grades because she didn’t “show her work” using the new math. She would just write down the answer, or use the old math. The teacher even called my wife and I in, worried about her poor grades.
“Are the answers correct?”
“Well yes, but...”
“Great. That’s all we care about. Flunk her if you need to and we can talk about this again if you do.”
Math is all wrong. They tried to tell me pie are squared. No, I said. Pie is round, cornbread are squared.
Oh yes! Pure math just didn’t make sense to me. What did is its applications. Show me how it’s used and I’d ’get it’. Guess I’m too concrete.
Parents don’t fear math..
Parents fear the psychological crap that now passes as math.
If you have to go to the school and take a class so you can help your child with 3rd grade math..
IT IS NOT MATH!!!!
Math is absolutes, there is no guesswork.
2+2 always equals 4.
4×4 always equals 16.
24÷4 always equals 6.
W6is being taught today is not math
I know you are being a bit facetious about doing new math, but there are old math expressions which are nonsensical.
My son said “1/2 TIMES 1/2 doesn’t make any sense, dad.”
I said you are right. We shouldn’t say 1/2 times 1/2, we should say
What is 1/2 OF 1/2 ?
Saying it that way makes it easier to show and draw an explanation of the problem.
Draw a box. Draw a vertical line down the middle to make two halves.
Now draw a horizontal line across the middle of the box to turn the box into fourths.
The first line created the one-half
The second line created the one-half OF one-half.
Any fraction is a representation of something less than a whole.
1/2 means one half of a whole.
So the problem is asking what is 1/2 of 1/2 of one whole?
When calculating the answer one has to look at the whole, not just half of the box we drew.
The whole in this case consists of four-fourths.
Two fourths = one half
1/2 OF 1/2 or 1/2 OF two-fourths = one fourth - which is the answer to the problem.
That my son understood because using the word OF instead of TIMES made the problem easy to illustrate and way more logical.
Perhaps you should actually read some of those books of the past.
We did using table first, especially the addition and multiplication. The teacher wanted to remember at least up to 9x9 by heart.
Quadratic equations are not hard if you pay attention.
The children are not paying attention, they have been given no reason to.
Me with failing grades were not acceptable at home.
I didn’t have to be best in class, I was expected to pass.
“So, we need to see that 23+14 means 2 parts of ten plus 1 part of ten. Then 3 units plus 4 units of singles We then have 3 parts of ten (30) and 7 single units, which total 37. Bingo!”
LOL. When I see 23+14. I add left to right “3” then “7”, and if there’s something to carry, then I go back and deal with that - virtually by sight, as you suggested. None of the crap from above is needed if you’re taught right in the first place, as I was.
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