How to help with maths homework without giving the answer

Why not just show them how to do it?

Because the answer is the least useful part. Memory is built by producing things, not by watching someone else produce them: answers you work out yourself are remembered better than answers you are shown. Psychologists call this the generation effect (Slamecka and Graf, 1978).

There’s a second reason. A question that feels nearly solvable makes children curious, and curiosity helps the brain hold on to what comes next (Gruber and colleagues, 2014). Hand over the answer and that state switches off. The homework gets done, but the learning that the homework was for doesn’t happen.

None of this means leaving your child to flounder. The skill is to give help that makes the question smaller, not help that makes it disappear.

What should I say when my child is stuck?

Try these in order. Each one does a little more of the work, and none of them does the last step.

1. “What is the question asking you to find?” A surprising number of stuck moments are really “I don’t know what they want”. Getting your child to say it in their own words often unsticks it.
2. “Can you read it to me?” If they stumble on the words, the problem may be reading, not maths. That needs different help (see Is it a maths problem or a reading problem?).
3. “What if the numbers were smaller?” Swap 48 + 37 for 8 + 7, or 3.6 ÷ 0.4 for 36 ÷ 4. Once they’ve solved the friendly version, ask how it connects to the real one.
4. “Can you draw it?” A number line, a bar split into parts, or a quick sketch of the situation turns words into something to look at. Fractions in particular are much easier on a number line.
5. “What do you already know that might help?” If a question about area has them stuck, the missing piece might be multiplication. Step back to the skill underneath, practise that for a minute, then return.

How should I respond to a wrong answer?

Treat it as a clue rather than a failure. Children’s wrong answers are rarely random. If your child writes 72 − 45 = 33, they have taken the smaller digit from the larger in each column (2 from 5, 4 from 7). That’s a specific misconception, and it’s fixable.

So instead of “no, that’s wrong”, ask “how did you get that?” Listening to the method tells you exactly what to work on, and explaining it often lets your child spot the mistake themselves, which is the best outcome of all.

My child does it a different way from how I learned. Does it matter?

It can. Australian classrooms teach methods many parents never saw, such as bar models, jump strategies on a number line and short division set out as a “bus stop”. If you teach your way, your child can end up with two half-learned methods instead of one solid one.

Ask them to show you the class method and to teach it to you. Teaching it back is excellent practice in its own right.

How long should homework help take?

Shorter than you’d think. Stop while things are going well, ideally on a question your child got right. For children who feel anxious about maths, pressure makes it worse: the worry takes up the working memory the arithmetic needs (Ashcraft, 2002). Time pressure is the usual culprit, so put the timer and the “quick!” away.

If it’s late and there are tears, stop. Sleep helps move new learning into long-term memory (Diekelmann and Born, 2010), and a question that defeated your child at 8pm is often easy the next morning. Let the teacher know it was hard: that’s useful information too.

When is it fine to just tell them?

When it’s something to remember rather than something to reason about. What “perimeter” means, how to write a fraction, which way round the < sign goes: these are conventions, and there’s nothing to discover. Tell them, and save the questions for the thinking.

How Workings does this

Workings is built on the same rule: it never gives the answer, in any mode. When a child is stuck, help comes as a ladder of smaller steps, such as a question aimed at the mistake, help with the reading, or a smaller question from the skill underneath, and the child always takes the last one. Wrong answer options are real errors children make, each mapped to a misconception, so a wrong answer tells us what to address next. Read how the hint ladder works.