Why your child isn’t able to complete their math homework.

This can be an incredibly frustrating situation, both for your child and you.

It’s bad enough to have to do homework for hours, but some children have to sacrifice their social life, sports, hobbies or sleep just to finish it. Do you have to remind your child over and over to finish their homework? And even if they do, it still doesn’t always translate into a good grade or a good test scores.

Here are the most common causes of this situation:

No teaching in class.

The most common “teaching” style in the Bay Area is: 3 examples + homework The teacher shows (doesn’t explain) the examples on the board. Your child copiest hem from the board to their notebook. Then, they receive the homework sheets. How could your child possibly learn anything that way? For a comparison, an effective learning routine that will help your child really understand the concepts in-depth and will teach them how to solve problems takes around 6-10 examples, depending on the concept.

Homework = overwhelm, confusion, fear of mistakes and pointless repetition.

A lot of children, even the advanced ones, struggle with homework overwhelm. It’s a daunting task to sit down and solve 30-40 problems. Yet that’s what daily homework load can be. Your child feels overwhelmed because they lack confidence in their math abilities and they question themselves every step of the way. When you ask them to finish their homework, they feel the overwhelm, fear of mistakes and confusion.

Lack of focus.

Many children do homework with TV on, while swiping through social media, talking to their friends or playing with their dog. On the other hand, math and learning take focus. Lack of focus or “multitasking” can multiply the time necessary to complete homework 3x or even 5x. A short, focused, productive study session is much more effective than long session, full of distractions.