How to deal with this?

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So, I am helping my 9 y/o daughter with math homework. I note that she has solved 16 x 4 incorrectly. I point it out to her and ask her to solve it again. She gets the wrong answer again. I do the problem for her, speaking out loud as I solve it so she can see how it works and I tell her the answer is 64. She tells me that I am wrong and that she is right, so I get a calculator to show her. She then gets very angry and yells "Stop trying to prove me wrong!" I explained that I didn't need to prove her wrong because there is only one possible answer to the question and she just got more and more upset.

Has anyone ever dealt with this, or could anyone explain to me why she sees it this way? I certainly don't want to argue with her, but I can't have her thinking she can arbitrarily change math answers to suit her desires. 16 x 4 is 64. It's just what it is.

She's probably embarrassed that she got the answer wrong.
I'd say something like, "Everyone gets math problems wrong sometimes, including me." That way she knows you're not judging or making fun of her.

I don't know if this will work


If it also happens again tell her we all get wrong answers which is why we help each other out.
That you hope that if she finds a wrong answer that she will help you solve it.

^^^This, people get "attached" to their own answer. Adults do it too. And to be fair, it IS annoying to be proved wrong for some reason (the rational response would be to thank someone for pointing out you messed up, so you can do better in the future... but few people work that way).
Maybe it would help if you did not just point out the answer with a calculator, but offer several different ways of solving it by writing it down? 16 x 4:
You could do 10 x 4 + 6 x 4 = 40 + 24 = 64
Or you could do 16 + 16 + 16 + 16 = 32 +16 +16 = 32 +32 = 64
I always found it easier by writing it out at first, and mathematics in secondary school is more about the procedure than the answer itself.

I also have a nine year old, and I swear there is some sort of hormonal shift that happens at this age that makes them more argumentative/ unreasonable/ sensitive. Recently, he had a report and was given a guide with all the parts that were supposed to be included in it and gave examples. He did not follow the assignment guidelines even remotely on the first draft, argued that he knows better than I how to do his own report, then blew up at me when I pointed out that he was missing most of the guidelines. He yelled: "Stop trying to correct me! IT's my report!" I think maybe they also are trying to be more independent and trying to take more ownership of their own ideas at this age too, and part of the development process is to argue their view against their parents even when it is not reasonable. I ended up letting it go, and the teacher made the exact same comments on it that I gave him, but he was ok with it coming from her. Then, he revised it.

Maybe next time, let it slide and let the teacher point out the mistake?

Maybe she just doesn't understand how 16 x 4 = 64 and got frustrated?

The calculator is very abstract and probably wouldn't help a person understand at all, and the way that you're supposed to "show your work" doesn't match everyone's understanding of numbers (I was good at math in elementary and early secondary school but I had a very, very hard time following the "show your work" steps -- they made no sense to me.)

Maybe show her, literally (using dots or objects), 4 groups of 16 or 16 groups of 4? I know it seems really slow and painstaking, but if it more closely matches her way of thinking it will actually be faster for her to see it that way in the long run.

At 9, they are probably well into drilling math facts and passed the "how" stage, so I am guessing she just regurgitated the wrong memorized fact, or something, which is not such a big deal, except that she made it one, because she was in "I must be right" mode.

She probably had this table http://www.mathsisfun.com/tables.html either last year or the year before. I would just matter-of-factly print one out ask her if she recognizes the chart, and let her know you are putting one near her homework area for checking purposes.

Then if you get in that spot again, where you have to correct her, you can check the chart when she is wrong, so it is the chart telling her she is wrong, and not you, per se. This might depersonalize it and make it less of an ego thing for her.

She will have to hear it from multiple sources, most likely, and then proof it out for herself in her own way.

Just let it move onto the back burner for now.

I've had some fun with my son over the years making "bets" on facts he was firmly, and incorrectly, set on, so if that could work with her personality, you can play that game. Eventually there will be something she gets right that you were sure she was wrong on and then she will love that game. One item like that alone will make up for everything.

Let her meltdown over this, so she can learn to deal with making mistakes and being wrong.

Teach her counting posts (or whatever it is called in English), she probably can't imagine so abstract operation - the posts will show her a way to do it without need to imagine abstract stuffs. In posts you clearly see whats happening to the numbers when you multiply them in one step at a time, with no need to use much working memory.

