Does your child find maths frustrating or confusing? Have you noticed that they hesitate before answering, guess with random answers, or avoid maths altogether? If so, you’re far from alone. Many children struggle with maths, and as a parent, it can be frustrating when you don’t know how to help.
The good news? Struggling with maths doesn’t mean a child isn’t capable – a lot of the time there is a root cause, such as gaps in their knowledge. Once you identify the root cause, and with the right approach, you can help them build confidence and skills in a way that makes sense to them.
In this post, we’ll explore common reasons why maths is difficult for some children and how you can start to pinpoint where your child needs extra support.
Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links. This means that I may receive a small commision – at no cost to you – if you make a purchase through these links. Thank you for your support!
Why Is Maths So Hard for Some Children?
1. Gaps in Foundational Knowledge
Maths concepts build upon each other a bit like steps in a staircase. Grasping each new concept relies on understanding the ones before, just like each step needs to be built on the one before in order for the staircase to go anywhere. If a child has missed, misunderstood or forgotten a key concept, the next steps become much harder.
This is particularly true for the earliest, most foundational concepts, such as number sense and place value. These concepts represent a solid floor that the staircase needs to be built on. For example:
- If they don’t fully understand place value, they will struggle to compare numbers or carry out calculations
- If they struggle with the concept of times tables, written multiplication and fractions will be hard going
A strong foundation is key to maths success!
2. Maths Anxiety and Low Confidence
For some children, maths feels incredibly stressful. Maybe they had a bad experience that has stuck with them, or they felt embarrassed by struggling in lessons. It’s common for children to believe they just “can’t do maths.” This anxiety becomes a barrier to learning and blocks their ability to think clearly and solve problems.
Signs of maths anxiety include:
✅ Avoiding any maths-related tasks and homework
✅ Freezing up or going completely blank when asked a maths question
✅ Negative self talk, such as saying, “I’m just bad at maths”
✅ Feeling sad or crying
Incidentally, maths anxiety is also common in adults. Parents with maths anxiety tend to have a negative impact on their children’s learning.
3. Different Learning Styles
Many children struggle with school routines and traditional teaching methods, which all too often rely on worksheets, memorization and a lack of variety in types of activities and teaching approaches.
Some children learn best through creative, multi-sensory approaches such as using visuals, hands-on activities, or incorporating movement into their learning.
If your child needs a different approach, their struggles might not be about maths ability—but about how they’re being taught and their teacher’s teaching style!
4. Difficulty with Memory and Processing
A significant proportion of the population have working memory difficulties. Working memory allows people to temporarily store and manipulate information, such as instructions or numbers that are needed to solve a problem.
Children with memory and processing difficulties often struggle to retain information they’ve just been given. They can struggle to hold numbers in their heads, which makes doing mental maths or multi-step problems very challenging.
5. Maths Concepts are Too Abstract
A traditional teaching approach might involve a teacher demonstrating how to solve a problem and provide examples. Apart from not being engaging, the problem with this approach is that maths can feel meaningless when children are presented with digits and symbols without seeing how it connects to real life.
If a child doesn’t understand why maths matters, and how it works, they may lose interest and motivation.
How to Identify Your Child’s Maths Struggles
Now that we’ve looked at some possible reasons why maths might be hard for your child, let’s try to figure out where they need help.
Start by Trying These Simple Steps:
1️⃣ Ask them to explain their thinking – When they are doing some maths, try some open-ended questions. Questions like “Why do you think that?” or “How did you solve that?” Do they sound unsure?
2️⃣ Observe their reactions – How do they behave whilst doing maths? Do they get frustrated easily? Do they seem to rely on guessing?
3️⃣ Check key skills – Give them a few simple foundation maths problems and see where they hesitate. Don’t try too many in one go and don’t make it like a test. The idea is for you to start to discover where they need help.
To make this easier, I’ve created a free printable Maths Skills Checklist! It will help you pinpoint your child’s strengths and weaknesses so you know exactly where to focus.
📥 Download the Maths Skills Checklist here! ⬇︎
What's next?
Remember that identifying the struggle is the first step toward success.
Now that you understand some common reasons why your child might be struggling, it’s time to focus on solutions! In my next post, I’ll show you how to build a strong maths foundation—without worksheets! We’ll explore hands-on activities and fun strategies that actually work.
Stay tuned for my next post coming next week! And in the meantime, remember to grab your free checklist to get started.
Book: Chinn, S. (2020). The Trouble with Maths: A Practical Guide to Helping Learners with Numeracy Difficulties (4th ed.). Routledge. [Available from Amazon here]
Website: Understanding Why Kids Struggle With Maths – Understood.org
0 Comments