By Jane Sonnenschein · June 9, 2026

Psychologist William James once said that the ability to bring wandering attention back, again and again, lies at the root of judgment, character, and will.

It took me many years to slowly understand that, for a child, “be careful” is not a simple instruction they can follow just because an adult says it. Being careful is a set of methods that adults need to break down patiently and teach step by step.

Over the past few days, I have seen a lot of discussion about the math paper in this year’s Gaokao¹. Many people said it was extremely difficult. Some students came out of the exam room with red eyes. Others argued in the comments that surely no one could score as low as thirty or forty in math—if you studied seriously enough, there should always be some basic questions you could get right.

When I first saw these arguments, what came to mind was not really the Gaokao itself. I thought instead about several children I had heard about recently, including Alicia’s latest math test, which had left me both frustrated and confused.

One blogger said she had always been very good at Chinese and writing, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never score more than thirty or forty points in math.

A former client once told me something similar. She said she had simply never been good at math. Even when running her business, she struggled with many calculations, and both of her children seemed to be the same. No matter how much extra help they received, math remained extremely difficult for them.

I used to find statements like this a little hard to understand. I have never been especially gifted at math myself, but I knew that if I was willing to put in the time and properly understand what was required within the scope of an exam, my math results would not be too bad.

But people really are different.

Some people understand something almost as soon as they hear it. Some may not have much natural talent, but training can make up for it. And for others, a particular subject may genuinely be unusually difficult. It cannot always be explained away with a simple, “You’re just not trying hard enough.”

That was already something worth thinking about.

But strangely enough, what finally helped me understand the issue a little better was not any of those stories. It was the mistakes Alicia made on her own math test.

She is normally not bad at math. In fact, her results are often quite good. Her teacher even invited her to join an advanced math group, and Alicia herself cared very much about that distinction. She made a point of telling me that it was not a class for children who needed extra help. It was an enrichment group.

But this time she came home with a grade 3.²

Of course I was not very happy. Based on what we normally expect of her, she does not have to get a 1 every time, but a 2 should usually be within reach.

What surprised me even more happened later.

A classmate who had always struggled badly with math came to our home, and the two of them did the same worksheet on three-digit addition and subtraction. That child got every single question right.

Alicia made more than ten mistakes.

That shocked me more than the grade 3 itself, because suddenly the problem was right there in front of me.

It was not that she could not calculate. It was not that she lacked the ability. She was getting questions wrong that she actually knew how to do because she misread symbols, skipped steps, became confused when borrowing, and failed to check her work.

In a column addition or subtraction problem, for example, the sign would clearly be a plus, and she would read it as a minus. Or it would be a minus and she would treat it as a plus. Sometimes she would subtract in the ones column, then somehow switch to addition in the tens column, as though the rules of the entire problem had become mixed up in her head.

Borrowing caused problems too.

At first she insisted that what I was telling her was wrong and that her teacher had not taught it that way. Later, once the emotion had passed and we talked again, she admitted that perhaps she had never really understood that part. She had simply thought she understood it.

If adults look only at the result, it is very easy to get angry.

The mistakes look so basic that it seems almost impossible to make them if only the child would “pay attention.”

That was what frustrated my husband most.

He felt that Alicia was clearly not unintelligent. If she simply listened carefully in class and worked carefully in tests, she could get very good results. Instead, she would hear half the explanation and assume she already understood it. Then she would rush through the work and make exactly the kinds of mistakes she should not be making.

But the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I felt that perhaps the problem was not quite that simple.

Adults are always telling children:

“Pay attention.”

“Be more careful.”

“Stop being careless.”

But “being careful” is actually a very abstract idea for a child.

Hearing the words “be more careful” does not mean that a child’s brain suddenly knows how to stop itself from misreading a symbol next time, how to avoid skipping a key word, how to write down the intermediate steps when borrowing, or how to find a mistake after finishing the problem.

This is especially true for children like Alicia.

Her mind works very quickly. When something interests her, she can become completely absorbed. She remembers things from drawing, crafts, games and internet jokes incredibly well, and she can become excited about something almost instantly.

But children like this can have another problem: their minds run ahead too quickly.

They hear half an explanation and already feel they understand. They glance at a question and think they know what it is asking. Their hand has already started writing while their mind has jumped ahead to the answer.

At moments like that, it is not necessarily that they do not want to do well, or that they are deliberately careless.

