When it's Good to Walk Away....

or in this case, drive away.

Yesterday in homeschooling was a bad day. A very bad day. I, at one point, had a vivid, in-color moment of picking Ian up and throwing him against the wall. Nobody needs to call CSP. It was merely a quick moment of insanity brought on by Ian's whining, groveling and writhing.

He did not want to do Math. Like it's something I want to do. I've said it once and I'll say it again; 90% of the world's population do not ever need to know how to divide mix fractions. If there is someone out there that uses this "skill" on a daily, monthly or even a yearly basis, please contact me.

That is the first thing wrong with Math - no one uses it. And don't email me with how we use Math on a daily basis, like the grocery store; that's always the math geeks first line of defense. It's not true. If I want to know how much Kraft mayonnaise is per quart versus Kroger mayonnaise, I look on the label in front of the mayonnaise jars on the shelf eye-level. No math needed to figure that out.

Here's the second thing wrong with Math. The Math books. I told a Math teacher once at Rogue Community College that I might be able to understand math if the book was written with language and there were no numbers. Seriously, it's hard for a person's brain to go back and forth, back and forth between numbers and letters. It's practically impossible for some of us. For example: Susan had four balls, two were red, one was yellow and one was blue. What percentage of balls were red?" I totally understand this - 50%. But, if you say "Susan had 4 balls, 2 were red and 1 was yellow, what % of balls were red?" No one who has a modicum of literacy can figure this out and.....then throw in all those graphs and colors and arrows and weird words such as integers and unknowns  and algebraic expressions...(is algebraic even a word?) well, suffice it to say that if all the math geeks in the world were a little bit more in tune with the real world, they wouldn't say things like "Expressions with Mixed Operations," which you could almost interpret as some sort of bedroom maneuver.

At any rate, after the math book and Ian's whining, groveling and whining, I left the house and drove down to the post office all the while talking on my cell to my husband wondering why HIS son was such a pain in the ass. By the time Mike got home to check on Ian he had done his math, his English, Spanish and was working calmly on History and wondered why his dad was home.
"Mom said you weren't trying very hard."
"She did? Why did she say that?"
"Well, she said you were having a fit over math."
"No, I'm fine. Mom gets kind of worked up over nothing, doesn't she Dad?"
Fortunately Mike is smart enough to not comment; we've been married a long time.