4th Grade Math
This is hilarious but sad! You know the new show called “Are you smarter than a 5th grader” that is out? It pairs adults against 5th graders and usually the adults are embarrassed by the 5th graders because they can’t answer any of the 5th grade questions that is posed to them.
Well, I can now say that I know how they feel. I guess that I should be even more embarrassed than the contestants on the show because I seemed to have not been able to get through a section of my sons 4th grade math assignment.
I love helping my son with his homework. Its a great way for he and I to connect though I do need to work on my patience level at times. Last week he was sick a few days so he missed some of his math lessons which means he didn’t learn how to do them.
So, he brings the homework home and says to me “Dad, I was sick on those days and I don’t know how to do these certain assignments…” So, being the “man” that I am I stepped up to the plate and went at the problems with him. For some reason I didn’t think that I would have a problem with “mixed fractions” and “whole numbers.” It seems that I also didn’t want to remember that I wasn’t a very good math student in school.
So, here I am going over this stuff and I have no idea what the heck I am doing. His math book had all of the graphs and the explanations of this assignment but I still just couldn’t seem to get it. Its one of those things that you are looking at the problems and can somewhat understand it but can’t seem to put it on paper. It was hilarious yet frustrating!
I thought that I had turned a corner with the problems and began to help my son with a section of answers. So, we finish it up and we are feeling pretty good about ourselves that we took the task head on and finished it.
So here’s how this whole deal ended up…I pick up my son from school the next day and his first words to me were…”Dad, the section you helped me with was all wrong…” I was like, “Are you kidding me!” “None, of the answers were right!” He looked right at me and said “None Dad!”
Oh my gosh! I couldn’t believe it but yet I had to laugh at myself. It was pretty comical! So, here I am…Mr. Entrepeneaur and Mr. Risk Taker but I can’t seem to get a handle on 4th grade math. I think that God has a way of bringing us guys back to a place of reality and humility.
I would love to hear some of your thoughts or stories that made you just sit back and go, hmmmmmm! We all have had one experience or another that we can just sit and laugh about. Please share so we can all get a good laugh at ourselves.
