A study has proven what a lot of parents knew to be true, and that is that they struggle with math homework when trying to help their child. Part of being a parent to a school-aged child is helping them with their school work, and children in elementary school cover a wide range of topics to give them the best start to education that they can. Parents have always struggled with Math, and we have heard the complaints come about how hard math is now.

This could partly be due to how math is taught differently now, and they don’t seem to use the same formulas and equations that parents used to when they were growing up. According to Study Finds, this has not gotten any easier.

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A recent survey found out that when it comes to schoolwork, more than half (56%) of parents said that they feel “hopeless” when they try and help their child with their math work. The majority of them also admitted to going to the internet to try and help their child with their Math assignments. The survey questioned 2,000 American parents and asked them how they approach their children’s schoolwork, and while 79% of parents said that they can recall things they learned in school, 70% of them said that they had a hard time solving their child’s math problems.

This wasn’t the end of the inquiry though, as the parents were then given some math equations to solve, and only 42% were able to solve them correctly. While adults can do simple math in their heads, which we do every day without noticing, the vast majority of them still used a calculator to double-check their result. It also turns out that parents are not so eager about helping their child, because 6 out of 10 people said that they have to negotiate with their partner on who will help the child with their homework.

According to Mercury News, this struggle could be because of how math has changed throughout the years. When parents were in school, math was a lot of memorizations of equations and multiplication tables, but now math is moving to common core math. This means that children are expected to show how they “reasoned” their way to the right answer. This is what makes math homework so difficult for parents to help with. Instead of just writing 3 x 5 = 15, now, they must write out how they get to that answer. If only there was a math tutor program for parents.

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Sources: Mercury News, Study Finds