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How to help your child with maths at home

You don't need to be good at maths to help your child with it. What makes the biggest difference at home is not knowing the right method, but how maths feels: whether it is something you do together, calmly and often, or something that ends in tears at the kitchen table. This guide is about getting the feeling right.

Little and often

Five minutes a day does far more than an hour on a Sunday. Short sessions keep children fresh, and facts that come up again and again are the ones that stick. Better still, most of it doesn't need to look like "doing maths" at all.

• Count the stairs on the way up to bed, then count back down in twos.
• In the car, ask "what's 6 + 7?" and let them ask you one back.
• At teatime, ask how many forks you need if Grandad is coming too.
• While waiting for the bus, ask "how many minutes until it comes?"

Our everyday maths ideas have more than 30 of these, sorted by age.

Talk about maths, and ask good questions

Children learn a lot by putting their thinking into words. At school they are asked to explain and reason, not only to get answers, so the same questions at home are a real help. Try these:

• "How did you work that out?"
• "Could you do it another way?"
• "Can you draw it or show me with these buttons?"
• "What do you notice?"
• "Roughly what do you think the answer will be?" (This is called estimating, and it helps children spot when an answer is way off.)
• "Is that always true, sometimes true or never true?"

Ask these when the answer is right as well as when it's wrong. If you only ask "how did you get that?" after a mistake, children learn that the question means "you're wrong", and they stop wanting to explain.

Praise the effort, not the "cleverness"

"You're so clever" feels kind, but it can backfire. A child who is praised for being clever may start avoiding hard problems in case they turn out not to be. Praise what they did instead:

• "You kept going even when it was tricky."
• "I like how you checked your answer."
• "You tried a different way when the first one didn't work."
• "That was a mistake, but look how much you learnt from it."

Mistakes are a normal part of learning maths. Teachers often treat them as useful, because a mistake shows exactly what a child is thinking. You can do the same: "Interesting! Talk me through it."

Let them be the teacher

One of the best things you can say is "I've forgotten how you do that. Can you show me?" Explaining a method is a stronger test of understanding than using it. If your child can teach you column addition, they really understand it. If they get stuck while explaining, you've found the gap, without a single test.

Helping with homework

Primary maths homework is usually short. Here is a routine that keeps it that way:

1. Pick a good time. Not straight after school when they're hungry, and not right before bed. A snack first helps.
2. Read the question together. Many "I can't do it" moments are really "I don't understand what it's asking".
3. Let them try first. Sit nearby rather than hovering over them.
4. Give a nudge, not the answer. "What would happen with smaller numbers?" or "Can you draw it?" are good nudges.
5. Know when to stop. If it's turning into a battle, stop. Write a short note to the teacher, such as "Sam found question 4 hard and we stopped after 15 minutes." That tells the teacher far more than an answer you helped with.

It is fine for homework to come back with some mistakes. Teachers use it to see what children can do on their own.

When you don't know the method

Maths is taught differently from 20 or 30 years ago, and many parents meet words like "part-whole model", "exchanging" or "bus stop method" for the first time in their child's book bag. That's normal. Here's what helps:

• Ask your child to show you. They are the expert on what happens in their class.
• Look up the school's calculation policy. Many primary schools publish one on their website. It shows each method, step by step, in the order it's taught.
• Read our guide to how maths is taught in primary schools now, which explains the common methods with pictures.
• Ask the teacher. Teachers are usually happy to explain, and some schools run maths workshops for parents.

What about the method you learnt at school? If it gives the right answer, it isn't wrong. But showing a second method in the middle of homework can muddle a child who is still getting to grips with the first. Let them use the school's way for homework, and save "here's how I learnt it" for another day, as an interesting comparison.

Keep it positive

Children pick up a lot from how adults talk about maths. Try to avoid saying "I was never any good at maths" or "I hated maths at school", even as a joke. Your child may hear "so it's fine if I'm not good at it either". If maths makes you anxious, our guide to helping a child who says "I'm bad at maths" has ideas for you too.

Other things that keep maths a happy subject at home:

• Play games with dice, cards and board games. Counting spaces, adding scores and working out who is winning is all maths.
• Stop while it's still fun, so they want to come back.
• Let them catch you out. Make a deliberate mistake now and then ("so 5 + 5 is 11?") and let them correct you.
• Notice maths out loud: "This box says it holds 24 eggs. How do you think they're arranged?"

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