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maths problems

primal

hi Guys/Gals

my 7yo son has aspergers and cannot get his head around maths. his teachers have tried and when it comes to homework time it is like pulling nails out trying to do even the most simplest of sums.

does anybody have  any suggestions as to how we go about helping him understand?

he gets very stressed when maths homework starts and it is as if we start talking another language - (which it is!) and then he just can't concentrate on the task at hand

  • My son is the opposite of yours in some ways, love maths (like me), hates writing. About half a year ago, when he was not long into year 4, he was sent home with writing homework took about 45 mins of hard work on my behalf and upset from him to get a plan of what to write, as agreed by him, written down by me and then no actual sentances written by him. I went into see his teacher and explained how long it had taken and how stressful we'd both found it and said that I didn't think this was what was intended by the homework. She agreed, and after that she tried to set him different homework and didnt complain if he didn't do it.

    The child psychologist in this link, www.kidspot.com.au/.../, feels very strongly that primary school kids shouldn't have any homework at all . Maybe you don't agree, but surely homework that upsets kids like you describe is clearly counter productive.

    I would go and talk to the staff at school, explain how stressful the maths homework is, and ask how they're supporting him with maths in school. They're the experts, they should be able to adapt to help him, ideas such as visual aids (lego is a great one for this that you might have at home but just let him play rather than pushing it on him), as are the homework programs where you play a computer game that you have to solve sums to get it to work (our kids school does this via active learn), and engaging their interests, such as described in this book asperkids.com/.../ But at the end of the day, what you describe sounds counter productive, it may be time to cut the homework for a little while and try again once things have calmed down.

  • Former Member
    Former Member

    If he keeps bashing his head against the brick wall then he may just build more and more stress and anxiety about the subject. It may take a special teacher or a fresh pair of eyes to manage to talk to him in terms that he can understand. If you make it more concrete, e.g. use toy cars for counting and for building blocks (e.g. of 3 columns and 4 rows of cars and then counting that there are 12 cars in the rectangle) and demonstrating what multiplication is about then it may click with him. If you can introduce the concepts during play, rather than homework, then he may not notice that he is learning and he may have less resistance.

    On the other hand, just as some people can't do good social interaction and no amount of practice seems to fix it, some people can't and won't ever "get" maths (or art, music etc). You can't make people do some things that they can't do.