Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? Nope!

In the past few days of helping Bugs with his homework, I have discovered that all of those Advanced and AP classes I took in high school a few (ahem) years ago did me no good at all. I now remember just barely enough to get him through his 5th/6th grade math, and he will leave me in the dust by junior high. Humbling? Humiliating? I don't know which word fits best. Either way it doesn't feel good at all. I was a smart kid, I breezed through Calculus and a bunch of other nerdy classes. No offense to nerds at all, I freely admit to being one. School was easy for me and I took my God-given gifts for granted. In retrospect, I see that someone should have kicked my butt a few times. I'm sure my parents wanted to. I'm sure they tried. I should have made it a priority to continue learning and using what I had already learned. I could use my many young children as an excuse. I could list ten other lame excuses but it comes down to this. I.have.been.lazy. I want my children to appreciate their gifts and especially their educational opportunities. I have some children who will breeze through every class and some who have to battle through every assignment. Fortunately, God has blessed my "fighters" with the determination and attitude to do well, and I hope I can convince the "breezers" to go the extra mile instead of coasting like their Mom did. I want them to see me struggle with things that were so easy not long ago, because I did not appreciate or use the talents that I was given by my Heavenly Father. I want to remember how it felt to know how, even if that means I must re-learn it all. So, I just enrolled in an online Algebra class at a certain local university (not the red one. As if!) and hopefully I will be better at learning than I am at teaching! I loved math (I already admitted to my nerdiness) and I hope I can rekindle those feelings. I have already started praying, and I'm serious when I say that. I cannot do this on my own. At least the last 20 years have taught me that much.