“You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me!” – Carrying the Message To Our Children – Step 12

My high school grade point average was attacked my tenth grade year by a disastrous experience with Geometry. I spent the summer retaking it, hoping to make up for some of the damage done. The retake helped, but not a lot. Mostly it allowed me to move on. I home schooled my five children through the eighth grade and helped and encouraged them through graduation. Twelve years of math multiplied by five kids was a lot of numbers for this mom. My personal struggle with the subject gave me compassion and patience. Gratefully math education doesn’t start with Geometry! Year after year I encouraged them, repeating over and over the words my dad had repeated over and over to me. “Math is fun. It’s a game!” “Read the instruction; do as many problems as you can; then come work with me until everything is correct and corrected.” That was the process. Chapter after chapter we worked through each years work, one day at a time. Then from ninth through twelfth grade and beyond my children received math instruction from public school mathematicians. I took off my instructor hat and simply encouraged them.

Not wanting them to use me for any kind of excuse to fail, I kept my dismal experience with Geometry to myself. I must admit that when they were each studying the subject, I did a lot more encouraging and praying than assisting. In the spring of her ninth grade year one of my daughters announced that in connection with graduation she and her parents were supposed to attend the school honor night. It was one of those nights that go on and on. We sat and listened and applauded while what seemed like hundreds of awards were given for this and that. It was hot in the auditorium. I was so sleepy, and there seemed to be no end in site.

Then the moment came that made this one of the most remarkable nights of my life. Really! I was jolted nearly out of my seat as I heard my daughter’s name being read as none other than, “The Outstanding Geometry Student of the Year.” Under any other circumstance my response would have been and has been, “That’s my girl!” But Geometry? Outstanding? Student of the Year? Honestly, my great impulse was to stand up and say, “You’ve got to be kidding me! This can’t possible by my child!” But this was not about me. This was about my daughter who turned out to be a mathematical improvement on her mother.

So often I hear the worry in the voices of those of us who are parents and have struggled with mortality. We have experienced everything from “bad habits” to “debilitating and deadly addictions.” We have suffered sometimes quietly alone and sometimes very public humiliation. Our great wish is to somehow avoid passing our bad experiences and the poor way we dealt with life in the past on to our kids. That’s my hope and I am hopeful. I don’t want to live in fear that my imperfections will reach out and somehow grab and bind my children.

I choose to believe that my best invitation for my children to be an improvement on their mother is to have a daily relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, to apply Gospel principles and to continually grow through the Atonement. If I recover in the open, in front of them, there will be other moments, more important than ninth grade honor night, when I will look at them in wonder and in gratitude and think, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

By Nannette W.
Posted Tuesday, November 11 2008

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