A Gift of Math - Post 3 of 31 Days of Blogging

Last Friday Bryon picked Grace up from school and went for her annual IEP meeting for her speech therapy. We've had her in speech therapy since she first started to speak and she's done great. They are working on her L's, ch and th sounds mostly now and it looks as though this will probably be the last year she'll have to do it.

I remember going to speech therapy myself when I was small. I went to one of the little trailers between the brick buildings and practiced my s sounds. I guess that runs in the family.

The meeting on Friday was with the school counselor, speech teacher, principal and Grace's teacher. They told Bryon they think she might be gifted in math and suggested we send her to Drury's Summer Quest program this summer for a gifted day camp. I looked it up and it's $200 for a week in June. We'll probably send her. She's pretty excited about the possiblity.

One thing I know for sure is that she did not get any math genes from me. If there are words and numbers in a problem ... I'll pick C every time. And if it's not multiple choice, then it will just be blank because that is exactly the one and only answer that comes up in my brain. A blank. My dad is a banker. My mom worked in a bank. My brother is very good with math. I am not.

I clearly remember my dad sitting me down at the kitchen table one day when I was sixteen and trying to show me how to balance my checkbook. I just couldn't do it. I always told him I was balancing it and went through the motions but it was never right. I finally just started keeping a cushion in it of at least $100 so I would never bounce a check. I haven't balanced my checkbook in 27 years. And yeah, I had to use the computer calculator to figure that out.

If I am asked to do math on the spot, in my head ... forget about it. There is this little black window shade in my mind with a pull dangling down the middle of it that slowly closes to block any possible math answers from getting through to see the light of day. It's a blackout shade. It's a total eclipse of the math.

So if Grace has a chance at working some math wonders, more power to her. I think she's also going to be a good reader and writer. She'll be unstoppable.

She'll just have to ask someone else how to balance her checkbook.