maths problems

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.

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.