Helping your child at home

Updated 29 October 2026

How to help your child with maths at home

What research says parents can do at home to help with maths, including if maths was never your favourite subject.

Why your attitude to maths matters

In a 2015 study of 438 first- and second-grade children (the equivalent of Years 2 and 3), researchers at the University of Chicago (Maloney and colleagues) measured parents' anxiety about maths. Children of maths-anxious parents learned significantly less maths over the school year and became more anxious about maths themselves, but only when those parents often helped with maths homework. When they helped less often, there was no link. Parents' maths anxiety had no effect on children's reading.

The researchers did not conclude that parents should stop helping. They concluded that parents need better tools to help with maths effectively, such as books, games and apps that make maths talk positive.

Short, positive maths conversations

A second University of Chicago study, published in Science in 2015, gave 587 families of first graders a tablet app with short maths story problems to do together. Children who used it more often were almost three months ahead of a group using a reading app by the end of the year, and the gains were largest for children of very maths-anxious parents. Even once a week helped.

You do not need an app to do the same thing. The EEF's Toolkit gives examples of everyday learning such as writing shopping lists together or spotting shapes on the way to school. Ideas that fit family life in the UAE:

• Money: totals and change at the supermarket, or comparing dirham prices.
• Time: how many minutes until school starts, or how long a journey takes.
• Measures: doubling a recipe, reading the temperature, distances on a map.
• Estimating: how many people in the queue, how many grapes in the bag, then check.

Keep it light and short. The aim is a child who sees maths as normal and interesting.

Practise the facts that make everything easier

Later maths methods depend on quick recall of number facts, above all times tables. The National Curriculum expects all tables up to 12 x 12 by the end of Year 4. A few minutes of out-of-order questions on most days is the kind of practice the research supports: testing recall and spacing practice out are the two study habits with the strongest evidence.

See how to learn times tables and revision techniques that work.

Homework: support the routine, not the answers

The EEF's guidance on working with parents suggests:

• help your child build a regular routine and good homework habits;
• be cautious about helping directly with homework tasks, particularly for older children;
• instead, encourage your child to set goals, plan, and manage their time, effort and feelings, which is often more valuable than help with the questions themselves.

If your child is stuck, ask them to explain what the question is asking and what they have tried. If they are still stuck, a short note to the teacher tells them what to revisit, which helps more than an answer you worked out for them.

The EEF also finds that homework works best when it is linked to classroom learning, and that quality matters more than quantity.