Okay, first let me say that I have never said this to my children. Second, I absolutely do not hate reading. I love it. Settling in with a book or magazine at the end of the day is one of my favorite things, and I cherish lazy Sundays with the newspaper spread out before me.

So yes, reading is great, for pleasure and for information. Being a writer, I think that reading as much as I can across content areas makes me do my job better. Okay, so what’s my point?

What if your child came home one day, and said that their teacher said, “Ugh, I HATE reading!” What would you do? Call the school? Email the teacher? Have your child’s ears checked? Most parents would demand some sort of explanation, and rightly so.

Luckily, I’ve never heard of this happening. When I was teaching, I certainly never heard any of my colleagues tell their students this (even though for some, reading might not have been their favorite activity). But several educators I knew did utter one troubling phrase to their students on more than one occasion.

“Ugh, I HATE math.”

Yep, you read it right. Teachers admitted to their students that they hated math. Not only did they say this, they’d give a little shudder or back away when a student asked them a math questions. This is not okay.

Now as you probably assume, teachers who admitted to hating math were not, in fact, math teachers. They taught other subjects like social studies or language arts or health. But really, should that matter? Would it be okay for a math teacher to say that he hates reading? Probably not.

The truth is, there’s a lot of math anxiety out there. This is not news. In fact, a recent PBS kids survey found that thirty percent of parents with school age kids were anxious about helping their children with math. To me, this is a major red flag. There is a bigger issue here than just a fear of math.

Kids, as we know, are very impressionable. The adults in their lives have a big influence over them, particularly their teachers, but more so their parents. If kids are hearing from adults – particularly adults they view as intelligent, successful, and important – that it’s okay to hate math or “not be a math person,” what message are we sending them?

We’re telling them that they don’t have to try.

Now I am not what I would consider a “math person.” In fact, math was always difficult for me, and I didn’t really understand it until I had to teach it. But I think that’s what made me able to teach it. I could anticipate where kids would struggle, where the gaps in understanding would be, and I could also figure out how to help them. After all, I’d struggled through it on my own, so why not help others with the struggle?

All children are not going to excel in every subject; we, their parents, certainly didn’t (okay maybe some of you did, but not me). Instead of teaching them that some stuff is hard and we don’t want to deal with it, we need to teach a different lesson. Yes, things are hard, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try. That doesn’t mean you don’t struggle. After all, struggling is how we learn.

So the next time your child comes home and wants help with math – or any other subject you find less than desirable – don’t recoil with unpleasant memories. Be honest. Tell them that yeah, this school stuff is difficult, but it’s nothing they (and you) can’t handle.