Kids and maths

[OneLemonHelper]

Does anyone else children struggle with maths? He's not engaging and disinterested with learning and doing his homework... Any tips?

My adult DD was not interested in maths. We just accepted it was not her thing. They can't be interested in everything. She has an MA now and runs her own business.

Encourage him to do his best - that's all you can do.

The way it is taught is not always the best tbh. I have A level double maths and a PhD in epidemiology, so very comfortable with maths, and I find DS’s year 3 homework ridiculously over-complicated. They also don’t seem to explain things very well.

He had a question last weekend about how many ways water could be divided between two buckets, for which the answer was “an infinite number of ways”. Which I thought was a bit complex for a bunch of 7 year olds.

I tend to disagree with @Saschka . I think that on the whole maths is better taught these days (I have maths degree from the 80s).
I like the spiral teaching, and things like number lines. I like that they try to break things down so a child understands rather than just saying 'this is the method'.
That said some interim steps are more complicated than the goal method, and of course some teachers will be better than others.

How old is your DC @OneLemonHelper ? One reason for disinterest could be he has got lost and so it is too hard. In which case you need to go back steps to find where he is secure and build from there.
Maths is a lot about confidence to try, so asking for things he can do before things he can't.

You don’t say how old he is OP. It’s always worth checking that he has basic quick recall skills safely under his belt.

Depending on his age this could be

number bonds to 10 and twenty ( including subtraction)

addition and subtraction over the “ten”numbers ( 30/ 40etc)

ditto over “hundred” numbers

multiplication / division facts ie times tables both ways

Having to stop and work out basic calculations from scratch every time slows you down, leads to errors and is very frustrating.

How are his reading skills? As children go through primary school reading a problem and working out what the maths they need to do actually is can be a stumbling block. Sometimes it is worth sitting down and just focussing on

what the problem is about ie what you are being asked to find out

what is the information you know

what are the steps, ie what is the maths, that you need to do to get to the answer.

Get him to verbalise his thinking, it can help to clarify the process. Sometimes I wouldn’t even bother with the maths at first, just getting him to understand the problem and say what maths he would do is enough. (You can give the same problem a few days later and get the maths bit done then, this also reinforces the thinking bit.)