Many parents are working with their children on schoolwork much more than usual, given the fact that we are all adjusting to the homebound education forced by the pandemic of 2020. If you notice that your child becomes anxious over math or reading tasks, then this blog is for you. As a former high school math teacher, I saw math anxiety first-hand almost every day. When you see a capable student worry that they are not smart enough to solve a math problem, this is the beginning of Math Anxiety. This insecurity can grow into a very debilitating self-perception that prevents even attempting math calculations. This is often commonly lumped into being the same, or similar to, Test Anxiety. This blog is ONLY about Math or Reading Anxiety, and Test Anxiety is a another story altogether, and a topic of a future blog soon to come. Reading Anxiety is a very similar fear, usually stemming from shame or embarrassment while reading. This ego-damaging experience sometimes causes the brain to view reading as threatening, which then can spiral into a real problem. My goal in this blog is to help parents whose children may experience Reading or Math Anxiety by helping to frame the approach when working with your child at home on schoolwork with three priorities.
To understand the problem further, it is important to realize that Math or Reading Anxiety can begin at any age. Reading Anxiety typically forms in the Kinder through 5th-grade experience and influences reading for life, unless it is addressed. When students who have missing background skills in math feel a stress reaction when that missing skill is called upon, we all understand how that produces fear and anxiety. But, why is it that some students, without lacking skills, STILL experience debilitating math anxiety? How can you prevent your child from having Math or Reading Anxiety, and grow their Math or Reading confidence? Emotions play an indescribably large role in learning. As parents, your child loves you and desires to please you the MOST and so you have the MOST POWER when it comes to influencing them. My Learning Coach practice has focused on working with thousands of anxious students and their parents full-time since 2005, prior to that it was amazing to me, as a high school teacher how frequently I witnessed students debilitated by Math or Reading Anxiety! I feel passionate about this topic and focused my career around these issues with the school which I founded at that time and my neuroscience research and current work to this day.
Math Anxiety is prevalent, and research has found that it occurs in roughly 20% of students at any level, kinder through college. Math Anxiety is a reason those who experience it do poorly in math, not the other way around, as most think. Many psychologists feel it is a diagnosable issue and the reason why is that Math Anxiety inhibits the working memory in the brain. Working memory is the short-term memory system that we use to temporarily store and manage the information we are using to reason, draw conclusions and process information that is required in mathematical thinking. We need working memory to perform math tasks, without it we cannot. An example of Working Memory is when a student has a hard time following through with a series of instructions or steps of a task. Not to be confused with Short Term Memory, which is used when a student must recall a homework assignment or remember a story they read earlier in the day. Long Term Memory is used to retrieve the facts and information studied earlier for a test. As parents, we need to notice patterns in our student’s struggles with different memory tasks in order to help them. Low ability working memory is often associated with low intelligence, so it is an important skill to practice. MIT’s research, shows members of the Miller lab have also shown how groups of neurons are coordinated, demonstrating how a large-scale, precisely timed interplay of brain rhythms correlate with goal-directed control of working memory functions such as storing or releasing, information from being in mind. Research by Fry, Hale, & Bronik shows that working memory can be increased with training, see their MRI evidence that more of the brain is activated with training. We know that brain is a use it or lose it muscle that needs challenge and experiences to grow. So, yes, playing that game of Memory with your kids, challenging them to remember where certain cards are hidden (turning all 52 cards upside down and choosing two at a time to find a match) is a meaningful game to help your child grow their working memory!
The first priority is to check the emotions and attitudes with a conversation about their feelings and experiences. When the student is struggling with thinking through the steps in a math problem- that is a sign to stop and check emotions. Math requires you to be observant, careful, creative and curious at the same time while calling upon things you have learned. Calmly noticing details, reading and then rereading, allowing yourself to decide what it is that you know to help you get to a solution. You need to hold ideas in your mind and try them out. This requires working memory, thinking of ideas and seeing if they “make sense”. It is impossible to do all of those things when you are grumpy or negative. Teaching your child the emotion to bring to math is such a BIG part of their battle to succeed. This is the place to begin. Anxiety becomes a pattern and creates a loop that is strengthened and intensifies the longer a person experiences it. If your brain is experiencing stress, doing this is nearly impossible. Eliminating math anxiety requires calming down the flight or fight fear response which is activated by the amygdala in the brain. I have seen a very similar response to reading by those students who struggle to read or have had a traumatic life event or a reading humiliation. Divorce causes academic stress in students for a 1-2 year period or longer. Special awareness of this deserves mentioning here. The fear of reading can look very similar to the well-accepted Math Anxiety, and I believe there is such a thing as Reading Anxiety. Those parents whose child may show different reading abilities to different people are reflecting their sense of safety in situations, and maybe you are seeing this in your child with different math teachers, language arts teachers or when with different parents. The brain’s perception of safety is key to the best working memory. Safety is perceived by the brain as no threat. If making a mistake is worrisome in math, then they are not safe. If a reading error is perceived as disappointing the parent or themselves, then they are not safe. If you want your child’s best performance, then you want them to feel safe, calm, curious and creative. This is true for both Reading and Math.
