Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader ?

I don't know about everyone else but at my kids school, they get a lot of homework. Sometimes I think it's actually more for the parents than for the kids. When I help my kids with their homework I feel like I am in a game of "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?" Math has never been and still is not my subject and trying to remember fractions is taxing enough but now they need to go throw all this new math out there. Thankfully my oldest son is a natural math genius, he is in advanced math and helps his little brother. But when he does run into a problem it becomes this puzzle that I get obsessed with trying to figure out, all the while feeling totally frustrated that I cannot remember any of it. It is amazing as you get older to find out what information has escaped for good. I sit there laughing wondering how many other parents are sitting at home with their 5th graders feeling the same way. It is a bit of an ego tester let me tell you. I swear I did not learn half the math that they seem to be teaching today, it is the word problems that I am usually best at, but even some of the ones they bring home get me stumped. I remember one night last year, Xander had this word problem that he did not understand. Now I knew I was in trouble if he was having problems, usually he can do his math with his eyes closed. So I must have read this thing about 20 times, and for the life of me I could not get it. So I asked my husband he is the math brain in this house, he of course gave up very quickly, I called my mother she was just as lost as I was. I looked on the Internet, called a few of my mama friends, nothing. Nobody could figure this out, I started to think well if none of these adults can get it then that is just ridiculous, maybe there was a typo ? I must of spent a few hours mulling over this word problem. Finally my son comes in and says let me see it one more time, he reads it again and figures it out on the spot, oh I must have read it wrong the first time; he says. I just looked up in total shock, are you serious; I said. I started laughing so hard I almost peed myself, I couldn't believe I had spent all this time torturing myself and he just read it wrong. How is my 5th grader smarter than me, I asked him. he replied; all 5th graders are smarter than their parents, they even made a show about it...