Keep your words soft and sweet

Last night at Annie's volleyball game, I overheard two mothers from the other team talking about the kids' homework. One mother said to the other:

"Well, she finished everything except her math. I told her she'd have to wait until her dad came home because Mom doesn't help with math after the third grade."

Sitting behind them, I rolled my eyes and thought "What a nice role model for your daughter! Let's teach her that women aren't capable of intellectual pursuits like higher math (as if fourth or fifth grad math is that difficult.)"

Fast forward to after the game. We were back home and Annie was working on her homework. She came to me for some help on her math. They're studying probabilities.

If there are 24 prizes in a box -- 13 small, 8 medium and 3 large, what's the probability that Biff will get a medium prize if he gets to choose twice?

Huh?! So we started scratching down numbers in various equations -- 8/24 x2. Cross multiply. Simplify the fraction. Find X.

"Annie, I think you better wait until Daddy gets home to work on this."

And I was reminded of that favorite phrase of my mother-in-law: "Keep your words soft and sweet. You never know which ones you'll have to eat."