It’s happened with almost every one of my nieces and nephews: My mom and I are visiting a beloved baby, and said baby realizes his mother has left the room. He looks from his grandmother to his aunt with rising panic. “Who are these people? Where is my mother?” His face crumples and he begins to wail, inconsolable.

It’s so cute and sad. The baby cannot possibly comprehend the depth of our love. He can’t imagine the lengths we would go to protect him from harm or see to his needs. He doesn’t understand that he’s hanging out with two people who will be unconditionally devoted to him forever. All he sees is his own fear. He just wants mom.

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One of the things I enjoy about life in 2020 is how easy it is to travel light.

I can run multiple businesses from a laptop and smartphone. I’ve got a camera, calculator, address book, and anything else I might need, right in my pocket.

Under such circumstances, I might be able to get away with the illusion that I’m independent — self-sufficient. But nothing could be further from the truth.

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A common lament of people in the healing profession is that people ascribe aches and pains to “getting older” instead of investigating and addressing the root of the issue with a professional.

This “Oh well!” attitude is mirrored by the way many of us approach kids’ difficulty in school.

The sentiment, unexamined, is that “school sucked for me, too,” or “that’s just the way it is.”

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While the other children around him settled into their lunchtime routine, one eleven-year-old stood agitated in front of the silent microwave. “Ah!” he yelled, and pressed buttons wildly. “Grrr!” He banged on the machine in frustration.

One of the teachers walked over and said gently, “We say, ‘Hey, could I have some help with this?’” She showed the student which buttons to press, and he was on his way.

That this student is unable to intuit how to use that particular microwave is no big deal; however, his inability to ask for help is a major problem. He’s not alone — this is something we see over and over again with children and adults.

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I was playing outside with one of my nephews (because I am an exceedingly lucky person, I have five of them). We were throwing poorly inflated balls back and forth, following the kind of arbitrary and unfair rules favored by young children.

In other words, he made the rules, and I followed them.

We threw our balls in the same direction, where they landed side by side in the wet grass. “You lost that time,” he said. “You say, “Darn!”

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What if there was a treatment that, while it might make life uncomfortable for a week or so, would allow your child to complete math homework in a fraction of the time for the rest of her school career?

GOOD NEWS! THIS TREATMENT EXISTS! It’s called memorizing your times tables.

Seriously. Whenever a student’s work takes longer than it should, weak multiplication knowledge is often to blame.

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