Hoping some of you lovely mumsnetters will have some wise words for me as I'm feeling very down about this and don't know how best to tackle it. DD1 has done very well getting into a good private school through hard work and determination, maths definitely her weakness but she's worked very hard. DD2 who is 8 (late July baby) and in year 4 has for a few years struggled with maths. We've just relocated and she was in the "remedial" group (it was probably really called something far more politically correct) at her old school and always had difficulty understanding what was asked of her.
She is just not interested in maths. She's not stupid, her English and reading and her creative writing are excellent. She can be determined, but unlike her elder sister she is feisty and stubborn and opinionated and knows how to push my buttons
She's generally doing well at her new state primary school and I'd hoped moving (I told the new teacher nothing about her struggling) might have helped remove her maths "label" and allow her to shine. She's doing an after school tutoring club with some of her friends which she moans like beggary about, but always seems to enjoy while she's there. She does the homework with prompting and seemed to be coping ok. They had an assessment yesterday. She got 19 out of 50, by far and away the lowest in the group. She thinks that's really good and told me it was stuff they hadn't learned.
I've spoken to the tutor, and it IS stuff they've learned. Tutor has acknowledged that she isn't retaining/understanding stuff and she's tried hard to make sure that DD2 goes away having fully understood the concept. DD isn't bothered. We are going to do an extra half an hour one on one before the tutoring group.
I'm conscious I've got school entrance coming up and there is just no way she'll get through it if she carries on like this. How do I get her to understand and engage? She's the kind of child who could achieve anything once she's put her mind to it...
I am thinking her sister will be enjoying a private education while DD2 will end up at the local comp (not that there's anything wrong with this but she's so sporty the private school would be really good for her amongst all the other stuff).
I really would appreciate any advice - really, it wouldn't matter if she went state or private secondary, at this rate, she'll end up tanking maths whichever route she goes down, so I feel I have to deal with it now to avoid future problems.
I'm not very good at maths either but managed to do what I needed to do to get through it
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Daughter is really struggling in maths, how do I deal with it?
DarkBlueEyes · 24/02/2016 14:36
She's in a state primary, and her sister is at a selective secondary, but it's not mega academic if you see what I mean - they do well with their value added and I think it would be good for DD2. I'm working on the tutoring. I just somehow need her to understand she can't just stick her head in the sand and ignore maths, it won't go away. Thanks Partron for replying. 
My dd too struggled with maths while at primary school. In yr 4 I bought a couple of children cookery books to encourage her to see the purposes of maths. Weekly she chose a recipe. So she would make a shopping list and find out the prices on supermarket website. Calculated the total amount and change. Then we went to shopping and she had to pay for the shopping by herself with cash. Then checked if she got the right change. At home she had to do the cooking or baking with the ingredients. The left overs would be used for next week and so on. She really loved the activity. Although she only got level4 at ks2 she s now at the top in middle set in a good comp. The maths teaching in secondary school suits her better. She now quite enjoy maths which i didnt think it would ever happen during ks2. According to her teacher she should be able to achieve a B or A or equivalent at GCSE. I m not qualified to give advice but just to say children learn and develope at different rate. Perhaps help your dd to develop more confidence and interest in the subject rather worry about ks level too much. Best wishes 
My DD1, now aged 16, has always struggled to retain maths. (It turned out that she has dyspraxia which may or may not be related to this.)
Honestly sometimes at secondary she would look at me as if she had never heard about percentages, or multiplying fractions, or whatever, before in her life.
The only way to get things to stick was constant repetition and revisiting the topic. Although she would look blankly at me to start with, each time we revisited she would pick it up faster. We also broke things down into tiny steps, and used physical examples or props wherever we could.
But DD1 has always been willing to sit down and do the work, unlike DD2, who is also struggling ...
Anyway, to give you hope, DD1 eventually ended up with a very high B at GCSE. (Despite still being iffy on working with negative numbers.) And actually now 9 months on from GCSE does seem to have finally retained some of it. 
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