They simply have not yet learned how to slow their own brain down.

Then I thought about myself.

I actually have a similar problem.

Not long ago, I misread a question in an exam. The information was right there in front of me. It was not that I could not understand the sentence. Somehow, at that particular moment, I simply failed to see it. Only later did I realize that I had completely missed something so important.

Another time, the time of an oral exam was clearly written in an email. I had seen it, but somehow the wrong time remained in my head. If the teacher had not reminded me later, I might genuinely have turned up at the wrong time.

So when I looked again at Alicia’s supposedly “careless” mistakes, I found that I could no longer reduce them to the words “not paying attention.”

Because I know that the human brain really can work like this.

It fills in information according to what it expects to see. It skips words. It turns one symbol into another. It believes it has looked carefully when, in fact, it has not.

Of course, that does not mean a child has no responsibility for her mistakes, or that carelessness should simply be excused.

But instead of saying over and over again, “How could you be careless again?”, perhaps the more important thing is to teach her what she can actually do when her brain has a tendency to skip ahead.

For example, when doing addition and subtraction, do not start calculating the moment you see the numbers.

First circle the plus or minus sign.

It can be just a light pencil circle that gets erased afterwards.

It is a tiny action, but it forces the brain to pause for a moment and ask: Is this question addition or subtraction?

If it is subtraction and there are not enough ones to subtract, the borrowing should be written down instead of being done entirely in the head.

For a child who tends to skip steps, keeping everything mentally is exactly what is most likely to create confusion.

If the question involves converting or ordering units, first convert everything into the same unit and only then compare. Do not just glance at the numbers and rely on instinct.

If the task is copying a sentence, copying it once is not the end. Copy one sentence, then compare it with the original: Are the capital letters the same? Is the punctuation right? Are the endings of the words really identical?

If it is a word problem, use a pencil while reading and mark the key words, especially words such as “add,” “subtract,” “in total,” “remaining,” “how many more,” or “how many fewer”—the words that can determine what the problem is actually asking.

These methods sound simple.

But they are completely different from saying, “Be careful.”

“Be careful” is a demand.

“Circle the sign” is an action.

“Stop being careless” is criticism.

“Check the calculation when you finish” is a method.

“Listen properly in class” is an expectation.

“Listen until the teacher has finished the whole process, then solve one problem yourself to confirm that you really understand it” is training.

I am only now slowly realizing that many children are not careless because they do not want to be careful.

They simply have not yet learned how to be careful.

They may know their parents will be angry if they get a bad grade. They may know they should not make these mistakes. But the next time they meet the same kind of question, they still trip over exactly the same place because they have never built a checking process they can use again and again.

It is like someone who always trips on the same step.

You cannot only scold her and say, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

You also have to tell her: next time you reach this step, stop for a moment, look down, and lift your foot a little higher.

Teaching children can be like that too.

The hardest part is not noticing that a child has made a mistake.

It is figuring out why she keeps making the same kind of mistake.

If she genuinely does not understand the material, then we need to go back and explain the basics again.

If she understands it but is not yet fluent, then she needs more practice until the process becomes automatic.

If she understands it but keeps making mistakes, then we need to build a routine for her and place a kind of “speed bump” exactly where she tends to rush through.

And if she becomes so emotional that she can no longer listen, perhaps we need to wait until she has calmed down before discussing the problem again, instead of continuing to press her with logic while she is crying.

I used to say quite naturally that Alicia was not careful enough, not attentive enough.

Sometimes I would even think: isn’t this obvious? The words are right there on the page. How can you copy them and still get them wrong?

What explanation could there possibly be?

But now I increasingly feel that hearing this again and again can be deeply frustrating for a child too.

She already knows she made a mistake.

She is afraid of bringing home a bad grade. She is afraid her parents will be angry.

When she cries and says, “You’re blaming me for something I didn’t mean to do,” perhaps she is not trying to escape responsibility.

Perhaps what she is really saying is:

You can see that I got it wrong, but you cannot see that I did not mean to get it wrong.

That thought made me feel a little sad.

Because if a child repeatedly feels that her parents do not believe her, she may eventually stop explaining herself. She may stop telling them what she finds difficult.

She may slowly begin to think:

There is no point explaining. You will only think I have a bad attitude anyway.

So now I would rather treat these problems as a question of process than as a question of attitude.

Instead of asking:

“Why are you careless again?”

