Helping With Math at Home: How Much Should Parents Teach?

In 2018 the Education Endowment Foundation published a guidance report for schools in England, Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning. On homework, it says schools should “support parents to create a regular routine and encourage good homework habits, but be cautious about promoting direct parental assistance with homework (particularly for older children).”

Sitting next to a child with math homework, it is easy for an explanation to turn into raised voices on both sides. This post sorts out which parts the parent takes on and which parts go to the teacher or to the child, using only what the sources say.

The parent’s part

The EEF report’s box of homework tips lists two things parents can do:

• “Parents can help by encouraging a regular routine, and good study habits”
• “Parents can help by knowing about homework, showing interest and encouragement”

It goes further. Parents can support children “by encouraging them to set goals, plan, and manage their time, effort, and emotions”, and this kind of support “will often be more valuable than direct help with homework tasks.” In the homework section it adds that these capabilities, rather than direct involvement in the academic content, are likely to be what parents “can most usefully support.”

The report also says that a daily homework routine “that is clearly communicated to children and reinforced with praise and rewards can increase the amount of time spent on homework and improve the effectiveness of how that time is spent.”

For young children, it notes that home activities “such as playing with letters and numbers, are also linked to improved outcomes.” As children get older, “parental encouragement for, and interest in, their children’s learning are more important than direct involvement.”

Teaching methods go back to the teacher

The same report says that students who are struggling “may be more likely to request parental assistance with homework, but parents may be unfamiliar with the most effective teaching methods.” So “it may be more effective to encourage parents to redirect a struggling pupil to their teachers rather than to take on an instructional role.”

How to tell the teacher what is going on is covered in When Your Child Refuses Math Homework.

How to sit beside them

In December 2010, NCTM President J. Michael Shaughnessy wrote a message for parents whose children ask for help with math. It opens with the questions parents ask, such as “What do I tell my child when I don’t remember ever seeing this type of mathematics when I was a student?” and “I was never good at math, so what can I do to help my child?” Here is what it says.

Don’t show how. The message asks parents to “work together as a team with your child” and not to show how to do it. If you know the answer, “ask more questions and try to help the students figure it out for themselves. Never give away how to do the problem.”

Let the child explain first. The suggested opening is: “Tell me what the problem is, and help me understand how you are thinking about it. What do you think we need to do?” The message says this buys a parent time to collect their thoughts, and that “often, in the process of talking it through, a student will figure out what is needed, or the next step to take.”

Don’t say “I was never good at mathematics, either.” The reason given is that it spreads the idea “that it’s acceptable not to be good at math.”

The message ends with six DO’s for families: be positive, link mathematics with daily life, make mathematics fun, learn about mathematics-related careers, have high expectations, and support homework without doing it.

Parents’ math anxiety and how often they help

A 2015 study by a University of Chicago team looked at first and second graders and their parents’ anxiety about math. When parents were more anxious about math, their children learned less math over the school year and had more math anxiety by the end of it, but only when those parents reported helping with math homework often. When parents reported helping less often, the children’s math achievement and attitudes were not related to their parents’ math anxiety.

A randomized field experiment published the same year, with an author team that overlaps the first, involved 587 first graders. Children did “math story time” with their parents: short numerical story problems delivered through an iPad app. Compared with a reading control group, the children’s math achievement rose more across the school year, especially for children whose parents are habitually anxious about math. The authors conclude that brief, high-quality parent-child interactions about math at home help break the intergenerational cycle of low math achievement.

The first study is about how often anxious parents help with homework. The second is about short conversations about math that are separate from homework.

Putting the sources side by side

In these sources, the parent’s part is setting up a regular homework routine, knowing what the homework is and showing interest, and helping the child plan and manage their own effort and feelings. How to teach a topic the child is stuck on goes back to the teacher. When sitting beside the child, the parent doesn’t show the method and has the child explain instead. Apart from homework, there are short math conversations at home.

What children learn in arithmetic each year in Japan is listed in What Kids Learn in Arithmetic, Grade by Grade.

What you can do in MathCal

MathCal is a math app where children write their answers by hand on the screen. I make it.

The app checks the answers, so a parent doesn’t have to mark anything. For a topic where the child wants to see how it works, there are 59 Montessori lessons where children move things like beads, rulers and balance scales, and Related Lessons under each drill’s settings opens them too. In my developer interview I said: “As a parent too, I care about being able to let a child use it alone without worry.”

Today’s Drill, Today’s Challenge and Today’s Lesson on the home screen are free every day, and setting a birthday picks them to suit the child’s grade. When they finish, they can stamp a calendar. Choosing any drill or lesson from the full lists requires a one-time purchase. There are no ads. How to start is in Getting Started with MathCal.