
Last night, my son asked me to quiz him in preparation for a geometry test. He handed me his notebook and pointed to the shapes and definitions he needed to memorize. Then he sat back, ready and waiting.
"Define a rhombus," I said.
He quickly replied, "An equilateral quadrilateral!"
I looked at his notes where he had written "a parallelogram with four equal sides" in a messy scrawl and said, "Wrong!"
I handed the notebook back to him and suggested he review his notes before we tried again.
He took the notebook and looked at the definition and said, "Mom! That's the same thing I just said. I'm right. I just used different words!"
He then explained why they were the same and I zoned out because math (in general) and geometry (specifically) have never been my strong suits.
I remember, in high school, sitting at the dining room table with my father as he tried to help me with first algebra and then geometry. He was so patient, going over the same material time and time again as he tried to help me understand the concepts. I had no patience for him, however, and our homework sessions often ended with me crying and yelling, "You don't know anything!"