I would rather ask:

“Which step in the process did we miss this time?”

Did you forget to circle the sign?

Did you forget to write down the borrowing?

Did you skip the key words?

Did you forget to convert everything into the same unit?

Did you fail to check the answer?

Or is the multiplication table still not automatic enough?

When we ask the question this way, it becomes easier for the child to return to the actual problem instead of immediately becoming defensive.

Of course attitude matters too.

A child cannot use “I didn’t mean to” forever as a way to avoid practice and correction.

But attitude only changes results when it is translated into concrete methods.

A child can genuinely want to be careful, but if she does not know how, she may still make the same mistake.

A child can be afraid of getting things wrong, but if she has no tools for checking her work, she may still get the same thing wrong next time.

So what we really need to give her is not simply fear of making mistakes.

We need to give her a way to deal with them.

I also no longer want to divide children too simply into “smart” and “not smart,” “careful” and “careless.”

A child can be highly creative and still be poor at checking her own work.

She can learn very quickly and also jump to conclusions too quickly.

She can desperately want to do well and still not know how to do well consistently.

Once I understood that, I found myself much less eager to get angry.

What I want instead is to give Alicia a small set of tools she can use every day, so that she can gradually understand something important:

Being careful is not an inborn personality trait.

It is an ability that can be trained.

A few days later, she did another worksheet with twenty three-digit addition and subtraction problems.

She finished it quickly, and every answer was correct.

At one point, she once again read a subtraction problem as addition.

But this time, during her check, she noticed the mistake herself and corrected it.

And I thought: this is progress.

Not because she had suddenly become a perfect child.

But because, for the first time, she had used the act of checking to pull herself back from the mistake she would previously have made.

That means more to me than scolding her ten times and saying, “You need to be more careful.”

Very often, what a child really needs is not another “Why are you like this again?”

She needs an adult who is willing to stop and look at the problem with her, and help her see:

You are not incapable.

You simply have not yet found a way to make fewer mistakes.

Only when we break “being careful” down into specific actions can a child truly begin to learn what being careful means.

Later, my husband and I talked about it again in the kitchen.

I said that perhaps we should stop telling Alicia all the time, “You’re very smart, you’re just too careless.” And whenever she gets something wrong, we should not stop at, “Why weren’t you more careful?”

My husband said he understood what I meant.

He simply had never been taught either how a parent was supposed to teach a child to overcome this kind of carelessness.

That sentence made me go quiet.

Because very often, adults do know what is going wrong.

Of course we can see that a child has mistaken a plus sign for a minus sign, skipped a key word in a question, or knows how borrowing works but still gets it wrong in a test.

We can see the result.

What we often do not know is how to break that result down into steps the child can actually carry out.

And so it becomes very easy to replace real teaching with a sentence like:

“You need to be more careful.”

But for a child, “be more careful” is far too abstract.

She may genuinely want to be careful.

She may genuinely be afraid of getting a bad result.

She may already feel terrible every time she comes home with a grade 3.

But the next time she sits down in front of a question, her mind may still race ahead. Her eyes may still skip important information. Her hand may still write down the first answer that comes to mind.

If parents only keep saying, “How could you be careless again?”, what the child hears is not a method.

She hears a judgment:

I am a careless person.

I am the kind of child who disappoints my parents.

That does not solve the problem.

What actually helps is turning “being careful” into a series of concrete actions.

Those actions may look very small.

But for a child, they are the path that leads toward real carefulness.

I am only slowly beginning to understand that parents cannot simply complain that their child has not reached the destination.

We also have to show her where to put her feet.

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Notes

1. Gāokǎo (高考) — China’s National College Entrance Examination, taken at the end of upper secondary school and used as the main basis for university admission. Because the exam can strongly influence which universities and programs a student can enter, its difficulty and results often become major public topics in China each year.

2. German school grades — In the German grading system, 1 is the highest grade, followed by 2 (“good”), 3 (“satisfactory”), 4 (“sufficient”), with 5 and 6 generally considered failing grades. So when Alicia came home with a 3, it did not mean she had received “three points”; it meant a middling result compared with the 1s and 2s her parents knew she was capable of.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 骂孩子十遍“太马虎”，不如教他一套能落地的认真方法

German version: Zehnmal „Du bist zu unachtsam“ zu sagen, hilft weniger, als einem Kind eine konkrete Methode für mehr Sorgfalt beizubringen