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Children

General

What to do when the student hates math

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Hi Everyone,

Alice Wotherspoon's daughter was a good student ... except for math. So, Alice used EFT on all the apparent reasons, but to no avail. In time, however, she found the right approach.

Hugs, Gary


By Alice Wotherspoon

Dear Gary,

I read the transcript of a taped discussion between you and Allan Misch and I was interested in the similarity between his daughter's case and mine. I've used EFT on practically anything as you suggested and also on anyone who was willing to let me treat them and have achieved extremely successful results. In some cases I had instantenous results (jaw-droppers) and others I had to spend a few sessions to root out the core issues but the end result was still an astounding success.

My daughter who is 10 years old also excels in all subjects and is very artistic and creative but when you mention 'math' to her she immediately goes into a complete behavorial change, her dislike of math was so intense, she just shut down and became very unco-operative and her whole body language oozed intense dislike.

Tutoring her in math became a very traumatic event for both of us. Her reason for the dislike was 'math is boring and confusing and I don't like it'. We tapped on that issue but made no headway. So I figured (based on what you say in your tapes) there must be an emoional issue here.

We went back in time to her pre-K class when she was first introduced to math. The teacher asked if anyone knew what 1+1 was, only one boy did. At the time she just wanted to go and play with the sandbox and 1+1 was boring plus confusing. We tapped on that issue but she still hated math and it was still boring and confusing. We therefore tapped on the issue of math being boring and confusing and play is more exciting but we still couldn't make any headway.

We went forward to 1st grade when her favorite teacher said that her weakest side was Math and she preferred English to Math. So we tapped on that too but her attitude towards math was still an intense dislike of 10. We proceeded to tap on various issues that came to mind, and one of them was she didn't want to forgive anyone for causing her this suffering, so we tapped on her forgiving and accepting herself even though she wasn't prepared to forgive.

At the end of an one hour's seemingly fruitless session I suddenly felt a sort of knowing that her dislike had something to do with her not wanting to let go of this attitude and that only she herself has the power to choose between keeping this attitude or letting it go if she wants to. Her explanation was 'math is just boring and of no use to her because her ambition is to be a writer/illustrator and math has no place there'.

Anyway we had a chat about why math was important and she agreed to tap herself saying:

Even though I dislike math and it is not important to me I myself have the power to choose to let go of it and uprooting every part of that dislike if I want to and I deeply and completely forgive and accept myself.

I choose to let go of my intense dislike of math because it is causing me a lot of problems and upsetting everyone.

While tapping she described the intense dislike as green and mushy like mashed potatoes. She really got to like the process and asked if she could use a shovel to dig it out by its roots and I encouraged her to incinerated them. She said they are now burnt to ashes and her exploding caterpillars are eating up all the grey ashes (the exploding caterpillars were her helpers and she was Pinnochio, she chose those characters in a previous EFT session to help her with solving some math problems). She finally ended her tapping with her choice of welcoming the new emotion, 'liking for math' to enter and fill that cleared space now.

When I tested her by writing 1+1 = MATH her reaction was interesting . She saw it as HI = MATH and started writing numbers and turning them into animals like 2 became a dog (she's very artistic) and MATH became a devilish cat next to a kite and a mouse hole. At bedtime she said math was boring but her intense dislike was gone.

One of the side effects of this session was she lost her timidity and became more assertive and also had a happier and more cheerful disposition as if a burden had been lifted off her shoulders.

Tutoring her math is now so easy, she is very attentive and alert and there is a two way communication and sometimes we even make jokes. When I asked her about her emotions toward math she said she just couldn't care less anymore, she felt neutral, the zzzzzzzzt was gone. Three weeks have passed since then and she is still fine.

My heartfelt thanks to EFT. I hope despairing parents with similar problems will find this helpful to them.

Kind regards,

Alice Wotherspoon

Update:

This is an update on the result of those EFT sessions more than 6 months ago. In early January my daughter had to sit for an entrance exam and also a scholarship paper for her 11+. I can now report with quantifiable proof that it was 100% successful. She surpassed herself by passing both her entrance exam as well as bagging the scholarship for the next 7 years.

A tip for parents:
Get your child to tap the 'karate chop' when they doing some memorising work. You'll be surprised how clearly they can recall that piece of work later on.

More articles on Children's Issues

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