Missing background skills are essential to address in both Reading and Math as a second priority. I think we can all understand how “math anxiety” can build and erode math confidence when there is a needed skill lacking. Parents I work with, seem to grasp the “building block” concept of math depending on previous skills to build the new skill. For example, you cannot divide until you can multiply. You cannot read if you do not learn how to spell, and spelling is the leading literacy indicator. If your child is a poor speller, then this is holding back their writing skills and reading comprehension skills. The longer this is not addressed, then the more unbalanced their literacy skills become and then the comprehension will get stuck at some point and not grow any further. If spelling is your child’s issue, then I highly recommend a literacy specialist get involved! As a person who also teaches calculus, I can say that it is a complex thing to repair spelling or orthographic skills. Not possible for me to teach this in a blog, but I can advise that you. need a reading specialist. Elementary teachers are primarily reading teachers, utilize their expertise if your child is in elementary school. If your child is older, secondary English teachers are not equipped to remediate reading problems, and I recommend you get a specialist involved. Knowing when to involve outside help is important to recognize. Go back to a level where your child is confident and comfortable, and move forward as a general rule of thumb.
The third priority to prevent Math or Reading Anxiety is to influence your child with your family culture at home. One great way is through Family Time when everyone reads for pleasure. This ignites new conversations when everyone shares what they were reading about, and provides content for meaningful conversations. See my blog on conversations that raise your child’s IQ if you have not read that already. Games are another way to challenge the brain in a way associated with play. Blocks and puzzles are always a winner because they provide opportunities to talk about spacial relationships. Board games and card games offer logic and strategic thinking! Everyday conversations can spark math to talk about, for example, counting, talking about the size of things, estimating, doubling a recipe, or noticing patterns in nature or a quilt. By initiating and engaging with your child in these types of conversations, you are also valuing and modeling mathematical thinking in a calm, curious state of being, as they need to be. Modeling a positive approach and attitude is more important than the topics you discuss. Sharing your fears of math, your hatred of math is like giving your child a problem. Please do not make that stance one you model for your child. Remember how it is natural and even subconscious how much children model their attitudes and actions from their parents. Modeling a positive attitude, with abundant curiosity and a willingness to ponder challenging tasks is incredibly powerful for your child to learn a positive approach.
Every mistake is a learning opportunity, skip the “feel bad” part. This was a motto at the school I founded, and it was posted in every room. This in itself helped students to stay positive through learning challenges. Think of the pressure and negative assumptions kids put upon themselves in the experience of a mistake. This is true especially in a world where work is “graded” and then they move on without the focus is learning from mistakes. One of my big issues with our school system today…. we need to slow down and help students recover what we see they missed, but do not get me started… How does your student perceive their errors? This is the perfect place for a parent to reframe HOW your child perceives themselves during a mistake. Realize how your reaction impacts your child’s feelings about themselves. Many students create negative self-talk about mistakes in their heads that you or their teacher never hear. What is your child saying to themselves? Have you ever asked them? This is about checking to see if your child has a “fixed mindset” or a “growth mindset”. That is another blog in an of itself which I am writing for next week. But it plays a big role in a student feeling anxiety.
So, to review the three priorities parents can have when working with their students. First, be aware of and check your child’s emotions when they are reading and doing math. Talk to them about how it feels to approach something negatively and how it feels to approach something positively. Teach your child that there is a choice for how t0 approach learning. The second priority is to assess if your child is missing background information needed to read, like knowing more vocabulary, or looking up words when needed, or if they cannot read the words, showing that the level is too high and they need to raise their reading levels, or if they struggle with reading confidence. An observant parent can see if their child is spelling many words wrong when they write, which is a sign of missing orthographic knowledge. Maybe a specialist is needed if these issues are present, but first, it must be observed. Lastly, the Third priority is to bring a positive reading culture and a positive math thinking culture to your child’s home environment. Do not underestimate the power of your child’s loving home environment associated with fun with reading and math! It is really the most influential thing a parent can do for their child. I hope this blog is motivating you to interact with your child or children with a new purpose.