When I was in 3rd grade I was 7 and our math teacher told us to learn multiplication tables till 6. And I didn't get the hang of it.. I didn't understand how from one number we suddenly jumped to 3 ahead or to 6.. And one of my friends didn't either. We were given sums and we couldn't do them so the teacher kept us out of the class as a punishment for not knowing the table of 6 in 3rd grade. When we asked her something she kept telling us we were dumb to not understand what the others had already understood and thus, we were out labelled as the ' dumb in math ' kids for most of the year. She really got our self confidence down. She made two 3rd grade kids who don't even know what an "exam" is feel like failures when it didn't even matter at that time. And you know what sucks? We still think we are dumb at math. If someone asks us something in math, even if we know it we won't answer because we are already pretty sure it is wrong. For most people, punishment is standing outside the class while everyone is inside learning, but for us the punishment is answering a question everyone knows in front of everyone because we have no hope that our answer could be correct. This happened more than 5 years ago and yet if someone asks me a math sum I feel like I am a failure and people will laugh at me. Most of you must be wondering why I'm ranting on. I'm not ranting. My point is, don't make someone who doesn't understand something feel like a failure. Their is a huge difference between being a failure and not understanding something. Once you loose self confidence it's not an easy thing to get again. So just, please be patient. Some people out there need it.
