Griffin is 13 years old and seems to be coming to the end of that early adolescent phase of rejecting everything those around him hold dear. Engaging him in math talk has taken more finesse in this phase of life.
Mostly it has involved giving him responsibility for things that involve making calculations. When he was little, we could talk collaboratively about how many tangerines are in a 3 pound bag and discuss whether this would be enough to last the family a week. Now I tend to put him in charge of getting enough tangerines to last us a week. He still has to do the same thinking, but he’s in charge.
This is not enough tangerines for a week at our house. (By the way, which is more?)
From time to time, though, we still put a mathematical idea up for discussion, and as he ages through adolescence, these conversations happen a bit more often. Yet he is still wary. Nevertheless, I persist.
We have been watching the Olympics, and we have wondered about which events are happening as we watch them, and which ones happened earlier (yet somehow happened “tomorrow”!)
Griffin was thinking about time zones, and about their implications for traveling as we wrapped up an evening this week, and made preparations for the next day.
Griffin (13 years old): So they’re 14 hours ahead of us?
Me: Yes.
G: You’d get a lot of jet lag, huh?
Me: Yeah. Maybe not as much as it looks like, though. Maybe it’s just 10 hours’ worth, going the other way.
There is a bit of a puzzled silence.
G: Wait. Really?
Me: Yeah. Well, plus a day.
G: Wait. Is this one of your mathy talks?
Me: Absolutely not.
If you’re reading this, Griff, I’m sorry (sort of). I am totally busted.
Me: Yeah. 14 hours ahead is the same as 10 hours behind, right? Just going the other way.
G: But the day would be wrong.
Me: Yeah. You have to add a day, but you don’t get jet lag because the day changes, you get jet lag because the time of day does.
G: Maybe.
He returns to packing his lunch. I go back to whatever I was doing. Putting turtles in boxes, probably.
A couple minutes later…
G: So the east coast is 23 hours behind us?
So What Do We Learn?
Keep trying. Opportunities to talk about numbers, shapes, and patterns present themselves. Seize them and do not stop. Ask questions, think out loud. Don’t worry about whether any particular conversation goes anywhere. Just keep at it.