Parents are baffled by homework


According to the late, great Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Unless, apparently, you’re among the 17 to 30 percent of children who have maths anxiety! Or you might be among the parents who experience ‘maths homework anxiety’ when you try to help your child with the day’s assignment sent home from school. Trying to keep up with the multiple strategies that children must learn in order to do their homework is not an easy thing. Perhaps you’ve come across the varied genres that children are supposed to master in their writing? Genres you most likely didn’t learn about when you went to school. All this ‘unknown’ material can cause a great deal of stress for children and parents alike. Today’s brain science is finding solid evidence that happy, relaxed brains are less stressed, learn better and retain information more efficiently.

Experienced by Mums in the UK as seen on netmums.

Parents are scratching their heads when it comes to their child's homework and feel embarrassed when they struggle to help.

One in three parents admitted they feel confused by their children’s homework and struggle to help, in a new survey by Butlins.

And 36% feel embarrassed and ashamed that they don't know the answers or can't help out.

But thank the Lord for Google, as 20% of parents admit that they pretend they know the answer before going online to find it out.

Parents don't only turn to Google but also go on chat forums to ask other parents for help. They also post their children's homework questions on social media in the hope that friends and family can shed some light on what the correct answer is.

Sometimes it is not just knowing and finding out the answer that is the problem, but the fact that our children are taught in very different ways to the way we were. This seems to be especially true for maths.

Newer additions to the curriculum, such as computer coding, prove particularly tricky for parents.

A quarter of parents polled were unable to identify a single common computing and coding word used in the curriculum, such as Boolean and Unicode.

Another recent survey (from publishers DK) revealed that parents also find spellings and grammar tricky. In this survey parents struggled to spell the following words correctly: definitely, separate, necessary, independent and embarrass. They also struggled with the correct usage of 'you're' and 'your' and 'their/they're/there'.

Another survey in 2014 highlighted the fact that our children's maths homework has us baffled - with over a third of mums and dads voting it the hardest subject to help their children with. In fact, half of parents polled failed to answer a maths problem designed for a ten-year-old. In particular, parents said they struggled with long division and with decimals, fractions and percentages.

Trying to keep up with our children's new curriculum eats up a lot of time. More than half of parents polled said they spend more than 40 hours each year trying to brush up on what their child is learning in school so they can help them at home.

At NumberWorks’nWords, we can help do this job for you. We are continually reviewing and refining our tutoring programmes to ensure we keep abreast of government education initiatives and are applying the same strategies that teachers are working with. These often are different to the way we as parents were taught how to solve problems.

 Our learning programmes closely mirror the content of the school curriculum. What's more, our teaching methods match the ones used at school, so that children won't become confused.

 We’re here to help, use us! We would be delighted to work with you and your child to solve your  homework  struggles. Please don’t hesitate to phone or email the centre nearest to you with any questions you would like to ask. 

Post your comment


No one has commented on this page yet.
