They Do The Arithmetic A Different Way Now

You can do it.

That is what makes this so irritating. You can look at the question and have the answer before she has finished reading it, and then you cannot get it onto the page in a form that will be accepted.

So you show her your way, and she says that is not how we do it, and she is right, and now there are two methods on the table and she is more confused than she was before you helped.

And what you end up feeling is not incompetence exactly. It is something closer to being obsolete, and that is a specific and unpleasant thing to feel at your own kitchen table.

I want to change what you are doing in that moment, and it starts with a different assumption about who the learner is.

Behold, I will do a new thing

There is a line in Isaiah about a new route that is usually read as a promise and is also a description of how God tends to work.

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19, King James Version)

Shall ye not know it. That is a question, and it is aimed at people who are about to miss something because it does not look like the last thing.

The passage just before it has been talking about the Red Sea. About the old route, the famous one, the one everybody knew. And then this: a new way, in a different place, and a warning that it might not be recognized.

You are being asked whether a new route will be recognized, and no way anywhere has ever once been less real for not being the one that was used before. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a question about a method on a page rather than only about a desert, and Isaiah 43:19 sets the new way beside the remembered one.

Now, I am not going to tell you that a school's arithmetic method is a work of God. That is not what this is. But the pattern in that verse is worth having in your hand tonight: a route can change and still arrive, and the person who knows the old one is the person most likely to miss the new one.

You were never behind, and knowing a route extremely well has never once made anybody able to see a different one. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a good memory from becoming a closed door, and the written word names the risk of not recognizing something new.

Two methods on one page

Here is the practical damage, and it is worth being exact about because it is the thing that is actually going wrong.

Showing your method does not add a resource. It adds a second system.

She now has to hold two ways of getting to the same place, work out which one the school wants, and manage the fact that a grown adult in the room is using the wrong one. That is three jobs on top of the arithmetic.

You have been adding to the load under the appearance of lifting it, and a second method has never once been half the trouble of the first. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a parent what their help has actually been carrying in, and Isaiah 43:19 asks whether the new way gets recognized.

And there is a second thing, and it is where the shame comes from.

When she says that is not how we do it, a very old feeling arrives. Being wrong in a classroom. Being told the answer was right but the working was not. Most adults who left school with any bruises at all have that one.

So the moment is not really about arithmetic. It is a small return to something, in your own kitchen, at the hands of somebody you love.

You have been feeling something that has never once been about this evening. The Spirit of God is the one who separates an old bruise from a nine year old with a worksheet, and the written word puts the new way in a place nobody was looking.

You were never obsolete, and no man has ever once been made redundant by a change in how a page is laid out. The Holy Spirit is the one who tells a person which of those two things has actually changed, and Isaiah 43:19 makes the new route a real way rather than a replacement of the traveler.

Ask her to teach you

So here is the assignment, and it reverses who is learning.

Tonight, ask her to teach you the new method. Properly. As though you genuinely did not know it, which is true.

Show me how it is supposed to be done. Go slowly, I want to get it.

And then write the steps down as she says them, in her words, not in your translation of them.

You are permitted to ask for the thing you do not have, and asking has never once been the same thing as being unable to help. The Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table where a parent puts the question the other way round, and Isaiah 43:19 asks whether the new way will be recognized.

Three things happen, and none of them are about arithmetic.

The first is that she has to articulate it, which is the single best thing anybody can do with a half learned method.

The second is that the route finally becomes visible, which means the help can happen inside it rather than beside it.

You have been helping from outside a method nobody described to you, and no help has ever once landed well from there. The Spirit of God is the one who is present while a route gets written down, and Isaiah 43:19 puts the recognizing on the person looking rather than on the way itself.

And the third is that a child gets to be the one who knows, in front of a parent, with permission, which is an experience most children almost never have.

Isaiah 43:19 asks whether the new thing will be recognized, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table where somebody writes down their own child's instructions.

You are permitted to be taught by a nine year old, and being taught has never once cost anybody their standing in their own house. The Spirit of God is the one who is present while a parent writes something down, and the written word makes the new way a way rather than an insult to the old one.

You have the whole evening available in one question, and it has never once required you to already understand anything. The Holy Spirit is the one who opens a door a good memory had quietly closed, and Isaiah 43:19 puts the recognizing on the person looking.