johngorse

I'm watching my 5th grade son excel at math and it's bringing back some intense memories of my own school experience. He's doing really well right now, but I'm terrified he might end up on the same path I did.

Despite getting decent grades in elementary math (around a B), I completely crashed and burned in high school. Failed my first year math class, barely scraped by with D's the rest of high school. College was even worse - managed to pass one math course with a C, but didn't pass the second required course until literally my final semester before graduation.

The whole time I was dealing with serious math anxiety. My heart would race during tests, I'd freeze up completely, and I convinced myself I was just "not a math person." It wasn't until I was almost done with college that I had this lightbulb moment - math isn't some mysterious force, it's literally just following rules and procedures. But by then, years of anxiety had already damaged my confidence.

Now I'm watching my son and I'm scared. He's confident now, but what happens when the material gets harder? How do I prevent him from developing the same mental blocks I had?

I've been reading about math anxiety in kids and found some helpful resources: https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety/helping-kids-manage-math-anxiety, https://math4fun.io/blog/overcoming-math-anxiety-in-children.html, but I'd love to hear from other parents who've been through this. Did anyone else struggle with math anxiety? How did you help your kids avoid the same pitfalls?

Any teachers or math tutors here with advice on keeping kids confident as the material gets more challenging?

I have a day job and I want to start a side project, but I'm a bit of an introverted person. I looked at a lot of growth and marketing YouTube videos and almost all of them suggest reaching potential customers. A lot times you don't even have the idea and the gurus just suggest that you reach some random people that you know and ask them if they have some pain points in their business. Things get complicated, because If you do, you often get refused that you just want to sell them some app they don't need. So I started to think that maybe some side project ideas board would be great.

I guess title is self-explanatory.

.. and be as productive as if you are in the office or even more productive.

I'm 38, in IT from 2003, did switch 6 full time jobs in my career. Almost every week for the last year I received 2 or 3 job offers, some of them with far bigger salary that my current position. I declined all of them, because I don't want to leave my current team. They are excellent co-workers, even friends, we have a great time togehter. Where is a breaking point in salary for you, that you would switch job in my case?

I have a full time job as full stack developer, wife and 2 kids. I commute every day 1 hour in each direction. On a work day I woke up at 5:30 am, wash, dress and jump in a car at 6:00 am, so that I can be at work at 7:00 am. I usually go home at 3:00 pm and if there is no traffic jam I am at home at 4:00 pm. I eat something, change clothes, clock says 5 pm and I try to spend some quality time with my wife and kids. Kids go to bed at 8 pm and at 9 pm I am exhausted as hell, and I fell to bed. And this repeats every work week.

On weekends I barely have time for my side projects (one is familyokjobs.com, which I created over several weekends when wife and kids were sleeping), because there is always something to do around the house. What I'm trying to say: where do you take time for your side projects or studying new technologies?