To be way less clever these days

[Ozgirl75]

I did really well in school, got a good 2:1 from a top university and then a law degree. I do well at work and am, basically a relatively clever and academic person.
But my god, my son is in year 9 and his maths, physics and chemistry are SO far beyond me! Why? I did fine in them at school so I must have studied them but he’s doing stuff where you could sit me in front of it all day and I would have zero clue.
Other son is in year 7 and I can just about get on with his maths although when he did the 11+ there were probably 8% of the questions that I really struggled with, and the non verbal reasoning was pretty much a mystery to me.

Probably because it's been years since you studied them!

We learn best when we are young. As you go through life other knowledge has probably replaced what you learned at school - eg work related stuff, and it gets progressively harder to learn new things fast.

Some of the things I’m fine with though - history, English, biology etc. Even the totally new things like verbal reasoning I picked up quickly. But maths! I literally remember NONE of how to do it.

Why does my brain decide to retain some totally odd bits of info like, weirdly, everything to do with calculating angles, but when it comes to algebra my brain is just doing a big shrug.

I found a notebook from Uni that I had done practise questions for maths in. I don't even know what all the different squiggles mean now, let alone be able to do the sums.

I was a sponge when I was a child. I soaked up facts with ease. Now, age 50, I struggle to remember what I walked into a room to fetch.