To think this is the most frustrating thing anybody ever had to teach a child!!

[Lunar1]

Teaching DS1 to tell the time! We'd got o'clock, half past and the quarters. He was consistent so we moved on to twenty past and to. Again really good, and this was over the last year so not all crammed into a week. 3 weeks ago we started looking at minutes.

He has lost all concept of the time, says bizarre things when I ask what time it is. Even when it's an o'clock! I know it will just be processing the new information, but it's worse than toilet training!!

AIBU to think this is the most frustrating thing on earth. No ds1 it's not 80.1 o clock!! Maybe this is one I should leave to the school .

What is time

Ds2 reckons time is all made up to make them go to bed. I think ds2 is wise beyond his years.

Can anyone recommend an iPad app to help them learn to tell the time?

Had an interesting conversation today with my 5 year old about how it is daytime here but night in Australia. She wants to go there to see what it is like having daytime in the dark. She just couldn't get it.

I wish we could use the 24 hour clock as a rule. I hate it when a TV announcer says 'at 7 o clock'. I want to scream 'when? As in after 1859 or tomorrow morning?'. I am unreasonable in that I guess.

Great advice here. I also found some apps on the ipad which helped. We used them over the summer holidays.

Ds1 struggled slightly more than ds2 - just patiently keep going - time and cocks can be difficult!

Please, just keep on with it :-) Every primary teacher shudders at the thought of teaching time in maths!

My 11 year old is only just getting mainly because he has managed to keep his watch longer then 2 days. Can anyone recommend a decent analogue watch for a 11 year old boy??? I may treat him to a cooler one.

Well I'm 31 and still can't really tell the time on a normal clock.

Telling the time with my 8 year old makes me want to cry. Every time we have done it, or he has covered it at school, he just about gets it to a point where I don't feel like throwing myself out of a window anymore, then the next day he has completely forgotten it again.

Don't even get me started on fucking shoelaces. He can have velcro 'til he leaves home.

My 9 year old daughter has just learnt to tell the time. She now wont stop telling what the time is and how long we've got to do something etc.
My biggest piece of advice is to not worry. As a teacher and mum to 3 children, time as the other teacher said, is something that seems to have very little to do with intelligence.

I bought my daughter a teaching watch and she finds this helpful, to have both numbers around the watch, such as the hours, and the jumps of 5.

My 9 yo is still ropey with time, despite years of work on it. She does stuff as mentioned up thread like forgetting things she had solidly the previous week. Her maths is generally fine, she is in the top group. This just seem like a mental block.

I have worked out that she doesn't really have a good idea of what time IS - like being able to make a good guess at what time it is during the day, so she will happily declare it is 5 o clock mid morning etc. So that is what we are working on now, not even using a clock, but just getting a 'feel' for the time of day, and what things happen at what time. Until this is relevant I don't think she sees the use of minutes and quarter parts etc.

I regret getting so worked up about this with our first child. She did find it difficult at the start. However, she can do it now, even though it was a mystery to her when the school started it. O'clocks, quarter and half past were fine, but once it was a 'to' the hour question she struggled.

Throw in a few problem questions based on time...

Anyway, with practice, she got there even though at the time, it was hard! I'm just not sure her brain was ready when the school was. We just had to wait.

DH was training a guy in his 50s. Part of the job was to work out the times of some camera work. All was going well and he was left to it.

A little while later the guy came up to DH and said, ' so if the clock says 3.7 minutes...that's 3 minutes and 70 seconds?'

Another one her who was educated to postgrad level - but couldn't tell the time til I was about 11 (yet I could read, even books like 'Jane Eyre', cover to cover, aged 7).

In those days no-one gave a toss about kids with dyspraxia/dyslexia etc so there was no-one asking why I did this. Also, I struggled with maths - tried to do division sums backwards; can 'see' numbers OK in my head but when I say them out loud, they come out backwards....

Turned out I had dyscalculia. And more than my total confusion with numbers, the fact I struggled with telling the time - despite being taught over and over by my mum who was a qualified TA - should have been a huge warning bell.

But, that said... Kids' brain development has 'zones of proximal development' - and the 'zones' in which any child 'gets' a concept are WAY bigger than non educators think. It is 'normal' for some kids to read at 4, and others at 10... Parents don't like to admit it, or maybe in some cases don't know this to be the case. So sometimes, hot-housing is pointless.

I used tot each primary kids - who had very little parental input at home - to tell the time, in all kinds of inventive ways and it's probably easier in a classroom setting, for some. Once we cleared away all the furniture in the classroom, and 12 kids were the hours of the clock - they laid down - 2 other kids were minute and hour hand. I was centre of clock, standing on a table. Just as we were doing this, the Head walked past and gawked through the window... Looked like she had not a clue what we were doing but she never asked me, after. Learning should be fun if it's not - like gambling - stop.

My DGS is 8 and rubbish at the most basic maths. We are still hoping for a lightbulb moment with numbers, the way we had with reading when he turned 7. I do get really frustrated the way modern education seems to expect all children to learn things at the same time.

Anyway he is actually quite good with telling the time on an analogue clock. And I'm surprised at a couple of people saying children should know their 5 times tables before learning to tell the time. He was very uncertain on his 5 times table before, now he just looks at the clock and gets them right!

OP for having a go. As a teacher I dread trying to teach telling the time - they are all at different points in their understanding and easily tie themselves in knots if they are not secure in their understanding of fractions, the five times table, etc.
My only advice would be to keep on practising with your DS and don't try to move on too soon.

Just coming back to say that ds1 can tell the time!!!! I think im going to make him teach DS2.