David Geary

So before they've had any type of instruction,

the kids of math-anxious parents just weren't doing well.

And it looked like the math-anxious parents were avoiding numeracy activities, had low beliefs in their own math abilities, and actually did have lower math achievement.

So I suspect they're avoiding numeracy activities with their kids at home, which is putting their kids at a disadvantage really, you know, before they're even four years old.

Well, I wish it was that simple.

Some of our other studies have shown that it's really the complexity of number talk, the ways in which parents talk to kids about numbers and magnitudes and so forth, that makes a difference.

So you just can't tell parents, okay, well, count more, do more of this or do more of that or whatever.

It actually has to be done in a very specific way to have an effect.

Well, so other studies have done interventions where you might have a storybook or whatever, and in that book, the kid comes up on five flowers, for example.

The parent states five flowers.

That five represents the quantity there.

And then for it to work though, the kid has to count one, two, three, four, five, and then the five has to be emphasized again.

to highlight that the number word five represents the set of five objects.

So very, very specific type of stuff.

It's kind of like what

the old Sesame Street used to do, but that wasn't very effective because the kids weren't directly engaged in it.

So it involves a sequence of events and engaging in kids in certain acts to get them to generate this conceptual understanding.

Well, I think that, you know, because we've identified the basic skills and other people have found interventions at work to build these basic skills, that programs can be developed for parents to use with their preschool kids.

And even math-anxious parents can use them because it's actually, they know enough about

to help their kids.