Math girl

Drew and I almost got into an argument the other night about Rachel and math. Probably because of my math phobia, which started when I was in 5th grade and flunked Roman numerals (it took a fellow volunteer in Africa in 1992, a math whiz, to tell me, "Lisa, you understand that Roman numerals have NOTHING TO DO WITH MATH, don't you?"), I really want to push Rachel ahead of her class in math. She had been getting challenge math packets for a while, but then that stopped about a month or so ago, and when I remarked on it, Drew said casually, "I think the rest of the class caught up with her."

So the other night I told him that I don't want Rachel to be doing math at grade level, I wanted her to be doing math ahead of the other kids (like she is in reading). He replied strongly that he doesn't want to push her too much so that she'll end up hating it, and he reassured me that he intends to give her math worksheets throughout the summer so she won't lose any skills. I have to be content with that, I guess, since I'm not around at night to monitor things.

When I got home from work the other night, Drew gave me a strange look and said, "I don't think we have to worry about Rachel not doing well in math." Then he proceeded to tell me that as she was setting the table for dinner, she suddenly said, "I think I understand division. It's like multiplication, but backwards. So, 100 divided by 10 is 10."

As Drew told me later, "She definitely is able to grok math." So, I'll stop worrying. This week.