`16
x`4
`__
`24 (4*6)
+4 (4*1)
`__
`64 (2+4, 4)

Thats how I learned multiplying numbers bigger than 10 when I was a kid. The methods teachers were showing us were ineffective in my case but my grandma showed me the posts and I got it in no time. I learned to use the posts method before anyone in my class even heard about it.

Out of curiosity - what answer did she give for the 16x4? It would be nice to see her reasoning. She wouldn't be so angry with you if she wasn't sure her answer is right so she must use some interesting, alternative math that gives her that conclusion. She wouldn't get her answer out of nowhere.

Wow. I wish I knew what the counting post are called in English. My older son has Dyslexia and has a really hard time with multiplication. He gets the concept but makes so many computation mistakes because he really has a hard time memorizing facts that are abstract. His mind gets jumbled in the process.

I found the name. It is called long multiplication:
http://www.wikihow.com/Do-Long-Multiplication
(although the "counting posts" is general name for long adding, substracting, multiplication and division)

Last edited by Kiriae on 11 Dec 2014, 7:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thank you so much!

This is a valid point and when she was younger, the entire family's life was built around avoiding meltdowns...until I realized that I was doing her a disservice in making her think that the world should always adjust to make her happy. That's not the way it works. I suppose the same is true here...she is going to be wrong on occasion and has to be able to deal with it.

Ironically, she had an issue at school yesterday in which she had an altercation with another kid during group work because the kid was wrong and would not listen to her corrections and just continued to insist she was right. I said to her "Hmmm....I guess now you know how I felt." She did not know what I meant until I told her I knew another girl who insisted she was right when she was wrong and got mad when I tried to tell her the truth. She buried her head into my lap and started making a frustrated growling sound, but when she lifted her head up, she was smiling...so I know she sees exactly what happened.

I did use long multiplication to try to show her how to do it, btw. I think I should print out a table like the one you referenced, ASDMommy...she has an odd profile with math. When it comes to math facts, she has been rated a "1" on her report card (not meeting grade level expectations), but when it comes to math concepts she got a "4" (above grade level). Her frustration is probably related to knowing how to do the problem, but not getting the right answer because she has a hard time recalling simple facts. Come to think of it, I was the same way when I was her age. I could not recall my multiplication facts to save my life, for example, and it made me conclude that I was stupid and bad at math, yet my brain actually follows mathematical reasoning quite easily and I am really good at things like Einstein's Riddle. I still have to think with any math fact--none of them just pop into my head--and I often count on my fingers, which is odd because I know my IQ is high, so you would think I would just be able to remember it.

She goofed-- that's embarrassing. Because, when you're nine, no mistake equals smart and mistake or don't know equals stupid.

Not only did she goof-- she didn't catch it. She defended the mistake. That's embarrassing cubed.

You can let the teacher catch it and not have to deal with the meltdown...

...or you can catch it and try not to make too big a deal out of the meltdown.

My opinion, the answer is, "Everyone makes mistakes. That's why you check your work. Everyone misses mistakes. That why you have someone else check your work."

Repeated as often as necessary, possibly in between screams or while dodging thrown objects.

Of course, I had to luck into my hubby checking some other engineer's blueprints and redlining his mistakes while the kids were doing homework one night in order for DD to finally get this through her head (at 12-- I think she was 8 when she wrote "I HATE MOMMY" on the front door in black Sharpie over me correcting her spelling in her spelling homework).

In other words-- batten down the hatches, here comes the Hormone Hurricane. If that's the worst it gets, give thanks daily.

And yes, at 9, she does absolutely still need the tables. I don't know WHY people don't let kids have a table. It's hard enough to memorize all those if you have autistic recall and no problems with stress or working memory (I didn't have too many with school stuff because it came easily and I was confident, and there is no way I could have trotted that out of my head at 9).

The table doesn't have to include every possible multiplication problem up to 100*100. It only has to go up to 9*9, because that's the largest number you're going to work with in long multiplication. The other thing it needs to include is a chart of the procedure.

That takes care of memory fail, computational error, and procedural error. Hopefully that will lower the stress level enough that she can get familiar with the process. All that leaves is "addition mistake..."

...and my ADHD hubby made enough of those to cost him a full letter grade (or more) in most of his college math and lower-level engineering classes. Now they all use calculators all the time (still dragging around his faithful TI-89), but I note that they still redline each others' work.