We'd been using Arabic numerals forever. Pretty sure your parent is complaining (tongue in cheek) about New Math, because us millennial parents learned multiplication by memorizing a times table and we think that's the only way to do it.

It makes sense, in terms of a long term education approach, because it teaches the other properties of arithmetic (like distributive or associative or cumulative) much earlier on, which IMO makes more difficult arithmetic far more approachable later on.

But it is weird as hell if you aren't primed on it. They really should make a ditto for parents when they start doing it.