Why can my 9 year old not understand time?

[MumoffourinBE]

My 9 year old can do most maths. She understands multiplication, can add and subtract, is now learning fractions... in short, for most parts of maths she has good marks.
Except for anything related to time. After three years, she still cannot tell the time on a regular clock, let alone a digital clock. We practise for hours, it appears she understands and then on her test she will write down: "it is 52 hours 25". Repeatedly. Of course, by now they have moved on from simply telling the time to working with it and she fails that too (genre: "the train leaves at 17.00, it arrives at 18.30. How long did the journey take"). She has no clue. She doesn´t seem to fit in the traditional dyscalculia/dyslexia framework as she can do the other parts of maths well and also has no other noticeable problems in daily life. How can this be and how can I help her? Her teacher has said to ignore the problem for now, as they have moved past this topic. But of course it will come back next year and she will be even further behind.

My DD was like this too. She's 11 now and gets it. Just to reassure you.

I'd suggest getting a digital clock set to the 12 hour (with an AM and PM marker) for her room and the kitchen, then also a 12h digital watch for her wrist.

Start discussing everything you do at home using time. E.g. "dinner will be in 15 minutes, at 6 o clock" then the clock and her watch ready 6pm when you sit down for dinner and she can associate that short gap before it as roughly 15mins. "You can read in bed for 30 minutes. It's 7.30pm now, so when your clock says 8.00pm that means it's been 30 minutes"

Turn the time questions into sums. Remove the time element.

A train leaves at 17.00 and arrives at 18.30, how long is the journey?

Split it into two sums. 18-17 to give the hours. 30-0 to give the minutes.

What about some animated time telling videos for her to watch?

It’s funny, my 10 year old is great at maths and yet time took him an absolute age to understand. He mainly seems to have the hang of it now but I still think it’s a bit hit and miss

We had a real concentrate at it during the first lockdown, we got a clock off the wall and practiced moving the hands and things which seemed to help. The 24 hour clock is still somewhat of a mystery.

My 9yo is able to do great maths work yet can't understand time. She tries too hard and gets overwhelmed trying.
My 11yo who isn't great academically has been able to tell the time and understand all things time related from being very young.

One day it will just 'click' I'm pretty sure.
Perhaps she's overthinking it.
I think with a bit of space things may fall into place.

Do you have any clocks with actual numbers on them. I only asking because it was only when we started to teach time we realised that we had no clocks with actual number on them. We are so used to looking our phones for time we no longer use 'clocks'.

I also got the children a teaching clock for them.