Please can you settle a maths question disagreement between my son and I?

[DontBiteTheBoobThatFeedsYou]

Which is bigger.

0.6

Or

6.09

@Iamtheweedonkey

In y5, get him to draw out a place value chart. Ones . Hundredths Thousandth 6 .0 9 0 .6

Yes this is what we did in the end, once someone pointed out where ds was confused, I could explain it by using the columns he was talking about.

Got there in the end.

Good old Mumsnet!
(Apart from the complete eejit who accuse me of shaming my son, rather than teaching him)

Whole numbers trump anything to the right of the decimal as the value is decreasing by ten.

Oh sorry, he's got it. Well done!

Since he's a child, you may need to show him visually. Do you have 100 of anything lying around? (dry pasta, coins, etc)
Count out 100 and then get him to work both out and lay them out.

OP, I have ADHD too and one of the things I can find challenging is shifting ficus from one level of detail to another.

Zooming out to see the bigger picture of how rules about decimals are simply extensions of rules about units, tens, hundreds, etc can be difficult, especially when decimals are often taught in a completely different way, as if they're a different concept altogether.

That, combined with the fact that he might miss things in class, can make maths quite challenging for people with ADHD, as it's a cumulative subject where it's difficult to move on to more advanced topics until you've fully understood the previous learning.

My advice would be to look for textbooks and videos that explain things in different ways until it clicks for him. YouTube is great as there will always be someone who can explain something in a way that he can relate to.

ah he got it- good!

He need to draw his columns:

Hundreds Tens Units . Tenths Hundredths
0 0 6 . 0 9

0 0 0 . 6 0

I think he’s muddling tens with tenths, hundreds with hundredths

"Because the the tenths is greater than hundredths and the 6.09 is in the hundredths is in the hundredths column and the 0.6 is in the tenths colum."

The part he is missing is the role of the decimal point. Would writing the numbers as fractions rather than decimals help?

Difficult to do here but in words that would be

Six and nine hundredths

Six tenths.

Try getting him to show the .6 and the .09 each as a pie chart. Draw a circle and colour in the part represented by six tenths for 0.6 and for nine hundredths

Good luck.

Another thing is get him to explain it to you so you (or, ideally, someone else) can understand.

@tarheelbaby

Now that you've sorted the maths, you can move on to SPAG. Please explain to him that following between (and other prepositions) he should say 'me' e.g. Please help settle a disagreement is between him and me.

The pronoun I is only used for when the speaker is the subject of the sentence:
e.g. He and I have a disagreement.
Tommy and I (not me and Tommy) want to go to the park.

I was just about to say that but hesitated because it often results in being called grammar police

@HandScreen

You're an adult and you obviously know the answer. Please don't use a Mumsnet thread to shame your son. Instead, spend some time Googling how best to teach children about decimal places. He's a child.

Does MN have a special line in hair-shirts? It's a simple request for help!

Is this to do with measurement, 0.6 m compared with 6.09 cm? I would have done the same, used money but you seem to have a real problem there. Does he understand the need to line up the decimal points and then work from the left to compare size?
My daughter insisted she was the older as her birthday came first in the year, irrespective of years!

In my defence, my grammar is usually better but my head was pounding, DS was getting mad with me and toddler ds was clambering on I's boob for mine milk
💐🍷

Think of it as money or a fraction.

0.6 is just over half a bar of chocolate
6.09 is 6 whole bars and a bit extra

I was just about to say that but hesitated because it often results in being called grammar police

Plus, it's rude and shitty to pull someone up on their grammar when it's not the topic and they're clearly asking for help in good faith on another topic - it risks humiliating them and comes across as cruel and dickish.

"Because the the tenths is greater than hundredths and the 6.09 is in the hundredths is in the hundredths column and the 0.6 is in the tenths colum." "tenths are bigger than hundredths, and the 9 is in the hundredths column and the 6 is in the tenths column , so 0.6 is bigger than 0.09 (even though 9 is bigger than 6)", but he hasn't learnt how to extend this rule to when you have a number in the units column.

So he's learning the rule, but doesn't have any understanding of what it means in real life. I've met so many people who struggle with maths at this level because they see it as a set of rules to be applied and have lost any idea that it may have any relationship to real life.

I think you'd both get something out of this 10min video, explaining things :-)

'A humorous look at early attempts at creating number systems, leading up to our modern base-10 decimal number system which uses "positional notation".'