I attended Oakland University in Rochester, MI. with a focus on business administration.

Since then the majority of my professional career has been spent in various forms of finance and training people in the field. Interestingly, I have found that the mathematical foundation that I acquired in my earliest school years, not only served me well in my career, but could also be used as a logic based guide in how to think quickly and rationally in many high stress situations.

This is the main reason that I'd like to teach your child early math. The underpinning that it provides goes far beyond simple arithmetic.

When I think back to my own youth and how resistant I was to school in general, it was the approach to math instilled in me by caring grown ups that made me see things differently. Of course, I wouldn't have been able to describe it at the time, but as an adult looking back, I realize how much it helped me in all my school subjects and relationships throughout my life. It's not just numbers, it's a way of thinking and it can be personalized.

In my experience with my own daughter, her struggles with the subject were more about not being able to adjust to an uncomfortable, or in her own words "weird way of doing stuff" than the actual processes of addition, multiplication, etc. She couldn't relate. She needed a point of reference that she could relate to. She would lose focus and become easily distracted.

By channeling pieces of her personal life and her likes (favorite dolls, and TV shows) into her learning process, I was able to create that point of reference. Suddenly she could understand how math was already in her life and how she could use numbers and their relationships to express herself more. To an elementary school aged girl , being able to express herself was huge and she was all about it. She became quite proficient at the subject and her confidence improved as her skillset improved.

That sense of confidence and accomplishment has carried over extremely well as she continues on in her academics and in her life.

I hope to do the same for your child.